Januaey 28, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



129 



treatment of the poor is crowded with the 

 rich, often to the practical exclusion of 

 those for whose benefit the charity was 

 intended. 



Let us see what the condition of the 

 medical man in this country is to-day. In 

 order to enter a good medical school, he 

 must have a better preliminary education 

 than is demanded for admission to any 

 other professional school. Having gained 

 admission, he must spend more money and 

 take more time in order to gain his degree 

 than any other profession demands. Then 

 the young man with his degree finds it 

 highly advantageous to take one or more 

 years of hospital work for which he re- 

 ceives no financial remuneration. Before 

 he can offer his services to the public he 

 must pass a state examination which is 

 more rigid than that demanded of any other 

 profession. Finally, having hung out his 

 sign, he walks to his dispensary or hospital, 

 where he offers his dearly bought skill and 

 experience to the deserving poor, many of 

 whom ride to the same place in costly motor 

 cars. He serves without recompense upon 

 boards of health, and does his best to pre- 

 vent disease upon the existence of which 

 his bread and butter depend. He writes 

 papers and gives lectures upon sanitation, 

 and the more his advice is accepted and 

 followed, the smaller is the number of his 

 paying patients. When he is treating a 

 case of any infectious disease the physi- 

 cian, in preventing the spread of the infec- 

 tion, is rendering a service to the public, 

 which as a rule is unrecognized and sel- 

 dom rewarded. In legislative halls he is 

 crowded aside by the followers of pseudo- 

 medicine. If his name gets into the daily 

 papers favorably in connection with any 

 case under his charge, his professional 

 brethren scold, while the bold advertise- 

 ment of the nostrum vender, the so-called 

 specialist and the abortionist stare at him 



from the pages of both the secular and 

 religious press. He lectures on the pre- 

 vention and eradication of tuberculosis, 

 telling how people should live in order to 

 prevent this disease. He says that out- 

 door life, good, wholesome food and sani- 

 tary surroundings are the essentials, and 

 he helps to make up the millions annually 

 required on account of the postal defi- 

 ciency, while the government mail carries 

 to the remotest corners of the county the 

 lying promises of so-called consumption 

 cures. He attempts to show how in- 

 temperance saps the health of body and 

 mind and fills our asylums, while the 

 most deadly forms of alcohol are freely 

 sold at exorbitant prices under the 

 delusive names of stomach bitters, celery 

 compound, peruna, etc. He shows the 

 deteriorating effect of venereal disease. He 

 tells that a large per cent, of his gynecolog- 

 ical operations results from this cause, 

 while the "restorer of lost manhood" 

 sprinkles the pages of the Sunday news- 

 paper with his nauseating ' ' ads. ' ' He pays 

 a high duty on the imported microscope 

 with which he watches the agglutination of 

 typhoid bacilli in his early recognition of 

 the disease, preparatory to recommending 

 measures that may avert the epidemic, 

 while the sugar trust bribes the custom 

 inspector and the corporation accumulates 

 its millions. He pays a double price for 

 the knife with which he removes the can- 

 cerous breast of the poor woman, because 

 the steel trust must declare a dividend. 



Twenty years ago there were many med- 

 ical schools in this country, owned and con- 

 trolled by their faculties, to the members 

 of which there came either directly or in- 

 directly each year a fair financial return 

 on the investment. It did not cost much 

 to inaugurate and maintain a medical 

 school at that time. A suitable building 

 with one or two large lecture rooms, a gar- 



