Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/48

46 a time when medicine, as well as all other studies, was cultivated with most success at the universities. This is now no longer the case. The universities, not by any fault of theirs, but by the necessary course of events, have ceased to be great schools of medicine. The presence of the principal hospitals, of the most eminent practitioners, of the most extensive museums, all mark out the metropolis as the necessary seat of the chief schools. It is, indeed, hardly too much to say, that the universities no longer contain any school of medicine at all, and have therefore forfeited their claim to the exclusive privileges, which may once have been properly bestowed upon them. But since the real grievance is, that the universities, being bad schools of medicine, have privileges, which, if to any, ought to belong to good schools, it is a strange fancy surely to think that the admission of Dissenters to the universities would be any sufficient remedy for this evil. A Dissenter now may have frequented the first schools of medicine in England—nay in Europe. He may have studied in London and in Paris; he may have attended the most able lectures—witnessed the operations of the most skilful practitioners, and walked the largest hospitals in the world; but, for want of a degree at Oxford or Cambridge, he cannot enjoy some privileges, which a person of inferior attainments—a person who has not had equal opportunities of professional knowledge and skill, may by means of that degree possess.