Scenes from Postgraduate Life The history ofpostgraduate medicine education

Although formal postgraduate medical education may be a recent phenomenon, many long-establish-ed medical societies throughout Britain have con-tributed to the continuing medical education of established practitioners while the specialist societies have made an immense contribution to the dissemination ofnew knowledge and many consul-tants regard these societies as the most valuable source ofnew knowledge in their field. The need for the medical practitioner to devote himself to a lifetime of study was stressed by Osler in a valedic-tory address to students at McGill University in 1905 when he said: 'The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a College Course