Medical education in the United States : an address delivered to the students of the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction, at the close of the session of 1846 / by Alfred Stillé.
- Stillé, Alfred, 1813-1900.
- Date:
- 1846
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical education in the United States : an address delivered to the students of the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction, at the close of the session of 1846 / by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![13 of his skill in dissection, and operative surgery. [It is now proposed that examinations shall be held at the end of each year on the studies of that year, and, at the conclusion of the whole course, on the studies of the entire course, to ensure that they are both well learned, and well remembered.] To this imperfect sketch of European medical edu- cation, you will expect me to add an outline of that pursued in Great Britain, and the more so, because it has been recently urged, not in palliation, but in vin- dication of our own meagre system, that England is, at this very moment, endeavouring to get rid of the cumbrous machinery of education, from which we are thought to enjoy so enviable an exemption. I am constrained to say that this argument involves a total misapprehension of the real state of the case. The English medical profession are striving to obtain the suppression of several close corporations, the members of which are few in number, and who, to the exclusion of practitioners in general, possess privileges and immu- nities, which in France, and in despotic Austria and Prussia, are equally shared by all physicians. It is only in free and constitutional England that the phrase republic of science is a meaningless mockery. The British practitioners demand a real equality of rights, not the abolition of control; they ask for increased requirements from students, and not for relaxing pre- sent rules; they pray that the portals of the shrine of Esculapius may be narrowed and guarded, not that they may be thrown open to a promiscuous crowd; in one word, they call for the adoption of that system whose glorious fruits are every where visible in conti- nental medicine. But you shall know why I did not set English medical education by the side of the other models placed before you ; and for this purpose, let me quote the language of Mr. Surgeon Wilde, in his work on Austria and its institutions. In England, with few exceptions, (and even in those exceptions the kind of instruction is very meagre) there is little or no preparatory education required by the different colleges and licensing bodies. The student is at perfect liberty](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156785_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
