592 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



course of instruction, three of them offer a four-years course, and the 

 remainder offer, although only few require, a three-years course. 

 The inaugurators of the reform of prolonging the course of study 

 were the Chicago Medical College and the schools at Harvard and the 

 University of Pennsylvania. At but few schools is the instruction 

 graded for different years, and students are usually compelled to pay 

 for hearing twice over the same course of lectures in two years. This, 

 with a little dissection, a thesis, and examinations upon the lectures, is 

 frequently all that is required of them before receiving a diploma. 

 Almost all practical work is optional, and, instead of each student be- 

 ing obliged to secure a hospital experience, he is lucky if he obtains an 

 appointment as interne after an additional competitive examination 

 for which he has crammed himself full during months of toil over text- 

 books and lecture-notes. 



The better class of students feel the inefficiency of this system and 

 so far as possible supplement it by attending small " quiz classes " for 

 recitations and practical work, which are, however, entirely independent 

 of the colleges, and are in no sense obligatory. The success of these 

 small voluntary classes (often conducted by men who are without any 

 official connection with the colleges) in drawing students, who thus 

 incur considerable additional expense, is in itself a severe commentary 

 upon the poverty of the colleges which restricts them from making 

 their own advantages all that they should be. 



Such is the system in vogue to-day at a large number of our medi- 

 cal colleges. There are, fortunately, a few where a much higher stand- 

 ard is not only encouraged but required. No wonder that our students, 

 immediately after graduating, go by the hundred to Paris, Berlin, 

 Vienna, etc., where the Government encourages professional schools, 

 laboratories, and scientific bureaus by substantial support and thorough 

 system. They go abroad, partly because it is the fashion, and gives 

 them a sort of advertisement as having done the proper thing, and 

 partly to learn a new and useful language, and study foreign methods 

 of life. But the fundamental reason of their going is that, instead of 

 sitting in a huge lecture-hall with two or three hundred other men, to 

 take notes verbatim of a lecture which often might be read in a text- 

 book at home, they can join small classes in which they practically 

 demonstrate every fact for themselves, under the guidance of an in- 

 structor. 



Lectures have their value, certainly, but it is a relative value which 

 is greatly enhanced by practical teaching. A gigantic picture of a 

 sore throat, hung on the wall of a lecture-hall, is after all far less in- 

 structive for a student than looking into the real throat, telling what 

 he sees there, and then looking again, while what he at first omitted 

 is pointed out to him. 



There are many demonstrations which can be better made, and 

 many theories which can be more conveniently discussed, in a lecture ; 



