Mabch 17, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



373 



reputation while the ability of a mediocre 

 man to get articles into popular weeklies or 

 into the newspaper may lead to inclusion 

 in "Who's Who." In order, however, to 

 get some measure of success I have tabu- 

 lated (Table VI.) the percentage of those 



TABLE VI 



Societies and Distinctions 



(J. H. U. Graduates, 1897-1906) 



belonging to various special groups who 

 have been made members of special scien- 

 tific medical societies, of those who have 

 been included in "Who's Who," and in 

 "American Men of Science," with a spe- 

 cial column for those starred as among the 

 first 1,000 men of science. Since the last 

 edition of "American Men of Science" was 

 published in 1910 the scientific standing of 

 the members of the later classes to graduate 

 is not up-to-date. For the sake of compari- 

 son I have also shown the percentage of 

 each group who are fellows of the American 

 Medical Association and I have included 



a special column to show the Fellows of the 

 American College of Surgeons. 



The graduates who have taken up a 

 career in science show the greatest per- 

 centage of those included in "Who's Who" 

 (52.5 per cent.) as well as in "American 

 Men of Science" (75 per cent.) and in the 

 starred list (30 per cent.). The internists 

 come next (28.6 per cent, in "Who's 

 Who") while relatively few of the sur- 

 geons are thus distinguished (6 per cent.). 

 The surgeons represent, on the whole, the 

 strong students with a practical rather than 

 a scientific attitude of mind, while the in- 

 ternists represent a group of strong men 

 with both "practical" and scientific lean- 

 ing. Taking the whole group of 415 indi- 

 viduals now engaged in medicine we find 

 10.4 per cent, included in "Who's Who," 

 13.3 per cent, among "American Men of 

 Science" and 3.4 per cent, among the 

 starred individuals. 



For the sake of comparison the follow- 

 ing rough estimate" may be of interest : 



3 These estimates, necessarily rough, are based 

 on the following data. The population of the 

 country is taken as 100,000,000. The number of 

 males of a given age is based on the ratios given 

 in the last United States census reports. The 

 number of college graduates is based on the ra- 

 tio between academic and medical students dur- 

 ing the last quarter of the nineteenth century and 

 on the assumption that the ratio between the 

 number of living individuals with the M.D. and 

 of those with the bachelor's degree corresponds 

 with this ratio but with somewhat fewer students 

 finishing the academic than the medical course. 

 This gives as a rough estimate 500,000 college 

 graduates, a number probably too high if gradu- 

 ates of regular college courses of the old type are 

 alone counted, too low if the graduates of all sorts 

 of technical courses leading to the bachelor's de- 

 gree are counted. It is arbitrarily assumed that 

 of the 500,000 graduates, 350,000 are men and the 

 ratios used in estimating the general male popu- 

 lation of a given age are used in determining the 

 number of college graduates of a given age, the 

 age of twenty-two being taken as the minimum 



