956 
analysis? Simply this, that a school hold- 
ing this point of view is either lax in its 
entrance requirements or at fault in its 
methods of instruction; otherwise it would 
not fear the failure of its graduates to se- 
cure interneships. If this is true it has 
under the circumstances but one duty: as 
an educational institution, it must itself 
provide the fifth year of hospital work for 
its lame students. This is the point of view 
which is gradually forcing itself upon the 
school of the better grade, which, now that 
the pioneer stage of medical education is 
past, desires to itself complete the student’s 
preparation, instead of turning him “‘over 
to others during this most valuable and 
important part of his preparatory work.’’*+ 
The proposition of Professor Peterson, of 
Michigan, that the council on medical edu- 
cation of the American Medical Association 
should conduct an inspection and classifica- 
tion of hospitals on the same basis as the 
inspection of medical schools is most timely. 
The data thus obtained would do much to 
clarify the situation, and, doubtless, mutual 
agreements between certain schools and cer- 
tain hospitals of the same class could be 
reached as to the distribution of graduates 
for interne service. Such a systematization 
would allow school and hospital alike to 
see their defects and to so rearrange their 
work as properly to care for the greatest 
number of properly prepared men. Only 
through the hospital year can we give the 
best type of practitioners to a most de- 
serving but too confiding public; but to 
bring about the consummation of this ideal 
every university school and every com- 
munity possessing a modern hospital must 
do its share. 
These general remarks cover, in my 
opinion, the cardinal principles which 
See Peterson, R., ‘‘The Relation of the Med- 
ical School to the Interne or Hospital Year,’’ 
Jour. Am. Med. Asso., LVIII., p. 723, 1912. 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Von. XXXV. No. 912 
should guide the modern medical school. 
They can not, perhaps, in every community 
be enforced at once in their entirety, and 
doubtless now and then their adoption may 
be followed by backsliding, but no one who 
has given the subject serious thought can 
doubt that the future of medical education 
in this country depends on (1) the univer- 
sity school with a high entrance require- 
ment, (2) instruction, in both laboratory 
and clinical branches, based on the method 
of observation and experiment, (3) clinical 
instruction in a hospital which the univer- 
sity owns or controls, (4) the principle of 
a fifth year of hospital instruction and (5) 
the fostering of the spirit of research. 
And now finally let me congratulate 
Syracuse University on the high ideals 
it has set for itself in the conduct of its 
medical school. Your course has been 
watched by all who are interested in med- 
ical education. Your responsibility is 
greater than perhaps you realize; there are 
those praying for you to continue your 
present progressive system, others hoping 
you may fail. Each group desires to point 
to you as an object lesson. I have full con- 
fidence, however, that the wise trustees of 
your university, supported and encouraged 
by your alumni and the physicians of Syra- 
cuse and its surrounding territory, will not 
only maintain the present high standards, 
but will inaugurate still greater advances 
and thus ensure for the practitioner of 
medicine in this community the ‘‘prepared 
mind’’ of Pasteur’s adage. 
R. M. PEARCE 
THE WORK OF COLONEL GORGAS 
Tue degree of doctor of laws was conferred 
on Colonel W. A. Gorgas by the Johns Hop- 
kins University on June 11. In presenting 
him for the degree Dr. William H. Welch 
said: 
