A plea for liberty of medical teaching : a letter addressed to the General Council of Medical Education and Registration / by John T. Arlidge.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plea for liberty of medical teaching : a letter addressed to the General Council of Medical Education and Registration / by John T. Arlidge. 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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    those regulations are prohibitive of the attempt by reason of the con- ditions prescribed to constitute a recognised school. For to fulfil those conditions it becomes necessary to erect special school-buildings, —including theatres for lectures, class-rooms, dissecting-rooms, labora- tories, libraries and museums, and, further, to organise a large staff of lecturers and teachers, who, on their part again, must obtain sanction to discharge their functions from more or fewer medical corporations. Now it may be urged that requisitions of this sort are right and proper as a guarantee of the fitness of schools and instruc- tors ; and I do not presume to question that, at least to a considerable extent they are so, in those instances where a school is instituted to supply the entire course of education, and to be duly certified or recognised for that purpose. But whilst salutary to this end, those requirements are assuredly inimical to all endeavours to render the numerous county and other hospitals scattered over the country available, as they might and should be, to the purposes of education. The present regulations for medical education are, in truth, based on far too limited views and principles; on views and principles derived not from serious consideration of the actual and necessary conditions and sources of education, but in a great measure the outcrop of acci- dental circumstances and of the traditions of past times. The main principle appears to be, that medical knowledge is attainable only where a hospital is connected with a complete school organization of an approved pattern; and with this principle are associated (1) the traditionary belief that efficient means of instruction and qualified teachers are to be found only in metropolitan towns, and (2) the fallacious notion that attendance upon lectures and the acquisition of knowledge are equivalent conditions. The lamentable result is, that the vast field for learning the pro- fession, existing in the numerous provincial hospitals or infirmaries, lies waste, to the detriment of those connected with these establish- ments, and to the serious loss of the profession at large. Of late years this waste has augmented. While the system of apprenticeship was in force, pupilage at provincial infirmaries was universal, and the advantages of those institutions were shared in not only by the in-door, but also by out-door pupils, the apprentices of of practitioners of the neighbourhood. But now that system has well nigh died out, and in its place no sufficient motive is proffered to students to