TRAVEL AS A MEDICAL EDUCATION". 17 



tice, The traveling post-graduate medical student, un- 

 less he intends to devote considerable time to labora- 

 tory work, should not remain at any one place for any 

 length of time. It does not take long to become fa- 

 miliar with methods of teaching and details of operative 

 technic. It is more profitable, and certainly more inter- 

 esting, to see ten men operate ten times each than to 

 see any one man operate a hundred times. Travel, as 

 a means of post-graduate medical education, does not 

 necessarily imply that the time should be spent in great 

 medical centers, as is too often the case. Some of the 

 very best medical and surgical work is now being done 

 beyond the shadows of medical schools and great met- 

 ropolitan hospitals. We often learn more of the real 

 merit of a surgeon who is thrown entirely on his own re- 

 sources in some remote, small, isolated city, whose in- 

 strument supply is limited, assistants few and perhaps 

 inexperienced, than when we witness the operations by 

 recognized masters in the palatial hospitals, supplied 

 with everything that modern surgery could possibly sug- 

 gest, and assisted by a large staff of well-trained, ex- 

 perienced resident surgeons. 



In our country and abroad magnificent little hospi- 

 tals are being built in the smaller cities and large vil- 

 lages in which the patients receive excellent nursing 

 and the very best medical and surgical service. Some 

 of these places in our own country have recently become 

 famous for the excellency of the surgery practiced. 

 Among these Rochester, Minn., and Oshkosh, Wis., de- 

 serve special mention. The Mayo brothers at Rochester 

 control the lion's share of the surgery of the West, and 

 their hospital in the little prairie city of not more 

 than 5,000 inhabitants has become a Mecca for the sur- 

 geons not only from this country but from abroad. 

 There is no other hospital on this side of the Atlantic 

 in which so many important operations are performed 

 daily as in this one. It would be difficult for any one 

 to visit St. Mary's Hospital, Oshkosh, a city of 30,000 



