MODERN MEDICAL SCHOOLS AND EXAMINATIONS.
Things are very different now, and it is only fair to state that this College and the University of London were undoubtedly the pioneers in that great improvement in medical education and medical examinations which has taken place during the reign of Her Majesty. University College was established in 1828, and within ten years of that date we find an illustrious staff of professors, nearly every one of whom has had an important share in increasing our knowledge of natural science in its widest sense. Turner and Thomas Graham, the latter certainly the greatest chemist of his time, were teaching chemistry; Lindley and Grant, each of them pre-eminent in his own department of knowledge, held the chairs of botany and comparative anatomy; while Dionysius Lardner, a man of great learning, in whom the power of expounding and lecturing was developed to an extraordinary degree, was professor of natural philosophy. Quain and Sharpey were teaching anatomy and physiology, and writing the world-famous text-book still known as “Quain and Sharpey.” Carswell was professor of morbid anatomy, and producing the series of marvellous water-colour drawings illustrative of his subject which are, and ever must be, reckoned among the greatest treasures of our museum. Samuel Cooper and Liston were teaching surgery; Anthony Todd Thompson, materia medica; Davis, midwifery; Gordon-Smith, medical jurisprudence; while Elliotson and C. J. B. Williams, who but lately was the sole survivor of his then colleagues, were setting an example in the teaching of medicine the effect of which is doubtless felt amongst us still. Here, then, more than fifty years ago, was a medical school complete in the modern sense. Our teaching has been altered in its details, and has tended to become more and more practical, but in principle it is the same now as it was then. Each branch of knowledge which is necessary for a medical man is provided for and controlled by a separate professor; and it is a remarkable fact, and redounds greatly to the foresight and wisdom of our founders, that the number of professorial chairs remains the same, the only addition being the all-important one of Public Health and Hygiene, in the establishment of which we were again the pioneers among medical schools. If imitation be the sincerest form of flattery, we ought to feel proud, for every school in London is now formed more or less perfectly on the model established here in 1828. Fifty years ago, as Sir James Paget reminds us, medical examinations were conducted in practically the same manner as that which is immortalised by Smollett in the pages of “Roderick Random.” But fifty years ago was founded the University of London, an institution which lives and progresses in spite of torrents of abuse, and which has had a greater effect for good upon medical education in this country than all the other universities and medical corporations put together. The great merit of the University of London consists, not in the severity of its examinations (in which particular it is fully equalled by the corporations), but in the training which it obliges each of its graduates to undergo, and when the General Medical Council some few years since reported on the final professional examinations, without reference to the two earlier examinations, it showed a want of appreciation of the principles which have guided this University. The University of London from the first decided that no one should become even an undergraduate who had not mastered his A B C, not merely the A B C of mathematics and certain selected languages, but the A B C of science also. There are many who still cavil at the breadth of the matriculation, and seem to forget that it comprises no subject that a decently educated man can in the present day ignore. It is argued that this wide smattering of knowledge which the matriculation involves is wrong, and that the best training for the mind is to master one subject thoroughly, a thing which nobody in this world ever did, and schoolboys of sixteen least of all. The correlation of knowledge is so complete that no one can attempt to master any one branch without some knowledge of many other branches; and in this fact is found the justification for the first examination which a medical student has to undergo. Which of the subjects of the matriculation is unnecessary for a decently educated doctor?
LONDON UNIVERSITY, BURLINGTON GARDENS.
The Preliminary Scientific Examination is the most abused of all, but in making a knowledge of natural philosophy, chemistry, and biology precede the study of anatomy and physiology the University of London is undoubtedly right, and there are signs that the other examining bodies are coming round to the same opinion. Of the final examination I need say nothing. There are those who say (even eminent persons, and notably one Aberdeen graduate) that the effect of the University of London has not been good, and that the medical graduates are not “practical” men. This assertion is too ridiculous to require an answer, for it is notorious that the London medical graduates have had more than their fair share in all the practical advances made by medicine in the last half century; and in medicine, surgery, midwifery, and public health they have more than held their own. It is very possible that a scientific training makes it rather difficult for a conscientious man to be dogmatic, and until the public is more highly educated than at present, the dogmatic practitioner is sure to have a large clientèle and will pass for a practical man. Scientific medicine has made enormous advances; but for a knowledge of the little arts, not always honest arts, which tend to increase our gains, John of Arderne was quite equal to any practitioner of the present day. He was, in one sense, pre-eminently a practical man, but whether we should do well to imitate him is more than doubtful.