SCIENTIFIC TEACHING. 
253 
‘ In reference to the former question, having first directed your Lordship’s 
attention to the fact that only a small minority of the students entering the 
medical profession in England offer themselves as candidates at the Matricu- 
lation Examination, let me trace the subsequent history of this minority. 
Nearly fifty per cent of the total number fail at Matriculation ; of those who, 
having matriculated, present themselves at the Preliminary Scientific, again 
nearly fifty per cent fail; of those who, having passed the Preliminary 
Scientific, present themselves at the first M.B. Examination, nearly thirty- 
five per cent fail ; and of those who finally become candidates for the degree 
of M.B., nineteen per cent are rejected. The collective result is (allowing 
for the fact that no inconsiderable number of the candidates faint by the 
way, and never proceed beyond the Preliminary Scientific or First M.B. 
Examination) that not ten per cent of the young men who enter at the lowest 
of the series of examinations emerge successful from the last; and that at 
least seventy-two per cent of the whole number are rejected at the Matricu- 
lation and Preliminary Scientific Examinations — examinations in subjects 
which, with scarcely an exception, have no direct bearing on medicine. 
Surely the fact that the examinations required of aspirants for the M.B. 
Degree are so devised and so conducted, that they involve the rejection of 
nearly three-fourths of them before they have been afforded the slightest 
opportunity of displaying their acquaintance with any of those branches of 
knowledge which are the almost exclusive objects of their study in the 
Medical Schools, which alone it is essential that a medical man should 
know, and which ought to be the real basis of a Degree in medicine, is suffi- 
cient to condemn them as tests of fitness or unfitness for the medical mem- 
bership of the University. As a matter of fact, those who have never 
presented themselves at the portals of the University, together with those 
who have lost heart by being rejected at its earlier examinations, include the 
great bulk of the more distinguished pupils at our hospitals ; of whom many 
leave us before the completion of their pupilage to gain in Scotland, Ireland, 
or elsewhere, the Degrees practically denied them in London. 
1 But the chief cause is the difficulty of the preliminary examinations. 
This has always been excessive, but of late has been scandalous. The 
difficulty and indeed the uncertainty of the results are now so fully 
recognized, that many students who under other conditions would have 
become Candidates, feeling the importance of utilizing the time at their 
disposal to the best advantage, do not think it worth their while, or do not 
dare to face them. Again I appeal to statistics. In the twenty-three years 
ending with 1860, the rejections at the Matriculation Examination were 
under 16 per cent. In the next eighteen years, without any apparent cause, 
they rose to 49 per cent, or to more than thrice their former average; ard 
during the last three years of this time, they actually exceeded 50 per cent. 
It was in the year 1861, from about which time the extraordinary increase 
in the rejections at Matriculation dates, that the Preliminary Scientific 
Examination was instituted, partly to relieve the first M.B. of some of its 
less strictly medical subjects, partly to insure a more exact knowledge of 
those subjects on the part of the student. A new obstacle was thus inter- 
posed in the medical student’s career, an obstacle so serious that it has 
involved from first to last the rejection of 47 Candidates out of every 100. 
