Notes on medical education : being replies to the inquiries addressed to teachers by the General Medical Council / by John Struthers.

  • John Struthers
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on medical education : being replies to the inquiries addressed to teachers by the General Medical Council / by John Struthers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/14 page 11
    when the school is small and unendowed, the teacher generally cannot afford to give much time to teaching or to preparation for it, and as lecturing of a kind is the easiest and shortest method, a course of lectures written once for all is apt to he repeated from year to year. There can be no doubt of the paramount importance of practical study and instruction, by which I mean the pupils being afforded opportunities and at the same time having instruction given by a teacher to individuals or to small groups. Every teacher should have not merely his lecture room and museum, but also his practical room in which the members of the class can work, and where he can work with them, training them to observe and act for themselves. The first aim of a school, and of each teacher, should be to set aside a sufficient time for practical study, including hospital work. The number of lectures may be reduced with advantage in most of the departments, and all the lectures, or meetings, should be as practical as possible. In Anatomy and Chemistry a systematic class should meet daily, as they depend so much on the teacher, the objects and experiments to be shown and explained being so numerous. For Physiology, Materia Medica (if in the Winter Session), and Surgery, three meetings a week might suffice. If the Practice of Medicine class meets daily, from the great extent of the subject, the tutorial method might be largely employed. If the systematic teachers of Surgery and Medicine are, as they always should be, also hospital teachers, they will more readily see their way to not giving too many systematic lectures. In the Scotch Universities the courses of Midwifery and Materia Medica are each courses of a hundred lectures. They should be reduced to fifty, as in other schools. The subject of Midwifery may be at least as fully treated in fifty lectures as that of Practice of Medicine in a hundred. The teachers of Materia Medica and Medical Jurisprudence should have commodious laboratories fitted up, where the pupils can work, and in which the meetings could be held rather than in the lecture room whenever there is anything practical to be taught. For practical work a class may be subdivided when necessary, the teacher attending daily, and half of the class on alternate days. There should be extensive museums connected
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3