Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

SUPPORT OF SCHOOLS.

165

American universities to be formed, some facts about one of them, Harvard University, Boston, for example, may be mentioned. Its staff for all subjects of arts, law, and medicine numbers 66, among which such illustrious names in literature, science, and medicine as Longfellow, O.W. Holmes, Dana, Agassiz, Asa Gray, BrownSéquard, and Bigelow, may be found. The library contains 168,000 volumes, and the regulations are of the most advanced and liberal character. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that this institution had last session 961 students, of whom 301 were medical.

Every medical school should have a dean or registrar, whose duty it would be to superintend the repair of the building, manage the advertising, and correspondence with pupils, and with parents, to whom they would be more or less responsible. The doubling of one medical class in Dublin within the last few years is wholly due to the activity, in such matters, of its registrar. As the office is onerous, and not over agreeable, it should be taken alternately by the professors-or if permanently by one, a small recompense should be allowed.

To exhibit the true principles on which educational institutions should be founded, no higher or more disinterested authority than Sir H. Davy could be quoted: "Those who establish foundations for teaching the sciences should at least understand their dignity. To connect pecuniary speculations or commercial advantages with schemes for promoting the progress of knowledge, is to create sterility and destroy improvement. A scientific institution should be made no more an object of profit than an hospital or charitable establishment. Intellectual wants are at least as worthy of support as corporeal, and they ought to be provided for with the same nobleness and liberality." It is desirable that such institutions should be endowed by private or perhaps public benevolence, as mere pupil's fees, although they stimulate the teacher's zeal, form a very insufficient and

objectionable mode of recompense, and cannot be adequate to the provision and care of suitable buildings, museums, and libraries, without which medical schools are ludicrous, or, still worse, injurious to the best interests of the profession and the public. The fact has been lately stated, that the profits accruing to an eminent naturalist who gave lectures on botany at one of the London hospitals for two sessions was £2 10s. The greatest advantage would flow from lessening the number of chairs, especially in such scientific subjects, by amalgamating schools. Schools and hospitals should be watchfully supervised for the purpose of ensuring adequate instruction by the qualifying boards for which they educate. The fees, number of teachers, and other particulars of the schools of the United Kingdoms, are arranged in succeeding pages.

The recognised schools which are all connected with hospitals in London are, alphabetically, Bartholomew's, Charing-cross, George's, Guy's, King's College, London, Mary's, Middlesex, Thomas's, University College, and Westminster. The chairs in all are physiology, descriptive anatomy, demonstrations, chemistry, medicine, surgery, materia medica, midwifery, botany, medical jurisprudence; and the chairs which some possess are comparative anatomy, pathology, dental surgery, ophthalmology, aural surgery, histology, and natural philosophy. The expense for all lectures and hospital practice may be averaged at £100-Charing-cross (£77 148.) being the lowest, and St. George's (£105) the highest.

1

The recognised provincial English schools are, Birmingham (Queen's and Sydenham Colleges just now being amalgamated), Bristol, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. The chairs are nearly the same as those in London, the less practical being often omitted. The fees for all lectures and hospitals required for the College of Surgeons averages

about £50.

SCHOOLS IN SCOTLAND-DUBLIN.

167

The Oxford and Cambridge University schools will be alluded to further on.

The medical schools of Scotland are the Aberdeen, Edinburgh University and Surgeon's Hall, and Glasgow University and Anderson's University. The chairs are similar to those in Ireland, except that of anatomy and physiology, which is termed "institutes of medicine," and includes physiology and pathology. The fees average £3 3s. for each lecture.

In Dublin the schools are not connected with hospitals, except that at Dr. Stevens' hospital. In addition to this, there are the School of Physic (Trinity College), School of Surgery (College of Surgeons), School of the Catholic University, and the Ledwich and Carmichael proprietary schools. The chairs are anatomy and physiology, practical anatomy (two usually), surgery (two usually), physic, chemistry, materia medica, medical jurisprudence, botany, and midwifery. The number of demonstrators varies from three to seven. The fees in all are three guineas per course. The only other schools in Ireland are the Queen's Colleges at Belfast, Cork, and Galway. These chairs differ, thus there is but one professor for the physiological and anatomical courses, and no separate professor of medical jurisprudence, but there are professorships of modern languages and natural philosophy which the medical students must attend. Class-rolls are regularly called. The libraries and museums of these colleges are very complete.

SCHOOL OF PHARMACY.

At the School of Pharmacy, lectures are delivered from October to July at half-past eight A.M., being the hour most suitable to those employed in establishments; but the laboratory is open from half-past nine to five daily. Such famous names as Fownes, Pereira, A. Todd Thomson, Redwood, Bentley, and Attfield, are to be

found on the professors' roll, the three last-named now occupying the chairs of pharmacy, botany, and chemistry respectively. There is an extensive library and a museum. The fees for the lectures are four guineas, or two guineas to registered apprentices or assistants. For work in the laboratory, for any two hours daily for the year, the fee is twelve guineas, or from half-past nine to five daily, twenty-five guineas, including appa-ratus and materials.

No other special school of pharmacy exists in Great Britain or Ireland. The Apothecaries' Hall of Ireland supported a school of medicine for some years, but in 1855 it passed into possession of the Catholic University. Their laboratory, under Mr. Tichborne, would supply the fullest opportunity of studying pharmaceutical chemistry. The laboratories of the medical schools, or of the Royal College of Science, might be used for instruction in general chemistry, and the Botanic Gardens of the Dublin Society offer abundant means for studying medical botany.

PRIZES.

The policy of stimulating medical education by prizes and other rewards is a subject on which the best authorities are divided. They are objected to inasmuch as it is alleged that they are apt to induce the exclusive study, and that not by the most practical methods, of one subject. There is much weight in this argument, but it is, on the other hand, very often the case that they have an opposite tendency, and the student who has mastered one subject has also, owing to the training his mind has undergone and to his perceiving their importance more fully, mastered the other branches of medical lore. Besides, prizes and distinctions should be especially given for general proficiency, and that, too, determined by a demonstrative and clinical test. Prizes also very often displease those who do not gain them, making them

[blocks in formation]

feel a certain inferiority, and it may be a tinge of jealousy. This, if the examination were necessary for obtaining a certificate, included the whole class (and not the very small section of it as at present)—if it was conducted in a manner altogether above suspicion, and if no extraneous circumstance, as the timidity of a candidate, were allowed to interfere, would never occur. No mind could be so ungenerous as to envy distinctions gained by superior talent or more persevering industry. I would then advocate the distribution of prizes for general proficiency, and perhaps (if the whole class was examined) for special subjects, as it would greatly stimulate medical education, in the same manner as the opening of the public services to merit by competition has manifestly and largely done. To illustrate the details of such a plan, the subject of physiology may be taken as an example. The examinations should take place during the last week of the session, and comprise-1. Recognition and description of zoological specimens, optical instruments, microscopical preparations, and organic substances which have been exhibited during the course. 2. Viva voce questions (the same to each candidate). 3. Written papers (the same to each candidate). Essays on physiological subjects read before the students' society should be taken into account, if candidates offered them. Anatomy, surgery, medicine, chemistry, and other branches, are even more capable of demonstrative examination. The class should be rigorously divided into first, second, and third-year groups. In a school with 150 pupils, £50 out of the profits of the lectures might be fairly allocated for three prizes in each year for general proficiency.

« AnteriorContinuar »