184 University of Pennsylvania. 



By a late regulation of the Trustees of the University, 

 the medical graduates are not obliged to publish their 

 Inaugural Dissertations. After the dissertations have 

 been submitted to the Medical Faculty, if they are ap- 

 proved of the publication is altogether optional ; or 

 entirely the act of the graduate. In consequence of 

 this regulation, Which has now been in operation for 

 two terms, only a small number of the dissertations have 

 been printed and published. Of the sixty, the titles of 

 which are given above, only three have been published. 

 These are marked with an asterisk *. Others, how- 

 ever, are intended for publication, either entire or in 

 part; and some of them, perhaps, in a state more im- 

 proved (by the authors themselves) thnn that in which 

 they were originally presented to the Medical Faculty. 



The writer of this account docs not hesitate to give 

 it as his own individual opinion, that the present exist- 

 ing regulation of the Trustees, in regard to the Inaugu- 

 ral Dissertations, is an improvement upon the former 

 system. To compel a young man, who acknowledges 

 that he has nothing new or important to communicate 

 to the world (and whose dissertation is found, on exa- 

 mination, to have no claim whatever to original merit), 

 to appear before the public as an author, seems, to use 

 the mildest phrase, an unnecessary procedure. It is 

 not meant to be insinuated, that such is the character 

 of all the Inaugural Dissertations which have, hitherto, 

 been published in Philadelphia. So far is this from be- 

 ing the case, that it is believed, that few universities, in 

 any country, hive produced more respectable original 

 dissertations than some (not a fexv) of those which 



