November 10, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



677 



other studies and his success confirms him in 

 his belief that medicine is his proper career. 

 I know that courses in experimental biology 

 and plant physiology are offered, which de- 

 mand the immediate use and observation of 

 physico-chemical facts. It might be main- 

 tained that such work is very direct and valu- 

 able training for medicine but I can not agree 

 with such an attitude unless the courses in 

 question are preceded by more fundamental 

 physics, chemistry and physical chemistry than 

 is now required for medical school admission. 

 Experimental biological courses of this type do 

 not, in my experience, reach many men. The 

 majority have been concerned with what 

 amounts to elementary comparative anatomy 

 and histology, work which meets the needs 

 neither of medicine nor of the medical school 

 and which, though it has an educational value 

 of high order, does not lead to the definite 

 scientific specialization which modern medi- 

 cine demands. A medical student of to-day 

 must have a larger understanding of physics, 

 of chemistry, and of mathematics than is pic- 

 tured in the admission requirements of the 

 school catalogues. 



It is interesting to many who have had a 

 close view of medical education and who have 

 observed the direction of medical school de- 

 velopment since the four-year course became 

 general, to follow the gradual absorption of 

 hours which had been given to different 

 branches of anatomy, by physiological chem- 

 istry, physiology and pharmacology. The day 

 when anatomy was the only real laboratory 

 study is long past, and it is perhaps not an ex- 

 treme view to hold that gross morbid anatomy 

 — dissection — will be still further cut in many 

 schools during the next ten years. 



While this fact is part of the ordinary ob- 

 servation of all who have a historical view of 

 the gradual stuffing and squeezing of the med- 

 ical course, it has evidently not become a pos- 

 session of the average college adviser who di- 

 rects the student to the very door of medicine. 

 He has a keen recollection of the struggles of 

 his own contemporaries as they plunged along 

 through a solid old Scotch course in gross 

 anatomy and he thinks that every medical stu- 



dent must prepare for the same fate. It is 

 true that a thorough course in comparative 

 anatomy together with such desultory work in 

 human anatomy as college courses offer, and, 

 indeed, all biological studies, may make a man 

 somewhat more efficient in his medical ana- 

 tomical course. But the trouble is that the 

 medical schedules have changed and anatomy 

 now takes at best a quarter instead of almost 

 the entire working laboratory time. The stu- 

 dent prepared as I have outlined, and it is the 

 usual preparation, finds and readily acknowl- 

 edges that he has taken the correct path to 

 equip himself for a career in anatomy if he 

 wishes to specialize in this subject, but he 

 finds too that he has been thoroughly cursed 

 by wasted hours if he heads out into the many 

 other fields which make up medicine. 



I may seem to have indicated a belief that 

 human physiology and human anatomy have 

 no place in the college course, but this is not 

 my intention. There can be no doubt that 

 the more widely these subjects are taught the 

 better. Let them be emphasized increasingly 

 for all who are not to study medicine. The 

 prospective medical student, however, must 

 lay his lines in harder places. 



In my experience there are not many men, 

 who at the end of their first two medical 

 school years, look upon anatomy as their most 

 difficult course. True, it may have required 

 more hours of study than any other subject, 

 but this was due rather to bulkiness than to 

 the character of the work. Just as in college 

 the ordinary man regards biology as easier 

 than physics, so in the medical school, the 

 average student finds the purely observational 

 task which anatomy represents far easier than 

 physiology or physiological chemistry. Cer- 

 tainly with the steady encroachment of 

 physico-chemical material it is only a matter 

 of a very short time when this statement will 

 be true with even greater emphasis than it is 

 to-day. There is only one line of safety, then, 

 for the man who plans to take medicine. He 

 must prepare on the side of physics and chem- 

 istry, taking as much of these two subjects as 

 his college course will permit. He will nat- 

 urally take enough mathematics to keep 



