Capacity

Although I believe our students could have make a better use of their memory, the problem is not entirely theirs.

They have too much to be remembered.

And that's not a problem for medical students only; all modern man face the same difficulty. (Yes, I agree the problem is exaggerated in our circle because of the breadth and depth of the subject.)

The very fact is, the structure of human brain remains essentially the same as the one we found 200,000 years ago when Homo sapiens sapiens first appeared. (The speed of natural evolution by random mutation is very slow.) However, the amount of knowledge that a modern man needs to master is probably 100 times than that of his ancestor. Notably, with the invention of writing (and paper and printing), human knowledge could accumulate - meaning that more material are there to be learned by a student.

With computer and Internet, the accumulation of knowledge became exponential.

And that amount of information is not supposed to be handle by our good old brain.

Just imagine you are using a computer with Intel 8086 processor to play an on-line game.

PS. A minor feature may skip your eyes: human brain completed its evolution before the invention of words and writing, and is therefore not meant for semantic memory. That's why we are so much more comfortable in remembering a story.