Intree-redes en het beeld van het medisch onderwijs in Nederland (1865-1900)

Abstract

Medical education in The Netherlands as seen from the inaugural addresses (1865-1900) In an earlier publication the inaugural addresses of the professors in obstetrics and gynaecology, surgery, ophthalmology and otology were discussed as to their views on medical education. In this article the inaugural addresses of the professors in anatomy, pathology, pathological anatomy, medicine, physiology and hygiene are evaluated. Moreover in some of the Dutch universities professors were appointed to teach dermatology, histology, neurology and psychiatry. Their inaugural addresses are also mentioned. The scientific basis of the medical education is one of the main topics in each address. A scientific approach of medical problems gives more credit to the doctor then the old empirical knowledge. The professors in anatomy on the one hand went on teaching classical anatomy as needed as a basis for medical education, on the other hand they were interested in research on comparative anatomy and embryology. They were strongly influenced by Charles Darwin and by the German anatomist Karl Gegenbauer. Pathological anatomy was based on the concept of cellular pathology as formulated by Rudolf Virchow. The Dutch professors slicked to these views during the eighties when bacteriology interfered with the anatomical approach. However ten years later bacteriology had sieged. Physiology became one of the important basic studies in the medical curriculum. During this period the subject of physiological investigation changed from the organ to the cell. In medical education the study of the organism as a whole had to prevail these sophisticated research subjects. From 1877 on hygiene was taught in the medical curriculum. The professors in this new field took great pains to be taken serious by the medical establishment. They stressed their use of scientific methods and gladly accepted bacteriology to support their discipline and to legitimate their reforming proposals with. Dermatology and venereology were only taught in the Amsterdam university. During the eighties the dermatologists felt the need for an experimental approach and laboratory research. The social implications of veneral and skin-diseases were also subject to discussion. The creation of chairs for psychiatry and neurology in the nineties showed the same interest for the combination of clinical, experimental and social problems. The search for a scientific explanation for mental disorders was one of the main aims of psychiatrists around the century.