Medical bibliography and medical education : Dr. Robert Watt's library for his medical students in 1812 / by James Finlayson.

  • Finlayson, James, 1840-1906.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical bibliography and medical education : Dr. Robert Watt's library for his medical students in 1812 / by James Finlayson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    may be, in a tentative or blundering manner) is the only way to acquire any real mastery of the situation, either with books or patients. Professor Osier of P>altimore tells me that, in the case of a senior student, he may give such a subject as Graves’s disease, and request him, in two or three weeks, to bring up a very short verbal account of the literature or history of the subject, explaining who Graves was, and where and when he described the affection; and in the same way as regards Basedow. Owing to their proximity to the great medical library in Washington, with its index- catalogue, his students have no doubt certain advantages. The information thus acquired, and communicated, it may be, from one student to another, is apt to be better assimilated than if it came from the professor. The student thus finds his way to original sources of information, and learns much in the process in addition to what he is searching for. In my own cliniques I have not gone so far or so systematic- ally in tliis direction as Professor Osier, but I have sometimes made a demonstration of the leading books, in various languages, on children’s diseases, or physiognomic diagnosis, for example, placing them on the table for personal examination. Occasionally, I make a student read aloud from the original treatise the descrip- tion (for exam])le) given by Sydenham of Chorea Sancti Viti; and 1 have given Hecker’s book to a clinical clerk, and asked him to bring up by and by a short verbal report of the differences or relationships of the dance of St. John, the dance of St. Guy, and Sydenham’s chorea, when such a case was under his care. I think, however, it is not often that this can be done in tlie Scottisli schools of medicine. The continual complaint still is, that the student has no time for such work. He is so much belectured that he has not the necessary time to prepare a few minutes’ lecture of his own! Professor Osier’s students have the enormous advantage that they have no systematic lectures mi medicine at all, either from him or any one else; all his teaching is by clinical work, or such methods as those referred to. Why should he lecture systematically, wlien he has done his best in this way by his printed book on medicine ? In Scotland, our medical professors in the universities were formerly tied down by a liard-and-fast ordinance, so that they had to give a hundred systematic lectures in winter and fifty in summer, whether they thought this wise or not. By the new ordin- ances they were liberated; but no sooner were they free than they seem to have voluntarily bound themselves with the old shackles, with tlie result that matters are practically unchanged in this respect. The new ordinances ordain only a time limit (five montlis and two and a half months) for each entire course, laying down no rule as to the number of lectures. The General Medical Council, on wliich the Scottish Universities are so ably