MEDICAL EDUCATION

Evening Star, Issue 22517, 9 December 1936, Page 2

MEDICAL EDUCATION

OTAGO SCHOOL’S PROUD RECORD VICISSITUDES OF EARLY DAYS RAPID EXPANSION 111 RECENT YEARS “ The year 1936 brings to, a close a period of 50 years since the complete course of medical education here lias been in operation and since the first degree in medicine was conferred on a graduate of the Otago School. The time, therefore, seems an opportune one to refer to the progress which has been already made and to forecast the work which has yet to be done both in the erection of buildings and in the direction of expanding our teaching to justify our position as the. national school in the future,” stated Sir Lindo Ferguson, retiring Dean of the Medical Faculty of the University of Otago, in a statement submitted to the University Council yesterday afternoon. CAUTIOUS DEVELOPMENT. The Dean said that the first 28 years after Dr Christie obtained his degree of M. 8., Gh.B.j'ih 1887, up to the outbreak of the war was a' period of slow increase in the number of students and of very cautious development in the lines of teaching. The growth of the school was much handicapped by want of funds, and its very existence depended on the self-sacrificing services of a small group of teachers who wore receiving merely nominal sums in recognition of their work. During the first 20 years, from 1887 to 1907, the graduates numbered 107, and of 600 medical men practising in New Zealand in 1907, just 100 held the New Zealand degree. This represented an output of five or six graduates annually, and as the yearly additions to the register came to about 55 or 56, the profession in New Zealand was recruited in the proportion of ten British to one local graduate. By this time the school had begun to make its existence felt and the classes began to grow in numbers, severely taxing the inadequate accommodation and equipment at our disposal. INCREASING CLASSES. From his appointment in 1877 till 1905 the late Professor'John Halliday Scott occupied the dual chair of Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, but the enormous development of physiology as a subject, together with the increasing size of the classes, made it essential that the chair should be divided, and in 1905 Professor Malcolm was brought out from Edinburgh to found a department of physiology. This departure necessitated accommodation being erected for the new department and led to the doubling in size of what were known as the Medical School buildings. The original buildings contained the chemistry department on the ground floor. The anatomy department, with a very small museum and dissecting room, one lecture theatre, a preparation room, and _ a professors’ room formed the entire accommodation for the school. In the one lecture room tho whole of the lectures of tho school were delivered. Fortunately, it had cross ventilation, but it was occupied practically every hour in the day from 9 in the morning onwards. There was no time between lectures to change diagrams or set up apparatus qr exhibits, and that any attempt at Systematic work should have been carried on under such conditions was almost unbelievable, said the Dean. After the separation of, the departments of anatomy and physiology increases in the classes made further dissecting room and chemical laboratory accommodation essential, and an addition was made in the north end of the building, the extension for the physiology department having been at the south end. The erection of the physiology extension had given the school a second theatre, but it was only by the kind co-operation of Professor Scott and Professor Malcolm that lectures in the other subjects were possible. IMPORTANT EXTENSIONS. “It is from about 1010 that the rapid growth of the school became marked,” continued Sir Liudo. “At the outbreak of the war our graduating class numbered 20, the total number of graduates to this date being 196. During 1914 tho medical curriculum was revised and a campaign started to raise funds for the erection of laboratories and class rooms, which resulted in the building of the bacteriology and pathology departments, which were completed in 1916, opposite the Hospital, but it was not till 1926 that the completion of the new departments of anatomy and physiology opposite to the Hospital gave us the necessary space for our classes and enabled us to bring these subjects into closer touch with clinical training. Since 1914 we have educated over 800 graduates, an average of 36 annually. Those graduating in 1936 number 39. The number of medical practitioners on the medical register has increased from about 600 in 1907 to 1,410 in 1936, and the proportion of New Zealand graduates on the register has increased from about 16 per cent, to 53 per cent. The probabilities are that at end of another 20 years all but a very small percentage of the practitioners of the Dominion will have been trained here. RECORD OF GRADUATES, l .‘ With regard to the quality of the training we give, the records of our graduates afford interesting testimony. Of tho total of about 1,000 graduates the great majority has gone to Britain for post-graduate 'work, and in the earlier groups a total number of 62 took the M.R.C.S., Fug., in order to have an English qualification at a time when tho Now Zealand degree was not well known, but increasing numbers have sought higher qualifications, so that at present our list of graduates includes: F.R.C.S., England, 85; F.R.C.S., Edinburgh, 109; F.R.C.S., Ireland, 1; M.R.C.P., 40; M.D. (New Zealand), 63; M.D., Melbourne, 2; Ch.M., 6; D.P.H., 28; M.C.0.G.. 10—a total of 344 men who have taken higher qualifications. That one-third of our graduates should have the ambition and ability to obtain these distinctions speaks volumes for the desire of the men to reach the highest levels of professional standing, as also for the soundness of their early training in the school. “ It is obvious that the school will supply an increasing percentage of the practitioners of the Dominion and that the character of our education must have an enormous influence on the health and welfare of the community. The responsibility of maintaining the standard of our training at the highest possible level is a serious one. We could not possibly have dealt with the large classes we have had without the accommodation afforded by our new buildings, which, as far as they go. arc excellent, but there is urgent need for a library Mock, for a public health block, for extension of the pathology department, for animal houses, for class rooms for the fifth-year subjects, and accommodation for research workers.”