710 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 777 



there can scarcely be room for discussion at 

 this time. Says Professor Christian in 

 another part of his address : 



There is no essential difference between the 

 methods followed by the pathologist in hig in- 

 vestigation and those followed by the zoologist in 

 certain of his fields of work; the medical chemist 

 uses the procedures of the organic chemist; the 

 bacteriologist is an investigator in a special field 

 of botany. That in the medical departments 

 man and his diseases is the ultimate subject of 

 study is no reason for regarding these studies as 

 less cultural than other university subjects. 



President Eliot has put the case of the 

 medical subjects even more forcibly. He has 

 said : 



There is no line between cultural and profes- 

 sional subjects. There is absolutely no line. I 

 read the other day an admirable definition by 

 President Hadley of what we wanted the colleges 

 to effect, not the professional school — presumably 

 Yale College. He said we wanted to teach the 

 college youth civic duty and religious earnestness, 

 and health of mind and religious aspiration; he 

 wanted to teach him public service as the root of 

 American life and therefore of American educa- 

 tion. Now, that is twice as gospel, gentlemen. 

 It is the educational gospel. But, in my judg- 

 ment, it is not the gospel of the American college 

 only, it is the gospel of American education from 

 the primary school through the professional 

 school, and I know of no subject better adapted 

 to develop the sense of civic duty, of public service, 

 and of moral and religious earnestness than the 

 subjects taught in the medical school. 



K these things be true, if we accept the 

 elective system, and grant to those sciences 

 which constitute the first two years of the cur- 

 riculum of aU medical schools the right to a 

 place among the sciences taught in the uni- 

 versity, can there be any logical escape from 

 the conclusion that if a young man elects 

 these sciences during the junior and senior 

 years of his college course, he must be granted 

 a bachelor's degree on the successful com- 

 pletion of his four years of college work ? 



No — the combined course has not degraded, 

 nor lessened, the significance of the bachelor's 

 degree. Eather I am strongly inclined to 

 believe, it has elevated and enlarged its sig- 

 nificance. The student whose last two years 



of college work have been taken in subjects 

 directly related to his chosen vocation, pur- 

 sued with an enthusiasm and an earnestness 

 bom of a definite purpose is pretty certain to 

 have attained to a higher degree of cultivation 

 of his mental faculties — which is the chief end 

 of any educational system — than is the student 

 whose studies are not directed toward a defi- 

 nite purpose. 



Has the combined course tended to degrade 

 or lessen the significance of the degree of 

 M.D. ? If the requirement for admission to 

 the medical school had been a bachelor's de- 

 gree, then that charge might be justly brought 

 against the combined course, but it is to be 

 remembered that when this plan was first pro- 

 jected but a single one of the 160 or more 

 medical schools in America exacted anything 

 more than a high-school diploma. The Har- 

 vard Medical School and all the remainder of 

 the list, excepting the Johns Hopkins Medical 

 School, were on this basis. Of course two 

 years of college preparation is not equal in 

 value to four years, and it is in the highest 

 degree desirable that a student should com- 

 plete four years of college work, exclusive of 

 the medical sciences, if his age and other cur- 

 cumstances permit him to do so. A large and 

 an increasing number of students are meeting- 

 this higher requirement in all of the better 

 medical schools, and every inducement should 

 be offered to young men to complete a full 

 college course before entering upon the study 

 of medicine. But for a long time to come we 

 shall have in this country a considerable num- 

 ber of men to whom the exaction of four years' 

 requirement would mean deferment of their 

 entrance upon medical study and practise- 

 beyond that age at which it is wise and best 

 for them to begin their life work. As Presi- 

 dent Eliot has said : "If a young man takes 

 his A.B. at twenty-two he can hardly hope to 

 begin the practise of his profession before the 

 age of twenty-six. That is quite late enough." 

 Professor Christian has himself so well stated 

 the objections to late graduation in medicine 

 that it is perhaps unnecessary to discuss the 

 subject further, but a specific case may serve 

 to emphasize this point. My advice has been 



