Observations on the education and examinations for degrees in medicine, as affected by the New Medical Bill ... in a letter to the Right Hon. Sir James Graham, bart. / by Richard Quain.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the education and examinations for degrees in medicine, as affected by the New Medical Bill ... in a letter to the Right Hon. Sir James Graham, bart. / by Richard Quain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    G ‘^General Report/^ and the “Appendix to the General Report and they will have reference to— The amount of preliminary Education which ought to be required for a University Degree in Medicine; and to— The manner of conducting Examinations into the general and professional attainments of the Candidates. In the “Appendix,” p. 187, the subject of the General Education is thus treated :— “Preliminary Education.”—“It would seem a matter about which all might be agreed, that it is desirable that Medical Prac- titioners should be men of enhghtened minds, accustomed to exert their intellectual powers, and familiar with habits of accurate observation and cautious reflection. It is also desirable that they should have that degree of hterary attainment which wiU prevent them, when minghng as they must do with mankind in the exercise of their profession, from being looked upon with contempt, or from committing errors in conversation and in writing for which others woMd be despised: because, even upon the supposition that, notwithstanding this, they have high pro- fessional acquisition, the law of association wiU operate, and the conclusion wUl be drawn, that much confidence cannot be placed in them. This tendency not to confide in him is one of the most formidable difficulties with which a Physician has to strug- gle ; much, unquestionably, of the success of ordinaiy practice depending upon the feehngs of trust and security with which he is regarded. There is, too, a connection between the Sciences, the cultivation of one certainly predisposing, or at least creating a facility, for the cultivation of another. And udth a view to the general dissemination of knowledge, it woffid be of moment that a class of men so widely difiused, and minghng so much with society as the Members of the Medical Profession, should be so instructed as to be able to give a tone to conversation, or to promote among those with whom they associate the love and the pursuit of hterary and scientific accomphshments. But after granting all this, the question stiU remains, whether there should be, before commencing the study of hledicine, or while that study is pursued, the acquisition of what is commonly called a learned education; and it is as to this that most intel-