946 
vidual is the first and in many ways the 
most important consideration. I know it 
is bringing coals to Neweastle to discuss 
this question before the students and fac- 
ulty of Syracuse University, for you have 
been among the first to recognize the value 
of two years’ college work which shall in- 
clude physics, chemistry and biology. Still 
this principle is not generally recognized. 
Many of those in positions of authority in 
our medical schools, while loudly proclaim- 
ing the right of medicine to a place among 
the sciences and indeed characterizing it as 
the ‘‘Mother of the Sciences,’’ deny that a 
scientific education is a prerequisite to 
medicine. True, the opposition is fre- 
quently due to a realization of the awk- 
ward financial position in which an admin- 
istration might be placed if students’ fees 
diminished. Frequently also it is due to 
the claims of those who hold that a greater 
cultural value lies in following the human- 
istic rather than the scientific school of 
thought. Naturally, there is also the ‘‘poor 
boy ery’’ and the closely associated ery 
that outlying districts will not be properly 
eared for if the cost of medical education 
is increased. The ‘‘poor boy’’ argument 
may be dismissed at once, for those who 
have had experience in teaching medicine 
know that the boy, poor or otherwise, who 
knows what he wants in the way of an edu- 
cation, gets that education in spite of all 
difficulties, and as a rule, if he has to work 
for it, is keen enough to get the best that is 
to be had. Such men will ‘‘come through’’ 
despite all apparent barriers in the way of 
higher preliminary requirements; if the in- 
different ‘‘poor boy’’ fails, lacking ambi- 
tion and a clear conception of what he 
wants, so much in favor of the higher 
requirements. 
As to the outlying districts, we need have 
no fear as long as the ratio of physicians to 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 912 
population is 1 to 568° and the use of the 
automobile is imereasing. If the ratio 
should change greatly, which does not seem 
likely, for only two states’ (North and 
South Carolina) have a ratio of less than 
1 to 1000, the matter then becomes one for 
state regulation, for, as the report of the 
Carnegie Foundation has shown, we have 
enough physicians, but the difficulty lies in 
the tendency of physicians to seek the 
larger civic centers. 
With the discussion of the cultural value 
of humanistic as compared with scientific 
studies, we are not concerned. It is suffi- 
cient that in a university medical school a 
man can not properly study modern medi- 
eine without that knowledge which comes 
from a familiarity with laboratory work in 
physics, chemistry and biology. The value 
of biological training for those interested in 
practical medicine was emphasized by Hux- 
ley many years ago, and that in physies and 
chemistry has recently been emphasized by 
Friedrich Miiller® in describing, for the 
benefit of the English Commission, the 
training of the German medical student. 
During his first and second year,® the medical 
student attends lectures and does laboratory work 
in physics, chemistry, botany and zoology in the 
philosophical faculty, and he has the opportunity 
of widening his views by listening to lectures on 
philosophical or historical subjects. His teachers 
and laboratories are the same as for the students 
of the natural sciences, and this is right, because 
there is no such thing as special medical physies 
° Flexner, A., ‘‘ Medical Education in the United 
States and Canada,’’ Bull. No. 4 of the Carnegie 
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 
1910. 
TAmerican Medical Association Bulletin, 1910, 
V., 278. 
5 Miiller, F., ‘‘ Memorandum on Medical Educa- 
tion Submitted to the Royal Commission on Uni- 
versity Education in London.’’ 
°The German student seldom takes his state 
examination until the end of five and a half years’ 
work (Miiller). 
