DR. PLUMB BROWN: These jokes on surgeons carry me back to Chicago, something over forty years ago, and I recall one day when Ludlam was examining a patient with an abdominal tumor before our class. He was a great hand to outline his case on the blackboard. Said he, “Gentlemen, tomorrow morning at nine oclock, we will operate on this woman and we will find a tumor. I locate it so,” and he turned around to outline on the blackboard the location of the tumor.
Dr. George Hall, a surgeon, was a visiting guest that morning and Dr. Ludlam said, “Dr. Hall, here we have a case of abdominal tumor. Would you like to examine the patient?”.
While Ludlam was drawing his outline on the board, Hall picked out his forceps from his vest pocket and removed a large anthrax from the lower part of the rectum and said, “Gentlemen, heres your tumor”.
What is medical education? As, when speaking of colleges, we had reference only to homoeopathic medical colleges, so here, when questioning as to what constitutes a medical education, it is a homoeopathic education of which we mean to speak. This can only consist of a knowledge of homoeopathic law and its corollaries, together with a knowledge of how to apply the science of therapeutics, founded on these, for the cure of the sick. Any education which leaves out a knowledge of these is not a medical education in the true sense of these words.
This education must contain a knowledge of the true philosophy of sickness, and also of the nature of the curing agents, and of the rules for the use of these for the solution of clinical problems. A medical education in this sense is an education which enables one, before a case of sickness, to put his hand on the specific agent which will cure it. To be able to do this according to law is the objective, and only objective, of this education.- P.P. WELLS, M.D., 1887.
