PAPERS OX MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 255 



how to adapt onr present-day educational methods so 

 that the medical graduate of today may be as capable 

 and efficient along practical lines as was his professional 

 forefather of two generation- ago, who, with a far less 

 comprehensive and adequate training, was able to exer- 

 cise a far greater personal influence. Everyone agrees 

 that physicians today do not have the influence or enjoy 

 the public confidence of their predecessors, though they 

 are much better educated and far more capable. How 

 can this confidence be restored without sacrificing our 

 high scientific standards ! 



The defects of our present-day medical education are 

 widely recognized. At the alumni dinner of the Car- 

 negie Institute of Technology, Dr. Thomas S. Baker, the 

 president, said, " We are giving too much importance to 

 methods and not enough to substance; too much im- 

 portance to courses of study and not enough to the indi- 

 vidual teacher. College and school executives are so 

 enmeshed in a maze of administrative details that they 

 are in danger of building up systems rather than in build- 

 ing up faculties. The greatest need of American educa- 

 tion is simplification." Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, presi- 

 dent of Leland Stanford University and president of the 

 American Medical Association, says, "The social re- 

 sponsibilities of the profession are enormous. Are we 

 going to fit in or be fitted- The social aspects of medi- 

 cine are inevitable. "We need to smash the present cur- 

 riculum and revamp it to bring it up to the medical re- 

 quirements of modern knowledge. Present medical 

 courses are in some ways ridiculous. We now take 

 twenty-five years of the life of the best young men in 

 the country preparing them to become physicians. We 

 standardize the work so that when they have finished 

 they are all alike." Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Boston 

 says, "The psychical side of practice is more than half 

 of the practitioner's job and makes or mars him. Men 

 intending to study and practice medicine must face the 

 fact that medical schools give practically no attention to 

 the psychic side of the doctor's work. How to deal with 

 people, — that is the problem. The doctor must learn the 



