Page:Stewart 1879 On the teaching of medicine in Edinburgh University.djvu/11

9 the objects and methods of each. The aim of the course of systematic lectures is to give in bold outline a description of the features of the various types of morbid action, and of these types as they manifest themselves in the different parts and organs of the body, also to describe the treatment which each condition demands. To any one acquainted with the subject, it must be apparent that it is impossible to do this work adequately within the limits of a single winter session; but as the present regulations for graduation require attendance during only one session, and as many students, however anxious they may be for a more extended course, are prevented by pressure of other work from attending more than once, an effort is made to render the course in each session as complete as possible. In different years, however, more time is devoted to one group of diseases and less to another; thus, for example, last session much attention was given to diseases of the alimentary and nervous systems; this year these will be described with much less minuteness, but the account of constitutional maladies and fevers which it was necessary to shorten, and in part omit last year, will take a leading place. It would be impossible to overtake so much even as we do, if we had not recourse to the printed slips which I adopted when first beginning to teach Practice of Physic. Every day, as you enter the class-room, each of you will receive one or more printed slips, constituting a syllabus of the lecture of the day. All the slips are arranged on a uniform plan, and each in a methodical way indicates the salient features of the disease to which it refers. The lecture generally closely follows the arrangement of the slips, so that if you gum them into your note-books, at the head of each section of your notes, you will find that they aid you materially in forming a clear and definite conception of the malady. Your predecessors have assured me that they have found the slips as helpful in study as I find them in teaching.

The systematic course is of use as guiding you to a correct and appreciative observation of the phenomena of disease, and it should impress upon you a first broad outline of the territory with which you are afterwards to become familiar from the detailed descriptions of others, and by your own observations. You will find the study somewhat arduous on account of the large number of facts which must be detailed, on account of the extreme