Observations on the system of teaching clinical medicine in the University of Edinburgh; with suggestions for its improvement / [Sir James Clark].

  • Clark, James, Sir, 1788-1870.
Date:
[1827]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the system of teaching clinical medicine in the University of Edinburgh; with suggestions for its improvement / [Sir James Clark]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    continent. In tlie foreign universities, generally speaking, there is no part of the physician’s educa¬ tion watched with more jealousy ; and there is no class of professors whose appointment excites more general interest than the clinical professors, or in whose selection and nomination greater care is taken that none but such as are well qualified for the office shall obtain it. In the case of no other professor, indeed, is there required a greater com¬ bination of the rarer qualities, of the physician; and no one certainly has more important duties to perform. Upon his efforts, favoured by a judicious system, depends, in a great degree, the pupil’s future progress in his profession. Accord¬ ing to the direction which his mind receives during his clinical studies, is he, in all probability, to become an accurate observing physician or an empirical writer of prescriptions. There can be little doubt that to a defective clinical education, more than to any thing else, is to be attributed the large proportion of routine practitioners in the profession,—of men who blindly follow the beaten track of their predecessors, without knowing or inquiring whether it is right or wrong ; because, having never learned properly to observe disease for themselves, or to reason upon its phenomena, they can derive but little advantage from expe¬ rience. For the truth of these remarks, I appeal to those members of the profession who have