Welsh Journals

manship is concerned with the cultivation and maintenance of health rather than with simply alleviating the sufferings of those who have actually become sick. To the State therefore one can look with assurance for generous aid in the forma- tion of a school of medicine, untrammelled by mediaeval traditions and permeated by the principles of prevention. Nor should the appeal to the medical profession prove less insistent. Inevitable changes in the training of medical practitioners, and the gradual substitution of professional advice for the all-sufficient bottle of medicine will be brought about too slowly to interfere with the vested interests of those who are unable to adapt themselves to the new order of things. Younger men will rapidly embrace the opportunity of placing their brains instead of their drugs at the dis- posal of their patients and medical practice will gradually be placed on a higher plane. A famous Guy's physician used to say that the hospital motto-dare quam accipere- referred to the drugs it is for the teachers of the new medical schools to ensure that future cynics need have no reason to in- clude the advice with the medicine. This will entail considerable changes both in the scope and in the aims of medical education, and it is fortunate for the University of Wales that the completion of its medical school should be contem- plated at such a crisis in medical history, and that Cardiff should be afforded an opportunity of doing pioneer work in medical education-work which not only should redound to the credit of Wales but prove of service to the Empire. How are these aspirations to be realised ? This is not the time or the opportunity to discuss details but the following are the essentials of what is required to complete an efficient medical school at Cardiff (1) The provision of suitable labora- tories for the advanced medical studies and for research. (2) The liberal endowment of pro- fessorships in medicine, surgery and midwifery. (3) The selection of the best available men for these posts. (4) The combination of all medical talent and of all local hospitals (including not only the King Ed- ward VII. Hospital but the Sea- men's Hospital, City Fever Hospi- tal and the Tuberculosis Hospital) as constituent parts of a medical school organized on the lines already indicated. If the possibilities of this scheme were brought home to those who have already done so much for the needs of Wales, it can hardly be doubted that the necessary buildings would be provided. In respect of the endowment of the professorships it is an open secret that the Government is considering the claims both of London and of Wales. In one respect Chancellors of the Exchequer resemble Providence because they always help those who help themselves, and if the money for the new buildings were raised in Wales, the case for suitable grants towards annual expen- diture would be materially strengthened and doubtless prove irresistible, if it were shown that the proposed school aimed at educating medical men on lines that would make them really efficient servants of the community. In such an effort Wales should lead the way, not only because there is an unrivalled opportunity of reorganising medical education without interference from vested interests, but because the subsequent success of those students who have received their pre- liminary medical education at Cardiff proves that a supply of the right kind of students is ready to hand.