Two Views

Richard Cabot of the Massachusetts General Hospital introduced the clinicopathological conference (CPC) as a formal teaching exercise early in this century, and it soon became an important feature of the educational programs at the MGH and at most other United States teaching hospitals. In 1926 we began to publish transcripts of these exercises as a weekly feature in the Journal, and we have continued without interruption for more than 50 years.Over the intervening decades, although the practice of medicine has undergone vast changes and diagnosis has become much less dependent on the autopsy, the CPC as a teaching . . .