Abstract
THE editor of the Lancet has begun the interesting experiment of throwing open his journal to selected medical men in various occupations, so that they may express unfettered thoughts upon any subject they choose, under the title “Grains and Scruples”. The first series of contributions, five in number, appeared in the numbers of December 1938 “from an Anatomist”. They discourse on the alleged gradual but definite degeneration of the medical student, who in former days is said to have been far older, more mature, and more responsible than his successor; upon the disappearance of the old-fashioned schoolboy bug-hunter, and other topics familiar to the teacher of long standing. But years have coloured the outlook, for there are still keen schoolboy naturalists, and while maturity and responsibility are difficult qualities to assess, the records show that the age of entry has been rising instead of falling. In the old days, students entered the universities at years of indiscretion undreamed of now, and the writer knew a surgeon-admiral who as a student, having passed all his medical examinations, put in a year on a whaler, until he should attain the legal age of qualification. That cannot happen often in these days.
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An Anatomist Analyses. Nature 143, 325–326 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143325b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143325b0