Education and training in internal medicine in Europe

Sir William Osler was the Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford at the end of World War I. In those days there was a great demand for postgraduate medical education. This was the motive for the foundation of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, under the presidency of William Osler. Osler himself had received his postgraduate education in Europe, from 1872 to 1874, during a two year sabbatical leave in teaching clinics in Germany. It was during this period that internal medicine was introduced as a specialty in the schools of medicine in Berlin, Göttingen, and Vienna.1 Postgraduate education in these clinics was directed at the practice of clinical medicine and was based on the latest advances in physiology, bacteriology, and pathology. The switch from mere observation to understanding had been made.