A hundred years ago
Lord Carnarvon on Wednesday, in distributing the prizes to the medical students of King's College Hospital, made a remarkable statement about the chances offered by the profession. He had inquired carefully about the matter, and Sir James Paget had told him that in one great hospital the career of 1,000 students had been followed. Out of them all, 23 had achieved a great success, 10 considerable success, 60 success, and 307 fair success. The remainder "had passed into a terrible limbo of death, failure, and leaving the profession." That is to say, the chance to a medical student of prosperity is 9 per cent.; of competence, 40 per cent.; and of total failure, 60 per cent. That is a large proportion of failures, as compared with any other necessary profession; but it includes deaths, and we have a suspicion that the mortality among doctors is very high. Let a man with a slight pulmonary predisposition try a doctor's life on the East coast for a month, and see how he is then.
Spectator, 25 May1878
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