334 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 611. 



information on certain subjects as we have 

 now. During the last three or four years 

 we have been very busy in rewriting all of 

 our older courses. These new courses will 

 cover the subjects more completely than 

 the older ones did, and there will be a 

 larger number of subjects than were in- 

 cluded in the former courses. Inasmuch 

 as the new courses will meet the demands 

 of our students better than the old ones 

 did, we expect that there will be a . great 

 increase in the number of students finish- 

 ing such courses, or, at any rate, in the 

 number of students studying a part or all 

 of the courses. J. J. Clark. 



THE PRESENT NEEDS OF THE HARVARD 

 MEDICAL SCHOOLS 



Every one who has visited the new 

 buildings on Longwood Avenue must feel 

 that, so far as spacious and well-lighted 

 laboratories are concerned, the Harvard 

 Medical School has all the laboratory space 

 which it will require for many years to 

 come. What it needs now, so far as these 

 laboratory buildings are concerned, is suf- 

 ficient endowment to equip, man and run 

 them in a manner commensurate with the 

 laboratory opportunities afforded. The 

 school has at the present time but a small 

 endowment fund. A much larger one is 

 necessary, because it is becoming more and 

 more difficult every year to induce capable 

 men to enter the laboratory branches of 

 medicine. This failure to take up labora- 

 tory work as a profession is due chiefly to 

 the salaries, which, in consequence of the 

 greatly increased cost of living and the 

 greater returns offered by clinical branches 

 of medicine or by business, have become 

 entirely inadequate. No man can live in a 

 manner becoming the position on the sal- 

 aries now paid in the laboratory depart- 

 ments. 



^ Read before the Harvard Medical Alumni Asso- 

 ciation at its annual meeting, June 26, 1906. 



The laboratory departments have, how- 

 ever, this advantage over the clinical de- 

 partments. They have the laboratories and 

 so can call the ablest men from any part 

 of the world to work and teach in them. 

 There is nothing to prevent these depart- 

 ments from attaining the highest rank ex- 

 cept a lack of endowment sufficient to at- 

 tract the best men and to provide funds for 

 necessary expenses. With this provision 

 the best results, both as regards the educa- 

 tion of students who are to practise in the 

 community, as regards men trained to be- 

 come the medical teachers of the future, 

 and as regards advancing medical knowl- 

 edge and investigation, can be produced^ 



Much as adequate endowment for the 

 laboratory departments is needed, however, 

 lack of endowment for these de-partments 

 is not the greatest need of the school at the 

 present time. First-class laboratory depart- 

 ments alone will never make a great med- 

 ical school. The first function of a medical 

 school is to turn out thoroughly trained 

 practitioners of medicine, and to do that 

 the clinical departments must have oppor- 

 tunities equal to or even greater than the 

 laboratory departments. This is not the 

 case at present. The clinical teachers labor 

 under great disadvantages, owing to the 

 fact that the medical school does not have 

 a hospital of its own and with possibly one 

 exception has no power of appointment of 

 clinical men in a hospital. Consequently 

 the clinical instructors have to do their 

 teaching in the various hospitals of Boston, 

 which all are under different boards of 

 management. These boards are entirely 

 independent of the school and some of them 

 are little inclined to cooperate with it. The 

 resulting difficulties, which most of the clin- 

 ical teachers have to contend with, are 

 short terms of hospital service ; variability 

 in the time of year of hospital services, 

 especially for the younger men; and the 

 inability of the heads of departments to 



