4i8 TWING B. WIGGINS 



liable to grave abuse. In the following year, 1845, Davis rose 

 and offered resolutions calling for a national convention to meet 

 in New York the following May, the delegates to be from the 

 medical colleges, societies and institutions of all the states, and 

 that a committee of three be appointed to carry the resolutions 

 into effect. Davis's motion marks the beginning of that great 

 organization, the American Medical association, and it brings 

 into our medical history for the first time, a distinguished man, 

 who is known to all as the father of the American Medical 

 association. 



After great discouragements and much labor the conven- 

 tion met on May 5, 1846, in New York. The next year on 

 May 5, 1847, a permanent national association was perfected 

 which has continued to this day a course of ever widening im- 

 portance and usefulness. The immediate result was a great 

 improvement in the work of the colleges, the course being in- 

 creased to six months, three entire years being required for its 

 completion. The subjects taught and the minimum number 

 of professors was increased to seven. .From that time to the 

 present, lecture terms have been lengthened, professorships 

 subdivided, new ones added; hospitals have been utilized for 

 clinical instruction; the curricula of study has been progres- 

 sively enlarged, and at length summer instruction added to the 

 winter's work; museums have been established, chemical lab- 

 oratories formed, microscopical departments created and all 

 the appliances attached to the schools, necessary in the in- 

 vestigation of structure, life and disease. The process of 

 growth is going on vigorously. Harvard in 1876 was the pio- 

 neer in requiring its students of medicine to undergo a system- 

 atic course of training under the supervision of a corps of 

 teachers of its own appointment. With the knowledge that 

 we all possess of the fine and adequate equipments and high 

 standard of requirements of such schools as the University of 

 Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins hospital, and many others, we 

 can see that the progress of the age in medical education is not 

 below the average advance in other branches of human en- 

 deavor. Merely to enumerate and describe in halting fashion, 

 the many men of worth and ability who have given of their 

 labor in the production of this result would fill many a large 



