NOVEJCBER 19, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



709 



Columbia University for an addition to the 

 Sloane Maternity Hospital. 



The Xew York Evening Post states that the 

 bequest of Dr. Levi Ives Shoemaker, of Wilkes- 

 Barre, Pa., of $500,000 to the Medical School 

 of Yale University will, at the expiration of a 

 life interest, give the school an amount more 

 than double its present funds, which, by the 

 last report of the university treasurer, were 

 $222,687. 



Dh. G. B. Loxstaff, of iSI^ew College, Ox- 

 ford, has given £2,400 to the university for 

 forming an additional endowment for the 

 maintenance and support of the Hope depart- 

 ment of zoology. 



The laboratory of physics of the University 

 of Illinois will be formally opened on No- 

 vember 26. President Pritchett, of the Car- 

 negie Foundation, will make the dedicatory ad- 

 dress, preceded by short addresses by the gov- 

 ernor of Illinois, the president of the board of 

 trustees, the president of the university and 

 Dr. A. P. Carman, professor of physics. At a 

 subsequent session addresses will be made by 

 Professor David Kinley, dean of the graduate 

 school and Professor Arthur G. Webster, of 

 Clark University. On iSTovember 27. the 

 American Physical Society will hold its regu- 

 lar meeting at the university. 



The formal inauguration of Dr. Edmund C. 

 Sanford as president of Clark College will be 

 held on founder's day, February 1, 1910. 



Professor Clarence E. Reid, who for the 

 last four years has been assistant professor of 

 electrical engineering at the Case School of 

 Applied Science, has been appointed head of 

 the department of physics and electrical engi- 

 neering at the Mississippi Agricultural and 

 Mechanical College. 



Dr. G. C. Fbacker has resigned the chair of 

 philosophy and psychology at Coe College to 

 accept the chair of psychology and education 

 at the State Normal School of Marquette, 

 Mich., where he succeeds Professor L. S. 

 Anderson, who has gone to the University of 

 Illinois. Dr. F. S. Newell has been appointed 

 to the position in Coe College. 



At the University of Birmingham Mr. J. 

 S. C. Douglas has been appointed lecturer in 

 pathology and bacteriology, and Mr. Leonard 

 Doncaster, special lecturer in heredity and 

 variation. 



Mr. Gordon Merriman, of Trinity Hall, has 

 been appointed to the studentship in medical 

 entomology at Cambridge University, lately 

 held by Mr. F. P. Jepson, of Pembroke College. 



Discusswy A^w gorrespoxdenc)!! 



THE COMBINED COURSE LEADING TO THE DEGREES 

 OF A.B. OR B.S.J AND OF M.D. 



The combined course leading to the degrees 

 of A.B. or B.S. and the degree of M.D. which 

 is discussed by Professor Christian in his ad- 

 dress at Leland Stanford LTniversity' is a topic 

 of such importance that Professor Christian's 

 comments ought not to go unanswered. His 

 declaration that " These schools have suc- 

 ceeded in rendering the A.B. degree of less 

 value and significance than formerly and have 

 sacrificed one or two years of college work 

 while seeking to conceal this fact by the award 

 of the two degrees A.B. and M.D.," will hardly 

 be accepted as a just and truthful statement 

 of the facts, by the twenty-five or more insti- 

 tutions now offering the combined course. 

 Those persons who maintain that the bache- 

 lor's degree should be awarded only to those 

 students who have completed the rigid, clas- 

 sical four years' course of study formerly pre- 

 scribed, may logically object to the substitu- 

 tion of science work for one half or more of 

 this curriculum, such as has been permitted 

 in Harvard University for many years. But 

 this rigid, classical ideal was shattered more 

 than thirty years ago by the institution of the 

 elective system in Harvard University — a 

 system which in one modification or another 

 has come to be all but universal in our Ameri- 

 can universities. 



Of the right of the fundamental medical 

 sciences, anatomy, histology, embryology, 

 physiology, physiological chemistry, bacteriol- 

 ogj', pharmacology and fundamental pathol- 

 ogy — to a place in the university curriculum 



'Science, October 22, 1909. 



