Abstract
III.
THERE is something elevating in the thought that the hospital, while it provides care for the sick, at the same time makes them useful for the purposes of instruction in the service of mankind. Still it is painful, on the other hand, to think that the patient enjoys this attention only in order to be made as profitable as possible to others; that he is given over to a crowd of curious seekers for knowledge, who feel his painful spots, percuss and auscultate his weakened body, and, in short, by proceedings of various kinds, disturb the rest he so heartily longs for. Such evils are not indeed of any account, so long as the number of students does not exceed a certain limit. Experience teaches that a patient is pleased to see a certain number of doctors about him; he soon gives them his confidence, he looks upon them as his friends, 1 and willingly allows himself to be examined, pardy with tbe idea that it will be better for him if the examination is several times repeated, partly in acknowledgment of kind I attentions which are shown him. The difficulty arises when the number of students is so large that the patient ! can no longer feel at home with them. Apart from the fact that the disturbance of the patient increases with the increase of the crowd about him, it is also of the utmost I importance to consider that the greater number of stu- l dents must remain total strangers to him, that they are for him only intruders, who are learning from his body I without offering him anything in return.
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STRICKER, S. Medical Schools in England and Germany . Nature 3, 81–82 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003081a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003081a0