Inaugural address on universities and medical education : delivered at the opening of the medical session of the Victoria University of Manchester on October 1, 1912 / by H.D. Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, Humphry Davy, 1862-1944.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Inaugural address on universities and medical education : delivered at the opening of the medical session of the Victoria University of Manchester on October 1, 1912 / by H.D. Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    which the relation of Universities to technical education was one of the subjects dealt with. In the past it has often been felt that Universities should not give a technical training, or that they should at most be concerned with principles and not with their practical application. In other words, that a University should con- tinue and expand the work of the schools into a liberal ■education rather than provide a strictly professional instruc- tion, however good. This was partly due to the proper ambition to send out graduates with a broad outlook and humanisation of character, and partly to a persistence of the vested interests of the classical tradition with which English Universities in the past were almost exclusively con- oerned. But the view that Universities should not give technical education, though they might examine for and confer medical degrees, may, in the light of the special courses and diplomas set forth in their calendars, be safely regarded as a thing of the past. The Best General Education for Medicine. No doubt the medical graduates of a University should have a groundwork of general culture and scientific discipline on which their technical knowledge is superimposed, otherwise their training would in no way differ from that given by a technical school. But is it true, as has been and is often assumed, that the necessary general culture can be obtained in one way only? The advantage of “the grand old fortifying classical education ” is such a familiar motif in addresses given on occasions such as this that it may appear philistine to suggest that the Humanities—literce humaniores —are not absolutely essential to a medical man who perhaps more than anyone should act up to the motto “Nihil humanum a me alienum puto,” It must be freely admitted that in the past many, if not most, of the eminent men of our profession went through the classical mill with the same success that characterised their professional life. But it hardly follows that the early was the cause of the later success. On the other hand, although in their time educa- tion was in the main a classical monopoly, some of the immortals of our profession, such as John Hunter, owed little or nothing to its influence. Such exceptional geniuses, however, are born with the qualities which enable them to become what they are, and are not educated to it. The school and University routine of Latin and Greek is a hardy survival from the time when Latin at least was of distinct use as a means of communication between men who had no other common language, and was the medium of correspondence of statesmen and philosophers. This no longer holds good to the same extent as it did two centuries ago, and though French and English have to some degree