Royal College of Surgeons

“ His school grew still more notable, notwithstanding the obstacles put in the way of the students by hospital surgeons in London, especially those composing the council of the College of Surgeons (see Lancet, 18 Feb. 1865, p. 190) . ”

“ In the hurry and confusion of a war, and amidst the pressure of hundreds of new cases in a day, what can the surgeons of the hospital be expected to do for science, or even for the improvement of medical and surgical practice?—The answer is seen in the new arrangements in England, where a statistical branch has been established in the Army Medical Department. Of course, no one but the practising surgeon or physician can furnish the pathological facts in each individual case; but this is what every active and earnest practitioner does always and everywhere, when he sees reason for it. ”

“ Medicine, proclaimed the Faculty when it suited its purpose, contains the theoretical and the practical side of surgery; a surgeon is therefore but the servant of a physician. If St. Côme sought to provide lectures in surgery, the Faculty, which kept possession of teaching licenses and desired in the surgeon a docile assistant, took the teaching from the college and invited the barbers to lectures of its own. In their duplicity and conceit of caste, physicians of the Faculty condescended even to publish books on surgery, books as arid and as insincere as their lectures. ”

“ In 1800 he was nominated one of the six surgeons to the Royal Infirmary under an amended scheme for the better management of the charity, and he almost immediately entered upon the teaching of surgery. He also gave a course of lectures on the nature and treatment of those injuries and diseases which come under the care of the military surgeon, and he visited London in the autumn of 1803 to be appointed a hospital mate in the army in order to qualify himself technically to take charge of a military hospital should it be found necessary to establish one in Edinburgh in case of an invasion. ”

“ The newly graduated surgeon is not as dangerous as the man who left medical school years ago, before the students received one-third of the surgical training that they do now. Many of these men have not taken a post-graduate course, have never been associated with a hospital, nor have they had even an opportunity for moderate surgical observation; and yet they are attempting to do the work that only a skilled specialist should undertake. I am not speaking of emergency surgery for which any man should try to prepare himself, and be brave enough to undertake when human life is at stake. ”

“ Very many with no pretense to this dexterity, and no equipment but a superabundance of assurance, graduate as surgeons and assume and aspire to a position of prominence that it has taken the true surgeon years of the hardest, closest, most untiring study, observation and work to reach. We are told as an excuse for this remarkable evolution from the student to the surgeon that the young man of today is taught so much more than the old men were ”

“ There is no question also but that indifference to everything but surgery is responsible for many of the failures before the State Examining Boards. We must have surgeons, and they must begin their training in medical schools, and it is not my purpose to discourage earnest work and honest effort to this end. I wish, however, to say that every ethical specialist needs a thorough grounding in the general branches of medicine, and he should not in his student days neglect the other essentials to a well-rounded man. ”

“ There is in many of the great clinics a disregard of the patient's feelings, of his sufferings, and even of his life, which would be impossible in an English hospital. The contact of a surgeon with his hospital patients as individuals is largely through the nursing staff, and his point of view will be largely influenced by them. There is no one in our profession, from the youngest dresser to the oldest physician, who does not owe a great part of his education to Sister. ”

“ The Irish College of Surgeons has not only opened all its examinations, and even its fellowships, to women, but also all the classes in its School,—making separate arrangements for Practical Anatomy only. (2) More wonderful still, the Scottish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh and Glasgow (now combined to give one ‘Triple Qualification’) have decided without a division to throw open all their examinations to women. I am exceedingly surprised, for though I heard an application had been made, I thought there was little hope of success, and took no trouble about it. ”

“ Kolb did not say something about the training school he had started in connection with his hospital. We sent some young officers over to learn technique and methods of handling the psycho-neurotics. We have also sent some officers to the Public Health Service clinic at the Psychopathic Institute in Boston and we hope that some of our other hospitals will start a similar school. The question of personnel is an exceedingly grave one. A great many young men want to become surgeons. ”