854 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 962 



only knowledge of the subject is that ob- 

 tained in the pure science courses. If any 

 question of application arises, they are un- 

 able to answer it and therefore discourage 

 all such inquiries or resent them as "catch 

 questions. ' ' 



Teachers in the science branches should 

 be in thorough sympathy with the future 

 professional work of the students, and I 

 am of the opinion that teachers in medical 

 schools should have taken a complete med- 

 ical course as part of their training. There 

 are many eminent teachers in medical 

 schools who haye not had this training, but 

 they have been long in contact with medical 

 institutions and have a saving sympathy 

 with the clinical side. In the large univer- 

 sity schools and where the school is divided, 

 there is danger in this lack of sympathy 

 with clinical work, which attitude the sci- 

 ence teachers are only too ready to criti- 

 cize harshly in the clinical man if he does 

 not show sufficient interest in their par- 

 ticular science. 



Medical progress is being retarded by 

 lack of coordination of science and clinical 

 departments. The lack of training in clin- 

 ical medicine too often prevents the sci- 

 ence teacher from being of assistance to 

 the clinician. Medical and surgical meth- 

 ods do not always fit in with laboratory 

 technique. The complexity of the prob- 

 lem causes him to give little scientific value 

 to the investigations not made in a labora- 

 tory. It is this attitvide of the science 

 teacher toward the introduction of clin- 

 ical work or clinical methods in the first 

 two years of the course, that is causing not 

 only the student to fail to appreciate the 

 value of and becoming interested in the 

 subjects, but also to make him less able to 

 apply the knowledge that he has gained 

 of laboratory technique to his work in the 

 clinic and wards. His work in the labora- 

 toiy has been on frogs and the lower ani- 



mals only. When he comes to his clinical 

 years he finds that he can not use the appa- 

 ratus with which he has become familiar 

 to human beings. He finds new factors 

 enter into the experiment which confuse his 

 previously formed conceptions; he can not 

 interpret his findings. The science teacher 

 claims that this apjDlied instruction should 

 be given by the clinical teachers and also 

 says that they 'should be competent to do 

 it, which latter contention we grant, but 

 what are the two years of instruction in 

 the laboratories for but to prepare the 

 student for his clinical work? Wherever 

 possible methods and apparatus should be 

 employed that can be used in clinical in- 

 vestigations. The burden of this instruc- 

 tion should not be thrown on the clinical 

 years, already so overcrowded as to make 

 a hospital year a necessity. 



To insure a better correlation between 

 science branches and clinical years and 

 allow of unloading, the hard and fast lines 

 that are tending to separate the second 

 and third year of the course should be ob- 

 literated. As students come better pre- 

 pared in the underlying sciences and are 

 able to accomplish more in the same time, 

 instead of extending the courses in pure 

 science, correlated clinical laboratory 

 courses should be introduced in the second 

 year. 



If the teaching staff of the science 

 branches can not give these courses, then 

 clinical teachers, most likely young men 

 who have been trained in laboratory- 

 method, should give them. This would be 

 the best introduction possible for the clin- 

 ical subjects, and students so prepared 

 could more rapidly advance in the third 

 year. It would permit of omitting much 

 of the lecture course in this year and allow 

 an early contact with clinical material. To 

 obtain such readjustment hearty coopera- 



