12 DAVID H. BERGEY 



The position of bacteriology in the curriculum in some medical 

 schools is unsatisfactory, especially where bacteriology is taught 

 to first year students. It is largely a waste of time to attempt 

 to teach clinical bacteriology to a student who knows nothing 

 about disease in general and is not expected to take up the study 

 of clinical medicine until one or two years later. The difficulty 

 can be overcome in large part by requiring that the student 

 receive a course of instruction in general bacteriology as a part 

 of his premedical training and then receive instruction in clinical 

 bacteriology during the second semester of the second year, or 

 the first semester of the third year of his medical course. In the 

 present arrangement of the curriculum of the medical school, if 

 bacteriology is taught entirely in the first year, the student has 

 usually not completed the study of physiology nor has he, as a 

 rule, begun to study pathology and clinical medicine. The 

 anomalous position of bacteriology in the medical curriculum is 

 probably due to the fact that those responsible for the condition 

 fail to appreciate the broad biological relations of the science of 

 bacteriology. 



The student of clinical bacteriology who lacks a knowledge 

 of physiology, of pathology, and of clinical medicine, suffers a 

 serious handicap in appreciating the principles that underlie the 

 pathogenic action of the bacteria and the reactions of the body 

 to infection. The problems of infection and immunity have 

 the most important relations to normal and abnormal conditions 

 of the body and these relations cannot be fully comprehended 

 without a knowledge of physiology and of pathology. 



Many of the colleges that prepare students for the medical 

 course could be equipped, without great expense, if not already 

 prepared to do so, to give a course in elementary bacteriology in 

 their biological departments through teachers of those depart- 

 ments who would develop the subject on a broad biological basis. 

 With such a prehminary training in general bacteriology the 

 medical student could then take up clinical bacteriology with 

 much greater profit in the second or third year of his medical 

 course because he could appreciate the relation of the subjects 

 to their clinical application. 



