"For strange to tell, e'en on that far-off shore
Doth flourish now the love of Latin lore."
The newly created Universities of Mexico and Lima developed during the half century following Columbus' Century into full-fledged institutions of learning amply deserving the name university. Lectures in medicine were delivered in [{281}] Mexico in 1578, and a full medical faculty was organized before the close of the century. Our first school of medicine in English America did not come into existence for fully two centuries later. More than half a century before this, however, special care had been exercised by the Spanish authorities to prevent the exploitation of the Spanish colonists or the Indians by pretenders to knowledge in medicine. As early as 1527 strict medical regulations were drawn up by the municipal council of the City of Mexico, granting the license to practise medicine only to those who showed the possession of a university degree in medicine. Even earlier than this arrangements had been made for the regular training of barber surgeons, so that injuries and wounds of various kinds might be treated promptly as well as properly, so that even the poorer classes might have the benefit of some regular training in those whose ministrations they could afford to pay for. A pure-drug ordinance, regulating the practice of the apothecaries, was issued as early as 1529. It was practically only in our own time that similar regulations were adopted in this country.
Standards in university teaching were well maintained. Post-graduate work was literally post-graduate work, and students might take up the study of medicine or of law or of divinity only after having made proper preliminary studies in the undergraduate departments of the university. The Spanish-American universities received a charter not only from the Spanish crown, but also from the Pope. The formal title of the University of Mexico was the Pontifical University of the city. The Papal charter was sought because it was the only way to secure an international value for academic degrees, for the Papacy was the international authority of the time. Papal charters for the universities, however, were granted only on condition that standards should be maintained. There are any number of these Papal university charters extant which emphasize this necessity. On the establishment of a new university the professors had to be graduates of well-recognized, authoritative universities, in which the examinations were held in oath-bound secrecy, in order [{282}] to assure as far as possible absolute fairness and the maintenance of standards. The course of studies and the length of time for them had to be arranged in accordance with the standards of older universities.
TITLE PAGE OF LETTER OF COLUMBUS (BASEL, 1494)
PAGE FROM THE LETTER OF COLUMBUS (BASEL, 1494)
The Spanish-American universities had the advantage of being closely in touch with the European universities, and as a consequence had taken their traditions direct from them. Papal university charters, as a rule, required explicitly that there should be three years of university work before medicine or other graduate work might be taken up, and then four years of medicine before the degree of doctor would be granted. Even after this, according to the Italian laws of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the practice of medicine must not be begun by the graduate until he had spent a year in practice with an experienced physician. This is the year of hospital work that we are now trying to introduce into the medical schools as a requirement and which is taken, but voluntarily, by most of those who are seriously interested in their professional studies. The preliminary requirements, that is, such formal academic preparation for the study of medicine as makes it possible for a young man to take up the subject and properly benefit by it, have only become obligatory by law in very recent years here in America, and that to a very limited degree.