November 5, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



429 



ing for and a wider outlook on medical edu- 

 cation. It is true that improvements ■were 

 creeping into tlie medical curriculum; the 

 annual sessions at this time were indeed ex- 

 tended from five to seven months and more 

 emphasis was heing placed on the laboratory 

 and less on the purely didactic form of in- 

 struction ; but progress was painfully slow and 

 medical teaching lagged sadly behind that of 

 continental schools. However, a turn in med- 

 ical affairs was impending which was to trans- 

 form within a few years the entire educational 

 structure. 



The Johns Hopkins Hospital was approach- 

 ing completion and the thoughts of President 

 Gilman and the boards of trustees of the Johns 

 Hopkins University and Hospital were turn- 

 ing toward the establishment of the medical 

 school provided for in the splendid gift of 

 Johns Hopkins. A leader to guide the new 

 enterprise was sought, and it is quite clear 

 from Salomonsen's statement that President 

 Gilman asked Cohnheim's advice, and doubt- 

 less the advice of others at home and abroad. 

 Welch seems to have been the unanimous first 

 choice. Dr. John S. Billings, so intimately 

 associated with the planning of the hospital, 

 visited "Welch at Bellevue, doubtless in this, 

 connection, and Welch was invited to become 

 professor of pathology in the university and 

 pathologist to the hospital. The great op- 

 portunity for which he had waited and labored 

 and toward which his dearest aspirations 

 turned had now come to Welch. 



There was no doubt in Welch's mind that 

 the Baltimore venture was full of promise and 

 should be embraced. In the meantime, how- 

 ever, his position in ISTew York had become so 

 important, it is not surprising that a strong 

 effort should be made to retain him. At first 

 Welch's friends failed to see how any one 

 could exchange the professional opportunities 

 of New York for those of provincial Baltimore. 

 The incidents of the transition from the " P. 

 and S." to Bellevue Collie were recalled in 

 this almost grotesque adventure. But there 

 was no doubting Welch's seriousness, and 

 hence steps were taken at once to thwart his 

 plans. The fear of losing Welch was the im- 



mediate incentive which brought the Carnegie 

 Laboratory into being. Dr. Dennis, an inti- 

 mate friend and admirer of Welch, obtained a 

 sum of $50,000 from Mr. Carnegie for the 

 erection of the laboratory. But there is rea- 

 son to believe that Dr. Dennis had in mind, 

 besides the purpose of anchoring Welch to 

 New York, the setting up of the laboratory as 

 an integral part of the medical educational 

 system of the United States. 



But the Carnegie Laboratory was, after all, 

 a building only, with such simple and neces- 

 sary equipment as was demanded by the work 

 of the period in pathological anatomy and in 

 bacteriology, just at its beginnings in the 

 United States. There was no provision made 

 for a paid staff, and there were no funds for 

 daily running expenses. Just what might have 

 happened had these essentials been provided, 

 it is impossible to say, for undoubtedly with 

 the erection of the Carnegie Laboratory the 

 outlook for pathology in New York had sud- 

 denly brightened. But the vista opened before 

 Welch's eyes at Baltimore was extremely fasci- 

 nating, and strong as now may have been the 

 motive to remain in New York, the unprece- 

 dented position which the Johns Hopkins 

 University, at the zenith of its great reputa- 

 tion, had attained in fostering science, was a 

 lure not to be resisted. Everything about the 

 opportunity at Baltimore attracted Welch, who 

 wished above all to be free to develop pathol- 

 ogy in a manner approaching that which he 

 had come to know in Germany; and fortu- 

 nately for the history of medical progress in 

 the United States, he yielded to manifest 

 destiny, although in doing so he was breaking 

 with old and devoted friendships and turning 

 his back on a position in New York never yet 

 attained by a devotee of a laboratory branch 

 of medical science. 



In the six years which had elapsed since 

 Welch had returned from his first period of 

 foreign study, the center of interest had be- 

 gun to shift from the purely cellular pathology 

 of Virchow to that of the microbiology of 

 Pasteur and Koch, in which the bacteria ap- 

 pear as the direct incitants of disease. Here 

 At last, it seemed, were to be discovered the 



