The ideal graduate study institution : what Germany has done.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ideal graduate study institution : what Germany has done. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    him to devote a certain specified time daily or yearly to the scientific study of new developments. The ordinary practitioner is much too busy a man to wade through special monographs and transactions, and specialism has nar- rowed 60 greatly of late years, and within its limits each speciality has built up so many vast structures, that it is well nigh impossible for him to grasp the essentials of every new step in medicine. Yet, as Professor von Berg- mann so aptly expressed it in the sentence that serves as text to this article, the welfare of the community, no less than the interest of the profession, demands that the prac- titioner should be acquainted with the I’ecent advances in science and that he should follow the development of his art and science. It was necessary, therefore, to give the practitioner a helping hand, and the State, recognising the importance of the matter, stepped in and lent the movement its cordial support. The ideal, accepted by the State as well as by the profession in Germany, has never‘been lost sight of, and the result is that graduate study in Germany, so far as German practitioners are concerned, is organised on the soundest basis and on lines which leave little, if any- thing, to be desired. It is interesting to notice how the committee achieved this gratifying result. It admitted, from the commence- ment, that it is wrong and unjust to expect qualified men to resume their places among the unqualified students in order to acquire further knowledge. Many a practitioner who would willingly join a graduate class shrinks, from motives which will be appreciated by every graduate, from joining a “ mixed class ” of the type which obtains in England. Equally was it evident that teachers who pos- sess a reputation as student teachers will not neces- sarily do for qualified men; the choice of instructors was, therefore, one of the points which the committee had to consider. Finally, there was the question of time and place. In the large University towns, where clinics and laboratories