PAPERS OX MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 863 



- has made the university of today a great workshop 



instead of the quiet and secluded retreat which it was a 

 century j 



On no other profession has this development of mod- 

 ern science had so marked an effect as on the teaching 

 and practice of medicine. In the last hundred and fifty 

 years has developed practically all of our accurate know- 

 -•■ of physics, chemistry, and biology, the three sci- 



- fundamental to a knowledge of the human 1 

 its workings, and diseases. The modern inicroscop' 

 perfected by Lister and Amici in 1836, has, in less than a 

 hundred years, developed the new sciences of histology. 

 pathology, biology, and bacteriology. So that instead of 

 a medical training of one or two short courses of lectures, 

 the medical student of today must have the most thor- 

 ough preparation and must undergo the longest, the most 

 severe and the most expensive training required of any 

 present-day profession. 



Medical education has undergone a complete revolu- 

 tion and has produced changes not only in educational 

 methods, but also in the character and type of physician, 

 that have not as yet been fully realiz 



During the Colonial period of our history, the only 

 trained physicians in this country were men who had 

 gotten their medical education in England or on the Con- 

 tinent and who had later come to this country. Naturally, 

 such men were few in number. The scarcity of physi- 

 cians in the growing colonies led to the custom of a young 

 man who desired to become a physician "reading medi- 

 cine" with an older and established practitioner and 

 fitting himself to treat the sick through personal instruc- 

 tion by his preceptor and the study of the medical : 

 books in the physician's library. Such an arrangement 

 not only the best that could be made under the ex- 

 isting conditions, but it was also by no means an ineffec- 

 tive system of training. The young man of seventy-five 

 years ago who "read medicine ? ' with his preceptor and 

 who. incidentally, took care of the horses, put up and de- 

 livered the medicines, and acted as general off 

 while he received a quality of instruction along scientific 

 - which would not be recosnized todav by anv medical 



