The study of dental surgery and the means thereto / by John Tomes.

  • John Tomes
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of dental surgery and the means thereto / by John Tomes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    A consensus of opinion as to requirements having been gained, effective action soon followed. But we were not the first to recognize the necessity of a systematic dental education. Our American brothers not only felt, but provided for, the want, in the organization of dental colleges ; and in follow- ing in their footsteps, and profiting by their experience, we accepted an obligation, which should at all times be freely acknowledged. The history of the organization, past and present, of the colleges has been published in “The History of Dental and Oral Science in America,” 1876. From this work, from Dr. Eliot’s address, delivered before the American Academy of Dental Science, 1878, and from the prospectuses of the colleges, I shall take the facts, a statement of which should be made in acknowledgment of the work of our predecessors, and of those differences of method, or of require- ments in education, which differences of social or of national wants or opinions have rendered desirable or necessary. In order to arrive at a right understanding of the constitution of the American dental colleges, it will be advantageous to refer very briefly to the state of medical education, and of the medical colleges, upon the lines of which the dental schools were, to a certain extent, of necessity framed. For this information I am wholly indebted to a “ Special Report upon Medical Education and Medical Institutions in the United States of America,” pre- pared for the United States Bureau of Education, by N. S. Davis, A.M., M.D., 1776—1876; and “The Relations of the Medical Profession to the State,” by D. B. St. John Rosa, M.D., 1879. In early days, Scotch graduates, who settled in America, organized a university drawn after our northern model, but it was soon found that edu- cational demands upon the student, readily met in Scotland, were altogether beyond the powers of the youth in a newly settled country. Plence, to avoid failure, the standard had to be lowered in favour of private pupilage. After the War of Independence—according to Dr. Davis—universities and colleges sprung up in the several States, subject only to the dormant control of the legislature of the State in which they were situated, and from which they derived their corporate powers. Neither the dominant feeling of the country in favour of individual liberty, or the multiplication of graduating bodies, tended to arrest the progressive lowering of the terms upon which the doctorate in medicine could be obtained ; and “ the fact,” says Dr. Rosa, “that the degrees conferred by the colleges became practically recognised throughout the whole country, as a sufficient license to practice medicine in all its branches, gave the student an opportunity of obtaining a degree wherever it was granted, upon the most convenient or easiest terms ; ” fully justifying the complaint of the president of the Medical Society of New York, in speaking of the medical colleges to the effect that, “The present necessary laxity in admission, and in final examinations, fairly overwhelms the land with physicians. Many of them are only so by title.” This is but describing a state of things that, in a certain degree, existed in our own country at no pre-historic time, and against which great efforts had to be made before it was brought within control, and practically to an end. Its bearing upon our subject is important, in so far only as it no doubt
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