A letter from a medical student on some moral difficulties in his studies, and on the duty of the state to aid in lessening them : addressed to the Rev. J.H. North.

Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter from a medical student on some moral difficulties in his studies, and on the duty of the state to aid in lessening them : addressed to the Rev. J.H. North. 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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    as more worthy of credit than mine. “ Take, for example, the case of one who has been removed from school at the age of fourteen or fifteen, for the pur- pose of being apprenticed to a practitioner in the country; and this is, I believe, a very general course. What superintendence has been exercised here ? What pains can have been bestowed upon the moral culture, or the formation of the principles and habits of a youth thus situated, by a master whose unavoidable absence from home extends fre- quently to the whole of the day, and whose inter- course with his apprentice is thus necessarily confined within the limits of mere professional com- mands on the one side, and obedience on the other? Yet, with no other preparation than this, it is that perhaps the majority of students are sent to encounter the difficulties and temptations of a London lifeand when such an one has arrived here to attend the masterly professional instruction, delivered for the most part by men of high character and attainment, showered also in this age and place round our very doors, whither does he come. He arrives, and finds “there is no officer connected with the hospital at which the pupil is entered, whose province it is to guide him in the selection of his apartments; there are no limits within which his choice is confined ; there is no warrant for the respectability of the persons at whose house he may take up his abode ; there is no provision made for the regularity of his meals, nor for