Two Discourses Dealing with Medical Education in Early New York
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
BOOK REVIEWS Two Disco urs es dea ling wit h Med ical Educ a - the address to its first graduates and he was tion in Earl y New York . By Samuel Bard, seventy-seven years old when he spoke to M.D., Professor of the Practice of Medicine the class of 1819. In the earlier address he in King’s College; Later President of the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons. New York, was chiefly concerned with an appeal for Columbia University Press, 1921. the foundation of a hospital, which would not only relieve the sick but would provide In this little volume are reproduced in facsimile two most interesting addresses by means for the better training of those who cared for them. In the later address he one of the most eminent of the founders of medicine in this country. Their author, could point to the accomplishment of the Samuel Bard, was the son of another hope expressed fifty years before and devote famous colonial physician, Dr. John Bard. his energies to an exposition of the best Like his great contemporaries Morgan, ways in which the student could profit by Shippen and Rush he had realized the the opportunities now afforded him. Two necessity of a thorough medical education years later Samuel Bard was gathered to his and the impossibility of obtaining it in the fathers. By the republication of these colonies. He had therefore studied at Edin- addresses the great institution, for whose burgh and received his medical degree from foundation he did so much, has paid a that University to which so many of the graceful tribute to his memory. pioneers in American medical education Francis R. Packar d . owed their training. The medical school of the College of Philadelphia, as the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania was then known, graduated the first class in medicine in this country in 1768, and one year later Dr. Bard delivered the first of these addresses at the graduation exercises of the first class in medicine at King’s College. The second address was delivered under very different auspices. King’s College had be- come Columbia, and the medical depart- ment of the colonial institution had become the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the State of New York. Dr. Bard had lived through the vicissitudes attending the birth of the United States and coincidently had aided in and seen the development of the embryo medical school into a great educa- tional institution capable of providing a thorough training in medicine. He was twenty-seven years old when he delivered .