HEALTH AND MEDICINE — GENERAL 507 



Medicine at Khartoum. The last-named lies outside the scope of 

 the present study. 



The training at Dakar was started immediately after the Great 

 War, and may be described first as the earliest established and 

 largest school for auxiliary doctors in Africa. The prospective 

 medical student spends two years on secondary education at the 

 Ecole William Ponty on the Island of Goree. Then follow four 

 years of intensive training at the Medical School, for which only 

 the better students are chosen. The first two of these years are 

 devoted to a grounding in the usual subjects such as physiology, 

 anatomy, pathology, and hygiene, but during the last two years 

 the students divide their time between the Medical School proper 

 and the Policlinique and African hospitals, where a large part of 

 the routine diagnosis and treatment is carried out by them under 

 European supervision. The actual work is much the same as in a 

 British medical school, but there is no 'long vacation', and the 

 students have more working hours during the four years at Dakar 

 than during the five or six years in a British medical school. 

 There are rather more than one hundred medical students at the 

 school, and during the past few years between twenty-two and 

 twenty-six have passed out each year. After examination there 

 follow two years in a hospital under European supervision before 

 the qualified rnedecin auxiliaire is ready to work alone at an out- 

 station. Most of them return to Dakar at intervals for refresher 

 courses, and after ten years' service they return for further exami- 

 nations. 



The regulations of the service are framed in such a way as to 

 make private practice by medecins auxiliaires almost impossible, 

 unless they subsequently go to France to take a full medical degree. 

 Individuals who have attained to a specially high standard may 

 be given permits to practice, but such a case has not yet occurred. 



In comparing this intensive training with that given in other 

 parts of Africa, it has to be borne in mind that the Dakar students 

 include a large number of Moors and half-castes, and, on the aver- 

 age, start their training at a higher educational level than those of 

 Nigeria or Uganda, for example. Moreover, the climate of Dakar 

 is more conducive to intensive study than that of more tropical 

 regions. For the other French dependencies a medical school is 



