Maech 14, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



247 



type has either come under university con- 

 trol or is carried on in separate schools 

 which have themselves adopted the ideals 

 of higher education. The teaching of law 

 as an inductive discipline under university 

 auspices has steadily discredited the didac- 

 tic methods of proprietary schools. Agri- 

 culture as an administrative art based upon 

 a scientific knowledge of physics, chemistrj' 

 and biology has had its chief development 

 in the large state institutions which central- 

 ize public higher education for a whole com- 

 monwealth. Modern medicine has become 

 so imbued with the university spirit and is 

 60 dependent upon scientific method and 

 university resources that the independent, 

 proprietarj-, practitioner-manned school is 

 virtuallj- a thing of the past. Dental edu- 

 cation is advancing steadily toward univer- 

 sity affiliation. Schools of education, busi- 

 ness, journalism, training for socal service, 

 are all apearing as university departments. 

 The American university has stood well 

 the searching tests of war. Undergraduates 

 have given good account of themselves on 

 land and sea. Alumni have put their tech- 

 nical training and administrative skill at 

 the disposal of their country, and univer- 

 sity professors have come to their own. They 

 were found in every service. Phj-sicists 

 Jiave invented submarine detectors and ear- 

 drum protectors; chemists have created 

 deadlj' explosives, noxious gases, new dyes ; 

 psychologists have tested aviators, classi- 

 4ed recruits and devised methods of voca- 

 tional selection; historians have prepared 

 patriotic propagandist material, and are at 

 the Peace Conference now fairly brimming 

 with information geographical, racial, eco- 

 nomic, political. University laboratory and 

 clinical men have been a tower of strength 

 to the medical service of the government. 

 They have discovered new germs, produced 

 sera and vaccines to protect the soldier; 

 they have worked out new methods of sur- 



.gery; they have promoted camp sanitation 

 and have improved hospital care. I shall 

 never forget that May morning last year in 

 France when General Finney — he was only 

 a major then — showed me over the Hopkins 

 Base Hospital which lay under the trees on 

 the slope of a lovely valley. "Tell the 

 people at Home," he said, "that the boys 

 will get a little better care here than they 

 would if they were in Baltimore." Could a 

 lo}'al Hopkins man say more? 



The American university, then, emerges 

 from the war with a new sense of confidence 

 and of social obligation. This does not mean 

 that the university is self-satisfied. It rec- 

 ognizes that many changes must come. En- 

 trance requirements, undergraduate stud- 

 ies, forms of organization, the status and 

 salaries of college teachers, the rivalry be- 

 tween the t3'pes known as the "mere 

 teacher" and the "research man," the 

 spirit and attitude of governing bodies, the 

 conventionality of much graduate work — 

 all these raise problems which must be dealt 

 with. Nevertheless, the essential university 

 ideals and methods have vindicated them- 

 selves. Especially is this true in the field of 

 medicine. The university laboratories in 

 charge of full-time workei^s with adequate 

 equipment and assistance, the completely 

 controlled hospitals and out-patient depart- 

 ments supplemented by community workers 

 and visiting nurses, clinical research and 

 teaching under full-time leadership, coop- 

 eration in investigation through staff con- 

 ferences, the fostering of ideals of research, 

 publication, training and social welfare, are 

 the characteristic features of modern medi- 

 cine which discards the labels and shib- 

 boleths of outworn schools and factions. 



As was natural, public health policies 

 and information about epidemics developed 

 for the most part independently of univer- 

 sities. Medical men were to be sure from 

 the outset concerned in public health pro- 



