Peter Mere Latham was a physician and medical educator. William B. Spaulding was associate dean of health sciences at McMaster University from 1965 to 1970 and acknowledged by the university as “one of the pioneers who developed the innovative medical school launched at McMaster University.”
Spaulding said in his paper “Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875): A great medical educator,” published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 1971, that “there is more wisdom written by Latham on medical education than has come from a host of curriculum committees, educational psychologists, national symposia and international conferences.”
On Latham’s academic achievement, Spaulding wrote, “Latham must have been one of the first English physicians to acquire skill in auscultation, for his ‘Lectures on Subjects Connected with Clinical Medicine,’ first published in 1836, dealt extensively and effectively with auscultation.”
