538 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 930 



just to condition the student in anatomy. 

 If you are satisfied that the teaching is 

 good and thorough in the other school, you 

 can overlook differences of this kind. Of 

 course if some important subject has been 

 omitted on account of difference of curric- 

 ulum, it must be made up. On the whole, 

 the good student should slip in easily on his 

 record. 



Allow me to introduce here a paragraph 

 on the general subject of migration of good 

 students. I believe it should be encouraged. 

 If we could implant the idea that the goal 

 of the student's desire should be thorough 

 knowledge of anatomy, of physiology, of 

 medicine, and not the possession of a cer- 

 tain piece of sheepskin, we should be on the 

 way to better things. And if to the student 

 specially interested in physiology I should 

 say: "Professor Blank is one of our best 

 physiologists; why don't you take a year 

 with him ? " I should be giving scope to that 

 student's interest and broadening my sci- 

 ence at the same time. If we proceeded in 

 this way, the time might come when stu- 

 dents would select men instead of schools. 

 And when that time comes, a professorship 

 will be worth working for and worth work- 

 ing to keep, having been attained. When 

 those good days arrive, we shall not find it 

 so difficult, perhaps, to find men willing to 

 enter the laboratory sciences as a career. 

 But whether these good results follow or 

 not, I believe that the migration of students 

 should be encouraged from the standpoint 

 of breadth of culture and training. And 

 our purely American whoop-it-up notion of 

 "college spirit" and school loyalty should 

 be somewhat abated in favor of a better 

 ideal. 



Taking up the second class of migrating 

 students, the poor students from good 

 schools, we have our most difSeult propo- 

 sition. When a man with a poor record 

 comes from Washington University or 



Michigan or Missouri, I have chills. And 

 when he tells me he comes because of our 

 superior facilities, I have an internal 

 spasm. Such a man may have a ' ' good con- 

 stitution. " He may "recover," but the 

 prognosis should be ' ' guarded. ' ' The coun- 

 cil of our school has, therefore, found it 

 necessary to decline to receive such stu- 

 dents into our senior class. The reason is 

 based on my first principle enunciated 

 above. We must know the student, and we 

 can not do that in the senior year. 



A second provision is that much of the 

 credit allowed is contingent. For example, 

 histology may be credited, provided the 

 student makes a good grade in pathology; 

 or credit in dissection may be made con- 

 tingent on topographical anatomy. We be- 

 lieve this arrangement is logical, and it cer- 

 tainly has a good effect on the student. 



If the student has a failure from his 

 former school, he is obliged to take further 

 woi-k in that subject. But we have no hard 

 and fast rule about repeating laboratory 

 courses. Too much repetition of elemen- 

 tary work is discouraging. Short special 

 courses are better ; and we have frequently 

 organized such courses, primarily for the 

 third class of migrating students, but to the 

 great advantage also of the second class. 



Even if the student is to be classed as a 

 junior, we always hold him for one inten- 

 sive laboratory course, commonly topo- 

 graphical anatomy (cross sections), which 

 is a hobby of ours and on which we have 

 a taskmaster not to be evaded, tricked or 

 cajoled. 



We find our summer school of great 

 value in whipping delinquents into line. 

 This is true both of our own backward stu- 

 dents and of those who come from other 

 colleges. 



Taken all in all, the second class of mi- 

 grants are not altogether a discouraging 

 body of men. Frequently they see the 



