Page:A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America - John Morgan.djvu/55

 creatures. Under these it is the custom of medical students to enter as apprentices, in order to learn their practice, and get an acquaintance with their profession. This it must be allowed is a great advantage; but if we add to it, a casual conversation sometimes with the most able masters whom they can have access to consult, an intercourse with one another, and a reciprocal communication of sentiment and observation, together with reading what authors they can procure on the various subjects of which this science treats; these make the sum total of the best medical education in America. How lame and insufficient it is must appear to all who have the least intelligence in these matters; but will be seen more evidently, I imagine, as we examine it more nearly.

, as I before observed, it is necessary that a plan be marked out for directing Students, and that they should be taught a regular course of every distinct branch of Medicine; the infant state of the colonies, and the want of professed teachers, have hitherto clogedclogged [sic] medical pursuits in America with innumerable obstacles.

yet has there offered a coalition of able men, who would undertake to give compleat and regular courses of Lectures on the different branches of Medicine; and such an extensive field it is, as requires the united efforts of several co-operating