December 6, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



765 



ical medicine. This has become an axiom 

 in modern medical instruction. But a 

 further duty is incumbent on the univer- 

 sity hospital of to-day. It should be so 

 conducted and controlled as to serve as a 

 model for all that is essential and T\rorthy 

 in the institutional care of the sick. Only 

 in such a hospital v?ith its numerous in- 

 ternes and assistants and its trained staff 

 can satisfactory control be made of new 

 methods of treatment and such treatments 

 standardized for use of others. The eleva- 

 tion of nursing standards, the thorough- 

 ness of ease study and care that inevitably 

 follow the well-trained student into the hos- 

 pital and ward are the great boon of a uni- 

 versity hospital. All this involves an effort 

 at the best in research, in training, and in 

 character building. 



The funds of a private institution are 

 limited. It can call on no legislature for 

 help if it has undertaken more than it can 

 carry out. It must be sufficient unto itself. 

 This means limitation. It can never cover 

 the whole range of knowledge, nor the 

 whole range of practical achievement. 

 It can not make its campus coextensive 

 with the state. It can not provide for 

 multitudes of students, dependent on fees, 

 unless it makes these fees so high as to be 

 prohibitive to self-helping men and women. 

 To this class belongs the vast majority of 

 the students we in the west find worth 

 while. 



But the private institution has its own ad- 

 vantages. It has freedom of development. 

 It is dependent on no outside influence for 

 its direction. It can undertake what it deems 

 best worth doing. It can insist on the highest 

 standards. It is above all temptation to 

 grant university titles or degrees to the 

 products of four years of frivolity, dissipa- 

 tion and sham. Above all, it has the privi- 

 lege as well as the duty of making its pro- 

 fessional courses of such a character that 



it can be sure that every graduate is really 

 a university man. It is not claimed that 

 the private university has any monopoly of 

 high standards or of efficient practise. It 

 claims only that no other type of institu- 

 tion has the right to loftier ideals. In pro- 

 portion as it is true to its opportunity its 

 aims should be the highest within its range 

 of possibilities. 



No institution can do better than its 

 best. If it falls short of this, it has no ade- 

 quate reason for being. And Stanford 

 University means to justify herself. She 

 is pledged to justify herself in the direc- 

 tion of medical instruction. And after all, 

 in the multiplicity of medical schools in- 

 struction in medicine is nowhere overdone. 

 The profession of physician is overcrowded 

 because its men are undertrained. It is a 

 very true expression that there is always 

 " room at the top." In medicine as else- 

 where in life the crowd is around the bot- 

 tom of the ladder. 



A young medical student in New York, 

 it is said, committed suicide not long ago, 

 leaving behind him his word: "I die be- 

 cause there is room for no more doctors. ' ' 

 Room for no more doctors just now when 

 in the history of the world it is most worth 

 while to be a doctor ! Now when the prog- 

 ress of the sciences and arts which deal with 

 sickness and health have given the intelli- 

 gent and honest doctor a power no one else 

 has ever had before over the forces of sin 

 and death! 



Another medical student was asked how 

 he dared to return to take so much time to 

 prepare for a profession already so over- 

 crowded. " I propose to practise medi- 

 cine," he said, " those in the crowd must 

 look out for themselves." 



Frederick Denison Maurice once said: 

 "Make your system of education such that 

 a great man may be formed by it, and there 



