586 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XLIV. No. 1139 



period. He discusses at considerable length 

 the importance of early scientific training 

 at the expense of the classics, and refers to 

 several recent important conferences held 

 in Germany in regard to the matter of a 

 premedical education more scientific and 

 less humanistic. 



Five years of medicine and a sixth or 

 hospital year permits the student to gradu- 

 ate at the average age of twenty-four years 

 in Germany and his license is issued after 

 a special examination. 



All of the various teaching institutions 

 are governmental and related. Gradua- 

 tion from the gymnasium, the realschule or 

 the realgymnasium, where the examina- 

 tions are conducted by the officers of those 

 institutions, entitles the student to en- 

 trance into the university. Students are 

 permitted to register in the university for 

 classes which they may attend or not. 

 When they have been registered in a par- 

 ticular subject for the requisite length of 

 time, they may appear before the pro- 

 fessor for examination. If successful, they 

 are given credit for the subject, which is 

 good at any one of the twenty-one univer- 

 sities. 



A seeming weakness in the system is the 

 lack of attention paid to sequence of sub- 

 jects. A source of real strength, when 

 properly controlled, is the migration of 

 students from institution to institution 

 whereby particular attractions in teachers, 

 equipment, clinical or other opportunities 

 are available to a student with some defi- 

 nite object in mind. The special attention 

 paid to research work has enabled Ger- 

 many to add her share to the world's med- 

 ical and scientific knowledge, and in fact, 

 had constituted her the Mecca for graduate 

 work in medicine for the rest of the world. 

 However, certain dangers arise from the 

 undue stressing of research work, in that 

 the undergraduate may come to be re- 

 garded by the professor as a necessary evil 



and only useful when he aids in the re- 

 searches of the staff. This may be at the 

 expense of his general medical training ; in 

 fact, the best medical schools of the United 

 States and Canada were undoubtedly not 

 surpassed in their undergraduate work by 

 the German institutions. 



Germany's special excellence was the 

 uniformity of her training and the bring- 

 ing of the whole profession up to a mini- 

 mum level, which was for some time above 

 that of any other country. 



Some few figures in regard to Germany's 

 supply of available physicians may be of 

 interest. In 1885 Germany's population 

 was 45,458,000. She had at that time 15,- 

 674 licensed physicians, or a ratio of 1 to 

 3,000. Her ratio before the war was about 

 1 to 1,912, varying from 1 to 637 in Munich 

 to a ratio of 1 to 7,718 in Ortelsburg and 

 other thinly populated districts. 



Germany's work in the universities 

 seemed entirely adequate to produce thor- 

 oughly equipped physicians of fairly uni- 

 form training faster than her population 

 increases. The problem of adding new 

 universities is one which is approached in 

 Germany with great deliberation and care- 

 ful study of population needs and of the 

 universities already existent. 



The facilities of German universities for 

 medical teaching and research are familiar 

 to most of us. Undue optimism, particu- 

 larly in the United States, in regard to op- 

 portunities for medical study in Germany 

 and Austria, had arisen on account of the 

 special opportunities afforded visiting 

 physicians. In many instances, instruc- 

 tion was given in English. Abundant ma- 

 terial and opportunity were placed at the 

 disposal of the visitor for a monetary con- 

 sideration which seemed slight to the man 

 in a hurry. On his return when he cited 

 the opportunities which he had been given 

 as showing the superiority of the German 

 or Austrian medical school it usually suf- 



