Doctor of Medicine

“ For about 1871 anyone who wished might enter an American medical school practically anywhere in the country, without any preliminary education, and having taken two terms of ungraded lectures, that is, having listened to the same set of lectures two years in succession, might receive his degree of doctor of medicine. ”

“ With regard to those who are to receive the degree of doctor in medical science, it must be especially observed that all those seeking the degree shall have heard lectures in all the books of this same science which are usually required to be heard by similar students at the University of Bologna or of Paris, and that this shall continue for seven years. ”

“ In the past seventy-five years medicine has progressed from an art to a science. The doctor today has diagnostic aids which would have seemed fabulous to the physician of a hundred years ago. Exact laboratory tests and the X ray enable the physician to base his treatment on definite knowledge. These are as available to the surgeon and doctor aboard ship as to the man working in the most modern and extensive medical center. ”

“ It is unlawful for any person to announce himself as a practitioner of medicine, surgery, or obstetrics, or to practise as such, who has not received in a regular manner a diploma from a chartered medical school, duly authorized to confer upon its alumni the degree of doctor of medicine. ”

“ The physician who is not also a scholar may be a more or less successful practitioner, but his influence will be confined, his methods mechanical and his interests narrow. The doctor, the lawyer and the minister of religion can do but inferior work, unless to a knowledge of their several sciences they bring the insight, the wide outlook, and the confidence which nothing but intimate acquaintance with the best that has been thought and said can confer. ”

“ It is not every man who would make a brave soldier, or who could become an eloquent advocate; and the natural fitness of an individual for his calling should not be overlooked; yet the public, and sometimes the profession, appear to suppose that all that is necessary to qualify an individual to become a doctor in medicine, is a given amount of medical knowledge, and whoever brings this requisition, even if he have no other, is initiated. ”

“ The learning required to master either of these professions can be acquired only after the most painstaking and arduous study. To learn the essence of things, the meaning of life and death, the movements that produce life and death, and the symptoms that proclaim disease, come within the purview of the doctor. How can he tell what will be the effect of his medicine unless he knows what the disease is and what effect upon the human body will be his medicines? He must know intimately the thousand and one essential parts of the human body, how they operate and their effects. ”

“ IN the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. ”

“ These memoranda read as follows: “There shall be a doctor of physic upon whom rests the duty of visiting all the poor patients in the building, females as well as males; a doctor of surgery whose duty it is to apply ointments to all the poor people in the hospital who have wounds of any kind; and a barber who is competent to do, for the women as well as for the men, all the other things that a good surgeon usually does.” ”

“ To render these lectures as instructive as possible to students of Physic, the Doctor proposes, in the course of them, to give some useful Observations on Medicine in general, and the proper manner of conducting the study of Physic. The authors to be read in the Materia Medica will be pointed out. The various Substances made use of in Medicine will be reduced under Classes suited to the principal Indications in the cure of Diseases. ”

“ In the first place, medicine has outgrown the capacity of any individual doctor; the only adequate private practitioner must have a sound general knowledge of medicine with an expert knowledge of a dozen specialties; that is to say, he must give place to a staff of doctors acting co-ordinately, for the present system, or lack of system, by which a patient wanders at random from private practitioner to specialist, from specialist to specialist ad infinitum, is altogether mischievous. ”

“ So the doctor learns to combat disease with science, and at the same time to apply scientific laws of health that he may fortify the human body against the invasion of harmful germs. Thus, eventually, he makes medicine itself less necessary. ”

“ Nothing in the above act shall prevent any person, not a British subject, who shall have obtained from any foreign university a degree or diploma of doctor in medicine, and who shall have passed the regular examinations entitling him to practise medicine in his own country, from being and acting as the resident physician or medical officer of any hospital established exclusively for the relief of foreigners in sickness ”

“ I've also noticed that most medical doctors are at heart very timid individuals who consider that possession of a MD degree and license proves that they are very important, proves them to be highly intelligent, even makes them fully qualified to pontificate on many subjects not related to medicine at all. ”

“ The whole town is friendly to a physician. வைத்தியத்தில் இரண வைத்தியமும், வயதில் எவ்வனமும் நல்லது. As regards medical science, surgery—in regard to age, youth are preferable. வைத்தியனே உன்னையே குணமாக்கு. Physician, heal thyself. வைத்தியம் செய்தவன் எல்லாம் வைத்தியன். Every medical practitioner is a physician. வைத்தியம் கொஞ்சமாகிலும் தெரியாத பேர்கள் இல்லை. There is none that does not know, at least, a little of medicine. வைத்தியன் மருந்திலும் கைமருந்தே நலம். Domestic medicine is preferable to that of a physician. வைத்தியன் பெரிதோ மருந்து பெரிதோ? Which is greater, a physician or his medicine? ”

“ Therefore a physician should study as many allied branches of (science or philosophy) as possible. The physician who studies the Science of Medicine from the lips of his preceptor, and practises medicine after having acquired experience in his art by constant practice, is the true physician, while any other map dabbling in the art, should be looked upon as an impostor. ”

“ In Europe, the shortest period of study required for a physician's degree is four years, and at least ten months of each year must be spent in attendance upon the course of instruction. This course comprises not only lectures on the different branches of medicine, but thorough practical study of chemistry, botany, anatomy, etc., in the laboratory, gardens, museums, etc. Attendance on the hospitals is also required, where, for several years, the student is occupied with subordinate medical and surgical duty. ”

“ And it may be remarked, that physicians, who try all the new remedies recommended from time to time in medical journals, do not add so much to their stock of available experience, as those do who are more cautious, and less ready to adopt everything which is new.
The science of medicine, in all its departments, is in a very changeable state. The discoveries, which are made from time to time in anatomy, physiology, and pathology, the theories which are put forth, and the new remedies, and modes of treatment which are continually proposed, keep up a constant excitement in the profession. ”

“ The same system of specialties is observed in the departments of a medical college. The professor who would assume to lecture in all the departments with equal ease and proficiency would be severely ridiculed by his colleagues; and yet it is just as absurd to suppose that the general practitioner can keep himself informed of the many new methods of treatment that are being constantly devised and adopted in the several departments of medicine and surgery.
PROGRESS IN MEDICINE.
In no other science is more rapid and real progress being made at the present time than in that of medicine. ”

“ The students of Medicine, who almost exclusively support the Professorship of Chemistry, are induced to do so in consequence of its application to Pharmacy and the different branches of Medicine, viz., Physiology, Pathology, Therapeutics, Materia Medica, and the Practice of Physic. ”

“ The head of the department should be a man familiar with the problems of clinical medicine, trained preferably as a pathologist, and with sufficient knowledge of the possibilities of physiology and chemistry to apply the methods of these subjects to clinical problems. I say preferably a pathologist because the pathologist is more apt to combine clinical training with a knowledge of pathology, bacteriology and the principles of immunity than is the physiologist, chemist or pharmacologist, though any one of the latter might well head such a department. ”

“ In the latter, clinical medicine or medical practise seeks to lay hold of the acquisitions of experimental science and to utilize them in the interpretation of symptoms. The clinical or hospital laboratory approaches medical problems from the professional side and is thus an extension of medical practise into a territory where science and practise meet and shade into one another. Here the future physician should receive most careful training when he begins to direct his studies toward some branch of medicine. ”

“ There is another profession, to the members of which, I think, a certain preliminary knowledge of physical science might be quite as valuable as to the medical man. The practitioner of medicine sets before himself the noble object of taking care of man's bodily welfare ”

“ ADVANTAGES OF SPECIALTIES.
By thorough organization and a perfect system of subdividing the practice of medicine and surgery in this institution, every invalid consulting us is treated by a specialist—one who devotes his undivided attention to the particular class of diseases to which his or her case belongs. The advantage of this arrangement must be obvious. Medical science offers a vast field for investigation, and no physician can, within the limit of a single life-time, achieve the highest degree of success in the treatment of every malady incident to humanity. ”

“ Let them go their ways; but let us endeavor so to exalt our own profession by improving it, that they who may hereafter bear the name of physician shall by that very title be recognized as being thoroughly educated; learned that they may know what has been done before them, solidly grounded also in the science of medicine, before attempting to build upon it the superstructure of medical art, and so enriched by knowledge, that when they go out into the world they may feel assured of securing the confidence of society in themselves, and in the art which they practise. ”

“ Those physicians who enroll themselves as students in the Washington Post-Graduate Medical School and faithfully follow the course of instruction which is open to them, can not fail to return to their professional work with broader and more exact information on many subjects relating to scientific medicine, with increased skill in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and with greater confidence in the resources of the noble profession to which they have devoted their lives. ”

“ A patient suffering from a disease belonging to the last class remains well as long as he continues the use of medicine, but relapses as soon as the treatment is stopped, just as a tottering house collapses on the removal of the props. The physician is advised to refrain from treating a disease which is quite incurable.* [2] The other two classes of diseases should be treated with all possible care and skill. In order to acquire success in his profession, the physician is expected to know both the theoretical and the practical sides of the science of medicine. ”

“ While the practice of medicine is so vast and extensive a field, that it has been found necessary to subdivide it amongst physicians, surgeons, accoucheurs, apothecaries, oculists, aurists, dentists, men for the gout and men for the gravel, one for the belly and another for the brain, these reformers seem to regard medical knowledge and medical practice as in a nutshell,—as already perfect and complete. ”

“ As I devoted myself with all possible zeal to the work in hand it was not long before I realized thoroughly that the best way of increasing one’s knowledge of medicine is to begin applying, in actual practice, such principles as one may already have acquired; and thus I became convinced that the physician [421] who earnestly studies, with his own eyes,—and not through the medium of books,—the natural phenomena of the different diseases, must necessarily excel in the art of discovering what, in any given case, are the true indications as to the remedial measures that should be employed. ”

“ Statesmanship as well as professional ability is expected of physicians in the leading European cities, more particularly of those connected with health departments. There it is not felt that a medical degree is of itself a qualification for sanitary or health work. After the professional course, physicians must take courses in preventive hygiene and in health administration. Medical courses include such subjects as vital statistics, duties of medical officers of health, sanitary legislation, state medicine. ”

“ The only branches of medical science, for the teaching of which special departments have not yet been established, are pharmacology (action of drugs) and public health.
“As regards the third part of the medical curriculum, viz., instruction in the practice of medicine, the University had adopted the principle that the two or three years which its students must devote to their purely professional studies must be spent where the existence of great hospitals affords opportunities for seeing medical and surgical practice in all its branches. ”