Teviot Place then; Fifty-Five Years Ago

Abstract

Having studied my preclinical subjects at Oxford and taken a B.A. degree in Physiology, I came home to Edinburgh in 1922 to do my clinical work. I thought it might be amusing and interesting to contrast our work, habits and behaviour at that time with what they are now, for the students of today are like everything else, different from what we were over half a century ago.

To begin with they are, on the average, undoubtedly of a higher intellectual standard. In my day almost anyone could become a medical student provided he was not so completely halfwitted as to be unable to pass the simple matriculation examination demanded and provided his parents were ready to pay for him. Thus a number had indifferent intellectual qualifications.