William Henry Welch : a biographical sketch / Simon Flexner.

  • Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946.
Date:
[1920?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William Henry Welch : a biographical sketch / Simon Flexner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    must be answered. Undoubtedly Welch possessed wares garnered at home and abroad—but to what market were they to be taken ? That the practice of medicine would be a necessary corollary to any other ambition he might indulge, seemed never to have been doubted by him. Where else were the necessary pecuniary rewards to come from? There seemed no alternative but to decide immediately whether he should choose New York or Norfolk as a field of operations. In Norfolk his father was still busily, if not very remuneratively, engaged in country practice, in the course of which he dispensed much kindness and, according to tradition, worldly wisdom with his medicines. It strikes one now as very odd that Welch should have hesi¬ tated at this juncture in his choice of New York or of Norfolk. The anomaly can best perhaps be explained by taking into account his remarkable modesty. It seems almost impossible of belief that one so gifted and innately so force¬ ful should not be aware in some degree of the part which nature had cast for him. But whatever pangs of indecision he may have suffered were about to be allayed by destiny in the form of Doctor Goldthwaite. Success in attaining interneships in hospital or appointments to the medical services of the Army and Navy was still determined by the results of competitive examination. To meet this situation the private “ quiz ” had arisen and operated about the medical schools and upon the aspiring medical students. The practice has now been generally discredited and discontinued; but in 1878 and for many years afterwards the “ quiz 33 if successful was a reputable and a relatively highly remunerative affair. The “ quiz 33 masters adapted the cramming process to the peculiarities and foibles of the indi¬ vidual examiners, which they sedulously set themselves to learn. It is now obvious that on joining Goldthwaite’s “ quiz33 Welch never regarded the undertaking as more than a stop-gap. It should not now surprise us to learn that the combination of Goldthwaite and Welch proved irresistible and soon outdistanced all competitors; it could choose the most promising students and its product gained the prize interneships. Welch endured the “ quiz 33 three years, after which and while it was at the height of its popularity he with¬ drew. The reason is sufficiently apparent now, but then with the system in¬ trenched as it were, it required insight and force to convict it of its salient defect, namely that of being a bad method, viewed from the standpoint of educational discipline. The “ quiz33 was, after all, merely an incident, the main import of which was that it ensured the necessary income, while leaving much of Welch’s time for more engrossing pursuits. As a matter of fact, Welch had offered himself for practice and occupied at this period rooms with his friend Dennis at 21 East Twenty-first Street, adjacent to the office of his old teacher, Alonzo