Cylchgronau Cymru

THE MEDICAL OUTLOOK IN WALES. IT is a fortunate coincidence that the subject of medical education should be engaging the attention of experts, both in England and in America, at a moment when the organisation of a complete faculty of medicine has become a pressing problem in the University life of Wales. Recent advances in the medical sciences have been so considerable, that general practitioners require a wider and more scientific training to enable them to take advantage of modern laboratory methods, or to recommend the adoption of some special form of treatment which they cannot personally undertake. The more scientific training of general practitioners would also relieve the specialist from the dangers of dogmatism, that intellectual isolation so often brings in its train. The State, too, year by year, is becoming more and more dependent on medical guidance in many of its administrative departments. The Local Government Boards, the Home Office, the Colonial Office, the Board of Education, the National Insurance Com- missions and the newly established Board of Control are all equipped with medical staffs. Successful administration by these central medical departments depends, not merely on the professional status of their personnel, but on the intellectual calibre and scientific training of the great bulk of the medical profession. It is for these reasons that the Government, the medical profession and their prospective patients are all equally concerned in the progressive development of medical education. To understand the position one must refer briefly to the evolution of medical education during the last century and a half. At the beginning of this period medicine was regarded as an art or craft to be acquired, for the most part, by appren- ticeship to practitioners versed in the methods of tradition. To this there was superadded in the early part of the nine- teenth century a top dressing of science in much the same way that Shakespeare and the musical glasses was made the coping stone at Academies for Young Ladies during the same period. The growth of the physical and bio- logical sciences in the latter half of the nineteenth century naturally had far reach- ing effects on the training of medical practitioners. The apprenticeship system gradually disappeared, and at the present moment medical education is divided into four more or less distinct stages, namely (1) Preliminary general education. (2) Training in the preliminary sciences such as chemistry, botany and zoology. (3) The study of the more strictly medical sciences such as human anatomy and physiology. (4) The teaching of medicine and sur- gery and allied subjects. Much might be said under all these heads. No one can doubt that both the doctor and the State would benefit if the standard of preliminary education were higher. This would tend, not only to raise the average mental calibre of the profession, but to postpone the study of medicine and surgery until medical students were more mature. The relation of chemistry, biology, anatomy and physiology to the training of the medical students also sug- gests many practical problems. Though