ipii] Charles A. Doremiis 247 



homeless, were given evening Instruction in the lecture room and 

 laboratory of the N. Y. Medical College^ from 1850 to 1860. 



The requirements for entrance to, and graduation from, a medi- 

 cal school were then and until about fifteen years ago simpler than 

 at present. Neither high-schools nor Colleges had the facilities for 

 Instruction in science which they now possess. Indeed most of our 

 universities were then but Colleges, and the antagonism of many 

 religiously minded people to the teachings of science was strong. 

 The medical Student selected a preceptor, with whose practice he 

 became somewhat familiär. Later the medical Colleges acted as 

 preceptors. The course of study involved attendance at two courses 

 of lectures and clinics, and the Student heard in his second year 

 substantially the same lectures he had heard in the first. He had 

 clinical privileges the second year not accorded the first. It was 

 possible to get through the two courses (one during the winter, the 

 other during the summer) in the same year, by going to two dif- 

 ferent institutions whose terms were so related. The title of a 

 paper read before the Medical Society of Philadelphia, in 1800, by 

 John Redmond Coxe, M.D., "A Short View of the Importance 

 and Respectability of the Science of Medicine," indicates the con- 

 ditions attending the founding of the early schools. 



The innovation of a three-years course when first attempted 

 by Bellevue Hospital Medical College, was objected to by the 

 other medical schools, and the present System of an examination 

 at the end of each of the four years course is of recent date. The 

 prerequisite of a College course is not yet exacted by all schools of 

 medicine. 



The College of Physicians and Surgeons had no adequate In- 

 struction in either physiology or pathology for the first forty years 

 of its existence, and it was not alone in this respect. Indeed, the 

 study of anatomy was hampered by the fact that dissecting ma- 

 terial was not easily had, and the Act which legalized the obtain- 

 ment of such, was passed under the title of "An Act to prevent the 

 Desecration of Graveyards." 



The introduction of experimental demonstrations of vital proc- 

 esses by experiments on animals, which at one time was con- 

 ducted before the classes, was later almost abandoned though now 



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