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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1145 



ences are physics, chemistry and biology. 

 It is for this reason that a knowledge of the 

 fundamental principles and facts of these 

 basic sciences is required for admission to 

 the better medical schools. Some of you 

 will fail because your training in these 

 sciences has been inadequate. Teachers in 

 the medical school can not take the time 

 nor can they hold back better trained stu- 

 dents to instruct those who are deficient. 

 By the end of the first year most of these 

 unfortunates are asked to withdraw. 



"With the best possible preparation the 

 medical student finds his daily task quite 

 as much as the strong can carry and alto- 

 gether too heavy for the weakling. There 

 has been some discussion among medical 

 educators concerning the curriculum, some 

 contending that it is too heavy for the 

 average student. This depends upon what 

 is meant by the ' ' average student. ' ' If the 

 standard set in college work is applied, I 

 am of the opinion that medicine does not 

 want such "average students." I am con- 

 vinced that a strong student, of a high aver- 

 age, can carry the medical work as now im- 

 posed and that the imposition of a heavy 

 task succeeds in weeding out the unfit and 

 is therefore desirable. "We do not develop 

 muscles by lifting feather weights, nor do 

 we strengthen brain activity without 

 earnest effort. The aim of medical educa- 

 tion is to develop strong men, and in order 

 to do so difficult tasks must be imposed in 

 the training. 



A strong intellect is not enough to insure 

 success to the medical student. Intellect 

 must be backed by industry, otherwise it is 

 of but little value. For lack of industry 

 many medical students fall by the wayside. 

 After forty years as a teacher in this 

 school, I am of the opinion that lack of 

 proper application to the work is the most 

 potent cause of failure among the students. 

 In his collegiate course the work has been 

 light, easily done. He has had a good 



record, but has failed to establish habits of 

 study. Some allurement causes him to neg- 

 lect his tasks for a day and then for a 

 week. Soon, he finds himself quite in the 

 rear. His bluff at recitation does not go. 

 His teachers question his intellectual 

 strength and honesty. He becomes a dere- 

 lict and must be removed for his own and 

 others' good. 



A third essential to success in medicine 

 is integrity. "When endowed with a high 

 degree of intelligence, supported by the 

 greatest industry but without integrity, the 

 medical man is likely to prove a disgrace 

 to his profession and a menace to the com- 

 munity in which he lives. That integrity 

 has been regarded as an essential qualifica- 

 tion of the practitioner of medicine from 

 the earliest times is shown by the exaction 

 of the Hippocratic oath supposed to have 

 been formulated by the father of the pro- 

 fession. The medical man must be honest 

 with himself, his patients and the public. 

 For personal gain he must not pretend to 

 greater knowledge or skill than he pos- 

 sesses. Professional ethics insist that in the 

 announcement of his purpose to serve the 

 community he must restrict himself to the 

 simplest statement. The public has long 

 ridiculed the restrictions which the med- 

 ical profession has attempted, with more 

 or less success, to impose upon its own 

 members, but that the public is now reach- 

 ing a point where it appreciates the right- 

 eousness of medical ethics is shown by re- 

 cent legislation forbidding false and ex- 

 aggerated advertisements. The first thing 

 for the honest man in becoming a physician 

 to do is to secure the best possible prepara- 

 tion. To enter upon the practise of medi- 

 cine or to continue in it without adequate 

 preparation is a crime — a moral, if not a 

 statutory one. The public has come to this 

 view and there is no other profession, ad- 

 mission to which is so strictly guarded as 

 that of medicine. State laws set the stand- 



