TEE TRAINING OF A PEYSICIAN. 307 



ignorance are valued above wisdom. To value wisdom is already to be 

 wise. 



The physician of to-day is not a priest nor a sorcerer. His place 

 is rather that of an engineer. One who understands the make-up of 

 the human mind machine, tries to keep it in order and faithfully 

 repairs it when its parts are out of place. He knows that each effect 

 has a cause, none the more mysterious because it must be sought with 

 instruments of precision. He regards pain as a warning, not as a 

 punishment. It is a sign that a screw is loose somewhere, and were 

 it not for this warning we should not be sure to make it good. 



In the continental universities of Europe, the teaching of medicine 

 has been from the first a university function. The faculty in medicine 

 has been one of the primary divisions of the university. The teach- 

 ing of medicine has kept pace with the instruction in law, philosophy 

 and science, under the same general influences, and with the same 

 methods of control. In England, medical instruction has been more 

 or less divorced from the university. It has been rather a function of 

 medical associations and hospitals. 



The American college had its origin in English models. Like the 

 colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, it was more or less under ecclesias- 

 tical control, its first purpose being to develop clergymen and gentle- 

 men, professional training being outside its scope and purpose. Thus 

 the medical school in America arose through associations of physicians, 

 wholly apart from the college system. 



But the same argument which justifies common schools, high 

 schools and state universities at public expense, applies to medical 

 schools also. It is cheaper for a state, and infinitely better for it, to 

 educate its own physicians than to tolerate uneducated ones. Better 

 to educate its doctors and hire them afterwards than to be the prey of 

 the quack, the iiApostor, the nostrum vendor and the almanac. This 

 was the view of the founders of the University of Michigan, the first 

 state college to devote itself frankly to the service of the state, regard- 

 less of tradition, regardless of what other states and institutions may 

 be doing. 



Other states followed the example of Michigan, establishing schools 

 of law and medicine and of other professions. Still others, as Indiana, 

 adopted a contrary view, and for a time refused to appropriate money 

 to ' help young men into these easy professions. ' 



Meanwhile, in default of endowment and public support, private 

 interest founded medical schools where they were needed. Later, for 

 purposes of advertising or of money-making, other schools of lower 

 standards were established where they were not needed. Hence we 

 have finally medical schools of every grade of honor and of dishonor, 



