Page:KIdd 1841 Observations on medical reform.djvu/20

 more remarks on the present subject; which however I offer with some confidence, because I know them to be in accordance with the views of several members of the profession, who though among the warmest advocates for Medical Reform, are most desirous of respecting existing institutions to the utmost possible extent compatible with the alterations essentially requisite.

The most prominent and most general object of the advocates of Medical Reform appears to be a uniformity of qualification, to be tested by a public examination, in all the candidates for a license to practise medicine. The desire of this uniformity has naturally resulted from the consideration of the fact that scarcely two of the numerous existing boards of examination exact the same kind or the same degree of qualification; and that each medical school determines, independently of all the rest, the character and the period of its annual courses of professional study, whether in the form of lectures or clinical observation. But it is here fair to state, that in almost every instance these annual courses are, with reference both to character and length, sufficient for the due instruction of the pupils; the average annual period of study being from six to eight months; the annual average number of lectures being from 110 to 140. It is also fair to state, that although not half the same number of professional lectures could be delivered in Oxford, consistently with the existing system of that university, and it may be presumed that no one would be desirous of unnecessarily disturbing