University of Virginia Library

ORGANIZATION OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.

The organization of the Medical Department of the University
of Virginia having been framed with a view to incorporate with
the system of instruction by public lectures the important advantages
of private pupilage, presents peculiarities to be found in no
other School of Medicine in the Union. It would be needless to
detail the circumstances by which the University has been enabled
to secure to Virginia and to the South generally, all the benefits of
a school so advantageously organized, but it is deemed right, after
several years of successful operation, during which upwards of
eight hundred medical students have been educated, that the public
should be made acquainted with the peculiarities of a plan which
ample experience has shown to be admirably calculated to fulfil
the intentions of its founders.

1. Unlike other Medical Schools, the session is of the same
length as the academic session, nine months, and but two lectures
are delivered on the same day. This arrangement, while it enables
three Professors to perform all the duties which in other schools,
with shorter sessions, are assigned to six, affords the student unusual
facilities for acquiring gradually, and thereby digesting, the information
conveyed to him by oral instruction, without that confusion
of thought and fatigue of mind which are inevitable when, as
always happens in city schools, he has to encounter daily six or
seven lectures delivered in rapid succession.

2. Immediately before each lecture the students are subjected to
a full and rigid examination on the subject of the preceding lecture,
or on portions of some approved text-book. This practice of daily
examinations, constituting one of the peculiar features in the organization
of this school, enables the Professors to explain both the
obscurities of the text, and such parts of their lectures as may
appear to be imperfectly understood by the class, and thus supplies
the student with a most valuable means of fixing in his mind correct
information, while it has an incidental advantage in familiarizing
him with the mode of trial to which he is subjected in his
final examination for graduation.

3. The length of the session renders practicable such a division
of the subjects of study, that the student has an opportunity of being
well grounded in the elementary branches of medical science before
he is required to listen to discourses on more complicated subjects.
It is, then, apparent, that this institution offers to students of medicine

facilities not found in other schools for commencing as well as
completing the study of their profession, while its connexion with a
general University, and its other features as already adverted to,
will afford them the most favourable opportunity for laying the
foundation of a liberal, scientific, and professional education.

4. Any person of approved moral conduct may offer as a candidate
for graduation, and receive the degree of M. D., without
reference to the time he has been engaged in the study of Medicine,
or of joining the school, provided he undergoes in a satisfactory
manner the various examinations prescribed by the enactments.

5. Connected with the Medical School is an Anatomical and
Pathological Museum, which has been lately enriched with valuable
and rare specimens, selected in Paris by one of the Professors.

An annual appropriation is allowed by the authorities of the University
for the purpose of procuring subjects, so that ample means
for the study of Practical Anatomy are thus afforded to each student
at the trifling cost of five dollars. The students have ready
access to the public library, containing in its medical department
most of the standard works of the profession, and several sets of
splendid anatomical plates.

6. The expenses for the entire session of nine months, commencing
on the first of October, are limited to $228—a sum not
exceeding that which is paid for a session of four months in city
schools. It provides for board, including bed and other room furniture,
washing and attendance—fuel and candles—rent of dormitory—use
of library and other public rooms—fees to the Professors
—dissecting fees and subjects for dissection.

As the Philadelphia and other city schools require as a condition
for graduation that the candidate shall have attended two full
courses of lectures, and recognise one course in this institution as
equivalent to one of their own, students who wish to take their
diplomas in Philadelphia, will yet find an advantage in availing
themselves, for the first session, of the peculiar benefits of a school
organized on the plan above described.