 | Catalogue of the University of Virginia |  |
MEDICAL SCHOOL.
From the foregoing announcement it will be seen that by the
organization of the University, provision is made for teaching all
the branches of Medical Science.
A joint committee of the two houses of the Legislative Assembly,
appointed to investigate the affairs of the University, having
had their attention directed to the peculiar features of this school,
appended to their Report a notice of the advantages resulting
from the direct connection of a Medical School with a general
University, from which the following statement is extracted:
1. Length of Session.—Nearly all the medical schools of this
country are located in our cities or larger towns, and have only a
nominal connection with the colleges from which they borrow
their names and chartered privileges. In these schools the usual
length of a term of instruction by courses of lectures is four
months. In order to embrace all the important branches of Medical
Science in a course of instruction compressed into so short a
term, it is found necessary to employ the services of six or seven
Professors, who deliver six lectures a day. By this arrangement
the students, if they attend all the lectures, are required to spend
nearly the whole of the day in listening to lectures delivered in
rapid succession, and treating of diverse topics. None but those
who have had personal experience in this matter, can fully appreciate
the troubles and difficulties which beset a tyro at the commencement
of his attendance upon lectures; the fatigue of body
and perplexity of mind which he inevitably experiences in his
painful efforts to hear every lecture, and master every subject. In
attempting, after the close of the lectures for the day, to bring in
review the topics discussed by his teachers, he finds links in the
chain here and there broken, he flies from one subject of thought
to another, without adequately mastering any, and confounded
by their number and the utter impossibility of keeping pace in
his private reading at night with the lectures of six Professors, he
despairs of doing more than retaining such portions of the facts
stated in the lectures as may happen to make the strongest impression
on his mind.
In the Medical Department of this institution, the length of the
session, which is nine months, enables four instructors to perform
all the duties which are elsewhere assigned to six or seven. The
students attend but two lectures a day, and thus have ample time
for private reading and for pursuing their Anatomical dissections.
2. System of Daily Examinations.—Immediately before each
lecture, the students in every school in the University are subjected
to a rigid examination on the subject of the preceding lecture,
or on portions of some approved text-book.
Experience has shown this to be an almost necessary adjunct
to the system of teaching by lectures, and it is felt to be of such
importance that the students in other Medical Schools into which
its introduction to any adequate extent is precluded by want of
time, resort to the expedient of employing the services of private
instructors, by whom they may be examined at night on the topics
discussed each day in the lecture-room. The fee paid by the
students for this necessary but extra-collegiate instruction, varies
from $30 to $50 in each case for the four months term of lectures,
and is usually about $100 for the whole year. These fees are
often received by the Professors themselves, in addition to the
usual collegiate fees.
The enactments of the Visiters of the University prescribe that
no Professor shall engage in pursuits of emolument unconnected
with the service of the University, or shall receive from the
members of his class any compensation in addition to that provided
for by the laws. They further require every Professor to
reside within the precincts, both for the purpose of assisting to
enforce the discipline of the college and of being accessible to
the students who may seek assistance in their private hours of
study. These students, then, enjoy here advantages which elsewhere
are purchased at a high price over and above the heavy
necessary collegiate expenses.
3. Order of Studies.—All Medical Colleges aim to place Medical
education on a scientific basis. Indeed, if the practice of the
healing art does not depend on general principles, embodied in
the fundamental sciences of Anatomy, Chemistry, Physiology,
Pathology, and Therapeutics, these branches of Medical Science
had as well be altogether omitted in a course of professional education.
If, however, it does so depend, the propriety and necessity
of laying a good foundation before the superstructure can be
reared, are too obvious to need illustration. This cannot be
done in city schools, in which, as above stated, the lectures on
the different branches of medicine are carried on simultaneously.
This system takes for granted that the students have "read," as
it is termed, with a private practitioner of medicine for a year at
least before he commences his attendance on lectures. This,
however, is not always the case, and when it occurs is not always
an advantage; for it is to be observed, that the fundamental
branches of Medical Science are precisely those which demand
for their illustration the apparatus only to be found within the
walls of colleges.
It is one of the peculiar advantages of the University Medical
School, that it unites, as may have been inferred from the preceding
remarks, the plan of instruction by private pupilage with that
of public lectures, while the length of the session puts it in the
the students having an opportunity of mastering the elementary
branches before their attention is directed to their practical applications.
4. Conditions of Graduation.—The regulations for graduation
of the Medical Schools in cities require that the student shall have
attended two full courses of Medical lectures, and shall have been
the private pupil for a year or two of a respectable practitioner of
medicine. The latter part of this requisition is, however, rarely
insisted upon, although, as above stated, the fact of such previous
study is taken for granted.
At the University, a consecutive course of nine months being
more than equivalent to two courses in the city schools in respect
to the time employed and the advantageous distribution of the
subjects of study, the students are permitted to take their diploma
at the end of one session, if they show themselves worthy. The
rigidness of the examinations deters the majority of the class from
making the trial, and none but the perseveringly diligent attain
the honor, which is here truly a testimonial of attainments.
5. Location in a Village.—This has been urged as an objection,
while in point of fact it is the circumstance on which most
of the advantages just cited depend. A residence in a country
village is, moreover, free in a large degree from the objections
that apply to a city in view of the temptations to extravagance
and dissipation in its worst forms.
The importance of the advantages attributed in the foregoing
notice to the Medical Department of this Institution, has been
tested by the experience of over twenty years, during which time
more than one thousand medical students have been educated.
6. It will be noticed that those students who desire to take
their diploma at a city school will yet find an advantage in
attending the first course in an institution organized on the plan
of the Medical Department of the University, by which they
avoid the expense of employing a private instructor, whose other
avocations may, and commonly do, disqualify him for the proper
discharge of his duties as a teacher.
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