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To the solid ground 
Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.’—WoRDSWORTH 

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 1871 


THE SMALLER LECTURESHIPS AT THE 
LONDON MEDICAL SCHOOLS 
I.—THE CONSERVATION OF FORCE 
pe OUT sixty years ago the student who determined 
to enter the medical profession was usually bound as 
an apprentice to some respectable country practitioner, 
and spent several years in acquiring the rudiments of his 
profession, by bandaging bad legs, dressing simple 
wounds, bleeding freely everybody that presented himself | 
and prescribing and dispensing for the poor. He then 
came to London, or attended one of the larger provincial 
towns provided with a hospital, and followed the practice 
of some celebrity, hearing an occasional lecture and much 
clinical discussion, and finally presented himself for ex- 
amination before the Master and Court of Assistants of 
the College of Surgeons, and started in practice. Such 
training was solid and good ; practice went before, and 
theory followed after; some thought, indeed, the cart 
went before the horse; yet the excellence of the plan 
was shown in the high scientific position and lucrative 
practice obtained by many a well-known name. As 
Shakespeare knew little Latin and less Greek, our stu- 
dent knew little anatomy and less physiology, but what 
he did know was substantial, and served him in good 
stead. 
A few years after the time we are speaking of, 
systematic courses of lectures upon various subjects, as 
upon chemistry, botany, anatomy and physiology, medi- 
cine and surgery, began to be delivered at the larger 
schools, at the instigation of the Society of Apothecaries, 
who were constituted by the Act of 1815 the guardians of 
“general practice,” two or even three subjects being given 
by the same lecturer; and attendance upon these soon 
came to be regarded as an important part of the student’s 
education. So far all was well. The several subjects 
mentioned above were treated broadly by such men as 
Abernethy, Cooper, Babington, and others, generally 
speaking with direct reference to medicine or surgery ; 
and the student underwent a training that possessed con- 

-siderable value in relation to his future profession, whilst 
VOL, IV. 
it furnished him with the rudiments of various scienc2s 
that he could pursue and extend in his leisure moments. 
A few years more passed away, and the advances made in 
every department of knowledge rendered it impossible for 
any man to undertake singly to lecture upon two different 
sciences, such as chemistry and botany, or even upon two 
such cognate subjects as anatomy and physiology. Each 
required its separate professor, who delivered from thirty 
to ninety lectures upon his special science, and attendance 
upon them was rigorously enforced both by the lecturer 
himself and by the examining bodies. 
And now ensued a period that was undoubtedly op- 
posed to all true intellectual training. The student, as 
soon as he entered the profession, saw little practice, 
but was everlastingly in attendance upon lectures. No 
mental effort was required, and, except in the case of 
first-rate lecturers, none, we are convinced, was ever 
exerted in acquiring and assimilating the information 
conveyed. Here and there a good lecturer, thoroughly 
master of his subject, chained his audience; but the 
substance of four out of five lectures either entered 
at one ear to pass out at the other, or was altogether 
refused admission to the brain by the locked portals of 
the slumbering student. The horses were indeed put 
before the cart, but the team was so strong that they 
often ran away with the cart before anything useful had 
been put into it. The requirements of the examining 
bodies in regard to these lectures rendered it imperative 
for every school, however small, to have as numerous a 
staff of lecturers as the largest. The senior officers of the 
medical staff consequently took the more important sub- 
jects of medicine and surgery, anatomy and physiology, 
whilst the younger ones divided amongst them chemistry 
and botany, materia medica, forensic medicine, and mid- 
wifery. In many instances these latter posts were filled 
by gentlemen who had received no special training, but 
who accepted them and often worked at them with praisc - 
worthy energy, merely to secure the succession to th= 
medical staff, upon obtaining which the minor lectureship 
was at once given up. ‘ 
It is obvious that lectureships so obtained and so held 
must have been in many instances valueless alike to the 
lecturer himself and to the student who sat under 
him, yielding to the former a barren honour, and to 
R 
