AN ARGUMENT FOR COLONIAL MEDICAL SCHOOLS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1590, 25 March 1879, Page 4

AN ARGUMENT FOR COLONIAL MEDICAL SCHOOLS.

[“Sydney Morning Herald.”] It will be remembered that when the question of the establishment of a Medical School, affiliated to the Sydney University, was agitated in the Press, it was urged, as one of the most powerful reasons why Australian students should be relieved from the existing necessity of completing their education in the old country, that not a few of the British medical schools were not what was to be desired. An article in the January number of the “ Fortnightly ” on “The London Medical Schools,” by Mr William Gilbert, goes far to sustain the allegation. We learn therefrom that no fewer than 400 out of the 2000 medical students in London came directly or indirectly under the notice of the police—a larger number than of the students of all other professions put together, including the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Mr Gilbert places this disreputable fact to the account of the bad organisation and defective supervision of the metropolitan medical schools. “Instead of there being one governing body authorised by Government to control the whole, each hospital is allowed to have a medical school of its own, without any other supervision than the professors of the school itself, the great object of each being to attract as many pupils as possible to to themselves, and to draw pupils from the other schools.” According to Mr Gilbert, the absence of supervision issues in the students (many of whom arc mere lads from comparatively poor country families) being carried away by metropolitan dissipations, and confining their studies generally “ to passing through the wards with a crowd of other pupils, so great as to render the acquirement of knowledge almost impossible.” What is the result ? In 1876 the number of pupils who presented themselves for the primary examination was 727, of whom 223, or 30 per cent., were rejected ; and at the pass examination, out of 518 candidates, 126 failed. The rejections charged against the Charing Cross Hospital’s school amounted to 44 per cent. And yet Mr Gilbert shows that in the Calcutta medical school, though the examinations are quite as severe, the rejections are, proportionate numbers taken into consideration, less than one-third of those of the London medical schools. No wonder that colonists show a decided preference for the Scotch medical schools. But the sooner we have our own institution the better. Dr. Senwiok explains that “ neither the Prince Alfred Hospital nor the Sydney Infirmary will be medical schools in the strict sense of the term, hut they and other hospitals throughout the colony and elsewhere will be connected with the medical school of the University.” It may be hoped, therefore, that the system proposed to he adopted here will prevent the evils which are complained of in Great Britain.