The Study of Medicine in the Universities.

It is interesting to see how the study of medicine as connected with a university course has changed with time; how now it is a separate affair, whereas once it was a compulsory feature of university education. The principal facts in this article are due to Dr. Wright of Toronto University.

The first study of medicine was at the famous school of Salemo, near Naples. During the early centuries of Christianity the practice of medicine was almost entirely in the hands of monks. They devoted themselves to its study, handed downs its secrets to the members of their brotherhood, and continued the good work begun by the priests of AEsculapius, who were said to closely resemble monks in their convictions of the religiousness of a life devoted to the relief of suffering, Gradually in the course of a few decades, the instruction of these monks developed into a full university course of three years in the arts and five in medicine, all of which instruction a scholar had to attend before receiving his doctor's degree. So in the early universities medicine was the chief study, and up to the sixteenth century the only recognized physicians were graduates of the great universities in England or on the continent. The divorce of medical education from university was accomplisned by the College of Physicians in England. Although university graduates were the only recognized physicians, yet there were many unrecognized practitioners spread throughout the country. Therefore the university graduates in London got themselves incorporated as the College of Physicians, with powers to license all practitioners in the city who did not have a university degree. The power of the college was afterwards extended all over the country. When the licensing was thus transferred from the universities to a certain number of their graduates in London, and as the chances there for medical study were much better than anywhere else, the universities were deserted by students of medicine, and the number of men who aspired for a university degree became much smaller. This only in England. In Scotland and on the continent the connection between the universities and the medical schools has never been dissolved. In London, however, there arose the purely professional hospital schools, and it is only in the last fifty years that a reunion of medical with other studies has been effected at University and Kings colleges. In this country, as we know, there are medical schools connected with our universities and colleges, but a university course is not compulsory for a medical student. We also have hospital medical schools entirely distinct from any colleges. It is, however, in the Scottish and continental universities that we see to what importance the medical faculty may attain. Edinburgh has nearly three times as many graduates in medicine as in any other department. And the graduation fees annually from the medical students are 35,000 dollars, whereas the fees of other students only amount to 2,500 dollars. In the Prussian universities more than one half the degrees are conferred by the medical faculty.