Page:Advice to Medical Students (1857) William Henry Fuller.djvu/20

20 views, the Governors of the hospital have made it incumbent upon all who shall now or hereafter enter as pupils of the hospital, to follow out a properly regulated course of study in the wards. It is no longer optional as to whether you shall hold clinical clerkships and dresserships; the signature of your schedules for hospital practice is made contingent on your doing so, and directors have been appointed to regulate the time at which you shall hold these several offices. The adoption of this rule is a token of the depth and reality of our conviction respecting the importance of this branch of your studies, and an acknowledgment of our responsibility in the matter; whilst the prizes form a material guarantee of our intention to offer you every encouragement in our power. How could we have asked the Governors to sanction these regulations, and with what face could we have offered prizes for clinical knowledge, if we had not resolved to do our utmost to impart the instruction which is necessary to the attainment of that knowledge? Gentlemen, we have not taken this step without grave and anxious consideration. We are aware that it must impose upon us a vast amount of additional labour; but we have felt it our bounden duty, regardless of our own convenience, to take every step to promote your welfare, and to prepare you for the practical duties of your profession. We trust you will meet us in a proper spirit, and reward us by your industry and attention. We hope that those of you to whom these new regulations do not apply—for of course they cannot be made retrospective—will enrol yourselves on our clinical directors' lists, and show yourselves anxious to benefit by the move we have made on your behalf. If you do so, you will find at the end of your career that you have acquired a practical acquaintance with disease which you would have sought in vain by any other means, and you will feel pleasure in the reflection that, whilst fulfilling your duties to yourselves, you have not neglected the responsibility which attaches to