Daniel Coit Gilman 55 



medical faculty may be organized. So also, in describing 

 the purpose and aims of the biological department, which 

 constituted a novel feature in the newly-established uni- 

 versity, he laid great emphasis upon its importance in re- 

 lation to the study of medicine. Indeed, from the begin- 

 ning of the University there was organized a pre-medical 

 course along the lines which had been laid down by Hux- 

 ley, a course which, in its general features, has since been 

 endorsed and imitated by many of the leading schools of 

 the country. As a matter of fact medical education among 

 us at the time of the founding of the University was in a 

 deplorable condition. Deprived of adequate financial sup- 

 port and without the uplifting aid of an academic connec- 

 tion, most of our medical schools had sunk to a very low 

 level. They demanded practically no educational prepara- 

 tion on the part of their matriculates, and they made little 

 or no effort to give their students an adequate training in 

 the theory and science of medicine. The training, in fact, 

 resembled that of an apprentice rather than that of a 

 candidate for admission to a learned profession. Mr. 

 Gilman, with his wide interest in education in general, 

 must have been impressed, as many other thoughtful men 

 were, with this very undesirable state of affairs. With 

 the prevision characteristic of a great leader, he seems to 

 have selected medical education as one of the great oppor- 

 tunities which the new university might utilize to do a 

 needed service to the country at large. For reasons over 

 which he certainly had no control the realization of his 

 plans was deferred for some seventeen years. It was not 

 until 1893 that the medical school, as we now know it, was 

 founded. It was and is a graduate school in the sense that 

 it accepts as students only those who are college graduates. 

 At the time of its foundation its requirements for 

 entrance seemed almost absurdly high. It was supposed 

 that only a few students each year would be willing to 

 meet these requirements, considering that in the other 

 leading schools the conditions for entrance were so mucl 



