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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1349 



mediately whetlier lie should choose New York 

 or Norfolk as a field of operations. In Nor- 

 folk his father was still busily, if not very re- 

 muneratively, engaged in country practise, in 

 the course of which he dispensed much kind- 

 ness and, according to tradition, worldly wis- 

 dom with his medicines. It strikes one now as 

 very odd that Welch should have hesitated at 

 this juncture in his choice of New York or of 

 Norfolk. The anomaly can test perhaps be 

 explained by taking into account his remark- 

 able modesty. It seems almost impossible of 

 belief that one so gifted and innately so force- 

 ful should not be aware in some degree of the 

 part which nature had cast for him. But 

 whatever pangs of indecision he may have 

 suffered were about to be allayed by destiny 

 in the form of Dr. Goldthwaite. 



Success in attaining interneships in hos- 

 pitals or appointments to the medical services 

 of the Army and Navy was still determined by 

 the results of competitive examination. To 

 meet this situation the private " quiz " had 

 arisen and operated about the medical schools 

 and upon the aspiring medical students. The 

 practise has now been generally discredited 

 and discontinued; but in 1878 and for many 

 years afterwards the " quiz " if successful was 

 a reputable and a relatively highly remunera- 

 tive affair. The " quiz " masters adapted the 

 cramming process to the peculiarities and 

 foibles of the individual examiners, which they 

 sedulously set themselves to learn. It is now 

 obvious that on joining Goldthwaite's "quiz" 

 Welch never regarded the undertaking as more 

 than a stop-gap. It should not now surprise us 

 to learn that the combination of Goldthwaite 

 and Welch proved irresistible and soon out- 

 distanced all competitors; it could choose 

 the most promising students and its product 

 gained the prize interneships. Welch endured 

 the " quiz " three years, after which and while 

 it was at the height of its popularity he with- 

 drew. The reason is sufficiently apparent now, 

 but then with the system intrenched as it were, 

 it required insight and force to convict it of 

 its salient defect, namely, that of being a bad 

 method, viewed from the standpoint of edu- 

 cational discipline. 



The " quiz " was, after all, merely an inci- 

 dent, the main import of which was that it 

 ensured the necessary income, while leaving 

 much of Welch's time for more engrossing pur- 

 suits. As a matter of fact, Welch had offered 

 himself for practise and occupied at this period 

 rooms with his friend Dennis at 21 East 

 Twenty-first Street, adjacent to the oflSiee of 

 his old teacher, Alonzo Clark, who would 

 refer occasional patients to the young men. 

 The volume of Welch's practise never became 

 embarrassing, so that he was still free to follow 

 his major bent, which was to teach pathology. 



The outlook for pathology in New York in 

 1878 was not bright. The extent and the na- 

 ture of the teaching had not changed mate- 

 ^rially since Welch was a student in the med- 

 ical college. New York was as much cut off 

 from the strong currents moving in Germany 

 and France along the three main lines of 

 pathology — ^pathological anatomy, experimental 

 pathology and bacteriology — as if Europe and 

 America were not connected by a common in- 

 tellectual bond. Welch was, indeed, destined 

 to play the principal part in breaking the bar- 

 rier of American isolation, but at this time 

 when he was offered by Dr. Francis Delafield 

 the lectures on pathology during the summer 

 semester at the College of Physicians and Sur- 

 geons, he declined the opportunity, because it 

 carried with it no chance to set up a labora- 

 tory, which was the one essential of Welch's 

 aspiration. But what was denied him at the 

 College of Physicians and Surgeons was 

 about to be put before him at Bellevue Hos- 

 pital Medical College. This rival institution 

 proposed to build two small rooms over a hall- 

 way, which, added to another room, Welch 

 could turn into a laboratory. 

 ' The invitation was accepted at once, and 

 Welch made his first break with the established 

 traditions in New York. For this was the 

 heyday of schism in medical schools and feel- 

 ings ran high among the several faculties, and 

 the position of his alma mater, the " P. and 

 S.," in the medical hierarchy of the time was 

 regarded as supreme. Certain of Welch's 

 friends were not happy over his choice and 

 even considered that he had made " the mis- 



