Some of the educational aspects of state medicine / by Henry W. Rumsey.

  • Henry Wyldbore Rumsey
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some of the educational aspects of state medicine / by Henry W. Rumsey. 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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    the Medical Officer of Privy Council, with the special inquiries of his Inspectors, who are yearly contributing most valuable additions to Hygiology and Pathology. Of scarcely less importance is the study of vital and sanitary Statistics,—the right application of numbers to correctly observed and reported phenomena of life, disease, and death. Dr. Farr’s commentaries on the alleged causes of death, as set forth in the periodical reports of the Registrar General, take first rank among the classics of sanitary literature, and should form part of the student’s work. The Registers of Scotland and Ireland also, as illustrated respectively by Dr. Stark and Dr. Burke, will be found, in process of time, of proportionate educational value. [These statistical reports will improve. The Medical Officer of Registration, whom long ago the Social Science Association recommended to be appointed in every district— if he be ultimately educated and examined in State Medicine —would prove the very best local superintendent of the system, and would make these national records of the causes of sickness and mortality thoroughly reliable, and establish with something like certainty the conclusions to be drawn from them.] The student should be required to take up selected portions of the works above mentioned for the final examinations,—at least some of them for the “ pass,”—all, I think, for “ honours.” Here, then, is an amount of work which undoubtedly ought to be prepared by those students who aim at proficiency or distinction in State Medicine, but which cannot possibly be crammed, even by the most approved arts and modes of cramming, into the quadrennium, now very properly required of every candidate for the licence to practise. Any attempt to enforce upon the whole embryo profession such a curriculum of study and standard of acquirements as ought to be considered indispensable for the exercise of