PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES. a We 
with almost no educational requirements for matriculation, nearly every medical 
institution in this country would graduate the average student after two courses 
of lectures, the second a repetition of the first, and each of but four or five 
months’ duration. I have known students of average ability to receive the di- 
plomas of some of the most renowned medical colleges of the United States whose 
entire medical tutelage was comprised within a period of less than one year’s 
extent. 
At the present time, many require four years of college work, or shortly will, 
and these college years are often eight or nine months in length, and are never 
less than six. Furthermore, they are not mere repetitions, but are graded from 
entrance to graduation, with constant laboratory practice and frequent examina- 
tions. When the course was of but two years’ duration, more students relatively 
sought preparation in a more liberal education in the college of arts, for the same 
reason that seems to actuate many law students. Many of the law schools now 
require but two years’ attendance upon college work and practically only nomi- 
nal preparation for admission, and the majority of the practicing lawyers of our 
country have had no college professional training at all. The better colleges are 
now extending their course to three years, and it is only a question of a short 
time when the period of college study necessary for the reception of the legal 
diploma will be equivalent to that of the medical profession. 
The modern educational requirements of the medical profession have, I be- 
lieve, raised it to a distinctly higher plane than that of the law. To use the 
words of Justice Brewer: ‘‘A growing multitude is crowding in who are not fit 
to be lawyers; who disgrace the profession after they are in it; who in the 
scramble after a livelihood are debasing the noblest of professions into the mean- 
est of avocations ; who, instead of being leaders and being looked up to for advice, 
are despised as the hangers-on of police courts and the nibblers after crumbs 
which a dog ought to be ashamed to touch.”’ 
But this condition will not last long. The time will soon come when every one 
who appears before the bar of justice as an advocate will be a thoroughly edu- 
cated man or woman. And does this mean that he will be required to have a 
four years’ education in the college of liberal arts? Most certainly not. A four 
years’ course in the law school will be required, whose certificate will carry with 
it the educational right to admission to the bar, and little or no attention will be 
paid to the so-called branches of liberal culture. 
Conditions have changed much. The greatly increased competition and the 
greater struggle for existence now render it imperative that the professional man 
should be better grounded in the principles of his profession than he once was. 
The great accumulation of scientific knowledge has left the teas, the simples and 
the boluses for the quack in medicine. The lawyer cannot bea politician, a real- 
estate or insurance agent, and, in the intervals of his avocations, do justice to his 
client. The professional man cannot spend much time in purely cultural and 
esthetic studies, while his competitors are spending theirs in acquiring a knowl- 
edge of how to treat their patients or how to execute a legal document. 
The average course in the college of liberal arts does not prepare for the 
studies of the medical profession, and not many physicians now urge young men 
to pursue the course in arts as a preliminary to professional training. A part of 
that time certainly is better spent in the more thorough mastery of the profes- 
sional education. 
The average age of graduation from the college or university at the present 
time is nearly twenty-three. The ambitious graduate in medicine will desire to 
give at least one year to hospital practice or to travel before beginning his more 
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