Freedom in teaching / by G. A. Gibson.

Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Freedom in teaching / by G. A. Gibson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    obtain the creation of a Chair of Surgery in the University, but the great influence of “ the second Monro ” prevented this movement from being carried out. Monro induced the Town Council to appoint him professor of anatomy and surgery; gave a few perfunctory lectures on the latter subject to ease his conscience; thus the Chair of Surgery was not instituted till 1831—two generations later ! In this way did the glamour of a great personality retard the progress of learning, and, to use a common figure of speech, put a spoke in the wheels of time. This was, fortunately, an uncommon occurrence. The more usual course of events has been that some man, full of enthusiasm for a subject, undertook to teach it, proved its usefulness as a factor in medical education, and by his success led the University authorities to found a chair or a lectureship for the subject. In a word, the University has been educated and guided to a great extent by the teachers outside her walls. Now, it has to be remembered that for many years the teaching carried on outside the walls of the University, both in Edinburgh and Glasgow, was absolutely unrecognised by the Universities of these cities. In the days of “ the third Monro,” anyone who desired to learn anatomy found it necessary to study the subject beyond the walls, yet he must, forsooth, attend the prelections of the professor—or rather, if all tales are true, of the professor’s grandfather—and pay fees twice over. The same appears to have been the sad fate of the Glasgow undergraduate, for it is obvious that, during the second quarter of last century, the Andersonian School had a larger number of anatomical students than the University, and assuredly the lectures given there were not qualifying for the degrees of the University. So absurd did this unjust restriction become, that in Edinburgh a strong agitation began and culminated successfully in the decision of the Town Council, then patrons of the University, to issue statutes in 1840 allowing undergraduates to take a proportion of their classes outside. These statutes were strongly opposed by the professorial oligarchy, and an appeal to Csesar was only settled in favour of freedom by the House of Lords in 1847. This protracted litigation, tedious as it may seem, was “ but as yesterday when it is past ” as compared with the “ thirty years’ war,” if you will let me call it so, between the Univer- sity and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in this city, arising out of the rights to practise of their graduates and licentiates. This, however, by way of parenthesis.