Observations on the system of clinical instruction in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh / by the professors of clinical medicine.

  • William Pulteney Alison
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the system of clinical instruction in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh / by the professors of clinical medicine. 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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    tunities of self-instruction to the Professors is by the present system of Clinical teaching. It cannot be overlooked, in considering the present ques- tion, that the emoluments of the existing Medical Chairs de- pend in part upon the fees of the Clinical Students ; that the present occupants have rights, derived from the uninterrupted usage of a century, which cannot be lightly dealt with ; and that their Chairs have an interest in the question which must form an important element in considering the present propo- sal. On the Continent, Avhere Professorships are supported always mainly, and in general entirely, by endowments, projected changes are untrammelled by such considera- tions. In Edinburgh it is not so. The transference of the right of Clinical teaching to a separate Professor would in- volve the sacrifice of a fifth part of the income of the present Professors of the most important practical Chairs. Before the Managers, therefore, resolve to recommend a change in the University involving so great a reduction, the Clinical Professors would submit, that three very serious questions must be ta,ken into consideration. 1. Whether such reduction, without consent of those now interested, be legal 1 2. Whether the present incomes of the most important practical Chairs in the University, reduced, as they have been, by various causes, to two-fifths of what they were fifteen years ago, can be safely reduced any farther ? And, 3. Whether this experiment should be made for the sake of carrying out an innovation, of the working of which no Aca- demic or Corporate body in this countrij has any experience ? The first two of these questions they will leave without commentary to the Managers themselves, being assured both of their capability and willingness to make inquiry, and to arrive at the truth, and of their anxiety to do justice. But upon the third it is necessary to put them right as to certain relative facts which have been incorrectly represented in their Statement. It is there mentioned, that other Me- dical Schools at home and abroad, in following the example of Edinburgh, improved upon it, by instituting separate Chairs of Clinical Medicine. And again alhision is made
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