December 30, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



943 



logical department. During the first six 

 months of this period I demonstrated these 

 specimens to small groups of students. 

 Then I discovered that what the student 

 saw in the preparation was for the most 

 part seen in a mimicry way and because 

 the particular features were pointed out. 

 Without inquiring, I had no assurance that 

 those important features were seen or 

 understood, notwithstanding my demon- 

 stration. Since then the labeled museum 

 specimens have been demonstrated by the 

 students to the instructing force and the 

 student searches independently for the 

 alterations illustrated by the prepara- 

 tion. What he fails to recognize among 

 the important characteristics can be 

 pointed out just as well by this plan as the 

 other and certainly his attitude in the 

 examination of the museum preparations 

 has been changed. We are all prone at 

 times to forget and pay so much attention 

 to teaching that no opportunity remains 

 for the exercise of such indiscrete curiosity 

 referred to as being a handicapping pos- 

 session. The result of this is that the one 

 teaching has no proper appreciation of 

 what the student is learning or has learned 

 and when occasion demands that in some 

 •way the student shall show what he or she 

 has gained, amazement on the part of the 

 instructor and sometimes other feelings re- 

 sult from seeing how little of real value 

 has been conferred. 



Other factors which have discouraged 

 enthusiasm over your present speaker's 

 methods of instruction are, the great de- 

 mand for earefullj^ systematized informa- 

 tion suitable for written examinations and 

 my reluctance to furnish such didactic in- 

 struction. Although I recognize the neces- 

 sity you are all under of pa,ssing examina- 

 tions (most of them written examinations) 

 during your undergi-aduate woric, for 

 graduation, for hospital positions and for 



licensure, necessities which I regret and do 

 not believe should exist as now consti- 

 tuted, I have found it very difficult to be- 

 come deeply interested in any examina- 

 tion which is not a practical test of 

 efficiency. I am unwilling to accept what 

 a student writes in an examination as an 

 equivalent for what he or she can do when 

 confronted with the conditions discussed 

 in written answers. This view is only a 

 detail of a larger belief and ideal which I 

 am confident we have in common, that a 

 medical school should be a place where 

 medicine is practised by students instead 

 of a place where students prepare to prac- 

 tise ; and in subscribing to this as a worthy 

 ideal you in all justice will admit that an 

 absence of enthusiasm on my part over 

 your preparation for written examinations 

 is not entirely inconsistent and you will 

 perceive the reasons for my interest and 

 activity in actual work by the student 

 rather than in didactic instruction. 



The statement just made that a medical 

 school should be a place where students 

 practise medicine sounds a little trite, but 

 the discussions of this truth in one way 

 and another in recent years have formed 

 in this countiy the nucleus for a literature 

 on medical education where little of the 

 sort previously existed. We are all, stu- 

 dent body and faculty, keenly alive to the 

 great need of this school for a hospital in 

 which to teach medicine. 



Ton no doubt know of the activity awak- 

 ened among the state boards of examiners 

 for licensure by the council of medical edu- 

 cation of the American iledical Associar 

 tion, the chairmanship of which we are 

 honored by having Professor Bevan oc- 

 cupJ^ One of the results to which this ac- 

 tivity has in some measure contributed is 

 the introduction by the medical board of 

 Minnesota of practical examinations for 

 the license to practise medicine in that 



