The two disciplines in education : an address delivered at the opening of the medical session, Mason University College, Birmingham / by Sir William T. Gairdner, M.D., K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Medicine in the University of Glasgow.

  • William Tennant Gairdner
Date:
1899
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The two disciplines in education : an address delivered at the opening of the medical session, Mason University College, Birmingham / by Sir William T. Gairdner, M.D., K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Medicine in the University of Glasgow. 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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    words) that “ science ” (so-called) might be taught out of a text- book, by rote, like anything else, and in such a way as not to have the smallest relation to the discipline of (fivais. The one essential point in that discipline, as distinguished from that of X0709, is that the teaching must be real of its kind, founded on experiment and observation directly, and not doctrinal. It must be, in short, rerum ipsa rum cognitio vera e rebus ipsis. Now in the actual teaching of a medical school in these days, gentlemen, we do our very best to make this kind of teaching yours as far as we can. You are taken into the dissecting-room and are expected to learn for yourselves (with assistance of course)—to make yourselves practically familiar with the anatomy of the human body by the work of your own hands 01 have to undergo a similar discipline in the chemical and physical laboratory, and again in the physiological, and again in the pathological laboratories, and in many others. In the great practical departments, you have your clinical work in the hospitals, which, if well managed by compe- tent men, ought to be all a part of the discipline of <fivai9 and nothing else. A certain amount of dogmatic instruction by lectures and text-books, it is true, is absolutely indispensable, and I am not here to disparage it, as I have long practised it myself, and have fully discussed elsewhere the need that still exists for it * But every systematic teacher of any eminence or effectiveness will tell you, that if he were deprived of his practical service, his teaching, even as a systematic and more or less doctrinal lecturer, would inevitably degenerate. Here again, therefore—rerum ipsarum cognilio vera e rebus ipsis—is the true note of the discipline of c/wert?, If general doctrines and conclusions must needs be taught, they should be taught as much as possible in the light of instances; and the * Two Lectures. I. Lectures, Books, and Practical Teaching. II. Clinical Instruction. University of Glasgow, Session 1S77-7S. [The first of these Lectures was printed in part in The Lancet, November 17th, I877. The second has been mostly used for distribution to my clinical classes, as an exposition of the method to be pursued. Both Lectures are now out of print.]