An exposition of surgical clinical teaching in Glasgow : being the lecture introductory to the winter course of clinical surgery delivered at the Western Infirmary of Glasgow (University Clinic) / by George H. B. Macleod.

  • MacLeod, George H. B., Sir (George Husband Baird), 1828-1892.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An exposition of surgical clinical teaching in Glasgow : being the lecture introductory to the winter course of clinical surgery delivered at the Western Infirmary of Glasgow (University Clinic) / by George H. B. Macleod. 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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    Macfarlane, Lawrie, Andrew Buchanan, Moses Buchanan, Lyon, and Fleming, clinical surgery in Glasgow was more carefully cultivated. The teaching has always been quite open, and at no time has this been the case more than at present, when every surgeon in charge of wards in each hospital is placed, as regards the recognition of his teaching, on precisely the same footing, and students are at perfect liberty to choose any of them as their instructor. In order to fulfil the necessary course, each student attaches himself to two teachers, and he is com- pelled to divide his time between them—attending the lecture of both every week, but confining his visits to the wards of one for three months at a time. He has thus the opportunity during the six months' session of watching the practice of two men, and yet following to a ter- mination the cases treated. Before the clinical teaching was transferred from the Royal In- firmary, Professor Gairdner and myself were the only representatives of the University engaged in clinical teaching. When the institution was opened last year, two of our former associates as clinical teachers in the Royal joined us here, and to them the University gave the well-earned status of professors. In this way, Drs. M'Call Anderson and George Buchanan were associated with Dr. Gairdner and myself in this very important and laborious work ; but their appointment and official position as professors of clinical medicine and surgery has in no sense changed the relation in which Dr. Gairdner and myself stand to the teaching, nor has their appointment in any way narrowed or restricted the choice which you are allowed to make of your teachers. These appointments have brought augmented force to our school, but they have conferred no exclusive position on their holders, such as was pointed out existed elsewhere. The conditions favourable to the healthy development of clinical teaching have greatly improved of late years in our school. The division which now markedly exists between medical and surgical practice, and the restriction to consultation work which several of the teachers have imposed on themselves, have allowed more time to be de- voted to hospital duties, and have enabled them to concentrate their at- tention on special departments; and to this circumstance more than any other do I ascribe that increased vigour which has marked the teaching of later years and the rapid increase of our school which has followed. The prolonged hospital appointments permit such improvements to be made in practical teaching as was before impossible, and to no event of my professional life do I look back with more satisfaction than the part I took in that reform. The almost complete severance which existed between the University and the Hospital up to a few years ago was a total bar to the development of the clinical teaching. Gentlemen, in closing these remarks, I would only add that the duty demanded of us teachers is most anxious and responsible, whether viewed with reference to you or to the patients. It is a very grave affair to be charged with the instruction of others in any matter: how infinitely
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