946 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 835 



ing the latter part of this traditional 

 method when the instruction during the 

 first two years was transferred to the uni- 

 versity in 1901. One was the lack of time 

 in the crowded schedule of the last two 

 years of medicine; another, that in all the 

 other branches taught in the last two years 

 there is of necessity a great deal of atten- 

 tion paid to the details of these regional 

 lesions. The weightiest reason was the 

 necessity, had traditional customs been 

 followed, of making the instruction largely 

 didactic. 



As students you are familiar with Course 

 VI.-12.^ You know the large part your 

 labors have played in the completion of the 

 records of post-mortem examinations. 

 Since the summer of 1901 when this course 

 was begun, and beginning gradually, the 

 records of over 1,000 post-mortem exami- 

 nations have been completed in the regular 

 class work. As now conducted students 

 perform all of this work under supervision 

 and during the last year or two some of 

 the student assistants have acquired suiS- 

 cient proficiency to be entrusted with the 

 post-mortem examinations. The work of 

 the class has been mainly the histological 

 and bacteriological examinations. I have 

 not attempted to estimate how many iso- 

 lated anatomical examples of disease from 

 operations and sources other than the post- 

 mortem examinations included in our reg- 

 ular series have been examined by students 

 in this course; their number would be a 

 considerable one, certainly several hun- 

 dred. A great deal of material siich as 

 drifts into every pathological laboratory 

 has not been utilized in this manner be- 



' This course in pathology is taken by students 

 during the last two years of medicine and Rush 

 Medical College is no exception to other medical 

 schools located in large cities; many students with 

 part of their training in the universities of 

 smaller places complete their medical studies 

 where the clinical material is more abundant. 



cause of its poor teaching value; it has 

 been insufficient in amount, the clinical 

 facts have been meager and the aim has 

 been to fto more than simply diagnose the 

 lesion. 



Eight hundred and thirty-three stu- 

 dents have taken the course which has now 

 been running 33 quarters* not counting the 

 one just completed. The average number 

 of students per quarter has been 2^\. the 

 average number of post-mortem examina- 

 tions attended by each class, as a whole, 

 16f, altogether 548 during the nine years, 

 about half of the number added to the files 

 of the laboratory during that time. The 

 remaining half of the post-mortem exami- 

 nations were attended very largely by por- 

 tions of the class, sometimes a few, some- 

 times nearly the entire class. All of the 

 important organs are usually brought to 

 the laboratory, those with the important 

 lesions always when possible. There are 

 many other details of the work of this 

 class interesting from the standpoint of 

 teaching, but time requires me to limit 

 myself to the more important results. In 

 connection with the work students have 

 made 450 reports to the class. Some of 

 these reports have been but a few brief re- 

 marks in connection with a demonstration 

 of microscopic preparations, gross lesions 

 or the results of bacteriological examina- 

 tions. On the other hand, a small portion 

 of the reports or the work in connection 

 with them have resulted in published ac- 

 counts. In the Transactions of the Chi- 

 cago Pathological Society there are be- 

 tween fifty and sixty articles contributed 

 by undergraduates of this school; many of 

 these are the result of work begun in this 

 class. Others, as you know, have resulted 

 from special work under the direction of 



* The quarterly system, four periods of ten to 

 eleven weeks each year, is used at Rush Medical 

 College. 



