Hospital construction and management / by Frederic J. Mouat and H. Saxon Snell.
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hospital construction and management / by Frederic J. Mouat and H. Saxon Snell. 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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![elaborated in the Medical College of Calcutta by myself and the colleagues with whom I was then associated, so long ago as in 1845, which, although deficient in some particulars, was in advance of anything attempted in Great Britain, even at the present time. The particulars of this scheme will be found in the printed reports of the time, and all that I need refer to at present is the character of the examinations to test proficiency, which were then adopted. In anatomy, chemistry, botany, and materia medica, in addition to written papers, were oral and practical examinations. In anatomy, the dissection and demonstration of anatomical and surgical subjects in the disseftion room ; in chemistry and materia medica, the identification of drugs and chemicals, and explanation of their properties and uses; in botany, the identification and description of plants brought up from the Botanical Gardens for the purpose. But the most substantial advance was in the teaching of medicine and surgery, and the system of clinical instruction adopted. As Professor of Medicine, I was, residing as I did at the College, Superintendent of the out-patient department, and there I compelled every student of my class to attend, to learn the visible signs and proper mode of examination of disease, with a view to its diagnosis and treatment. Until he brought from my assistant and house physician, who directed their studies, a certificate of diligence and efficiency in this department, he had no chance of obtaining a clinical clerkship. In this clerkship he had carefully to examine and diagnose every case assigned to him, to examine the secretions, and to submit to the house physician, when he went his rounds, a written statement of all he had ascertained. This officer [during the whole of my tenure of the Professorship, the late Prosunno Coomar Mitter, a singularly gifted and accomplished physician, whose early death was a great loss to the institution] went carefully over the ground again, and prescribed for the case during the intervals of my visits. When I came into the ward, the notes were read over, the diagnosis verified, and the treatment, with the reasons for its adoption, explained. On the termination of the case, a careful abstract record of it was prepared by the clerk for the hospital registers, and, if fatal, the pathological examination and its results were entered. In the last year of their pupilage, the best conducted and most proficient clerks were appointed practising pupils, and allowed to treat a certain proportion of the cases themselves, under the constant supervision of my house physician and myself—a proceeding originally instituted by Professor Graves of Dublin. The final examinations in medicine and surgery were thoroughly practical, and subsequently to my leaving the College test cases were selected in the hospital wards, for examination and diagnosis by the candidates for degrees and diplomas. I am induced to place all this on record, at this distant date, to show what, in my judgment, are the real uses of clinical hospitals, as well as in justice to my fellow- labourers and myself, for it is the ill fortune of those who work in the distant possessions of this great Empire, under difficulties unknown in this temperate climate, to be entirely ignored in their native land.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21911319_0087.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
