Observations on the present state of medical education : with suggestions for its improvement / by James Syme.

  • Syme, James, 1799-1870.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the present state of medical education : with suggestions for its improvement / by James Syme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    students, has enabled me to become well acquainted with their feelings and difficulties, will be accepted as a sufficient apology for my present attempt. To any one at all acquainted with the progress of medical science in recent times, it must have been obvious that a period was approaching when the load upon students' memories would become so excessive as to require some measure of relief. That the state of matters has actually arrived at this condition very plainly appears from what took place at the last meeting of the Medical Council, when, from England, Scotland, and Ireland, there was a strong expression of desire that the attention of licensing boards should be directed to the evils which result from the present sys¬ tem of over-teaching. It is indeed only necessary to compare any department of the curriculum as it was thirty or forty years ago with what it is now, to per¬ ceive the enormous difference which has been gradually introduced between the former and existing amount of burden imposed upon the memory of a candidate for medical honours. At the time I studied it, chemistry was a science that could be easily comprehended by any ordinary degree of intelligence, and all its details lay within the limits of a moderate compass; but now, instead of being merely a branch of general knowledge, it has spread over a field of such boundless extent as to re¬ quire the most complete devotion of time and talent for its successful cultivation. Botany, also, in my day was a most agreeable recreation, unfolding the structure