Mat 19, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



701 



practitioner and consultant? Certain of 

 the luxuries of life the professor may be 

 obliged to eschew, but there are other priv- 

 ileges which will be his that no money can 

 buy. 



It is true that the salary of the university 

 professor has not, in general, advanced with 

 the incomes of those about him, or with the 

 general scale of living; and it is, I believe, 

 folly to attempt to put the directorship of 

 clinical departments on a university basis at 

 salaries such as have been in the past offered 

 to the professors in the strictly scientific 

 departments. Nevertheless, no one can ex- 

 pect such salaries to be large as compared 

 with the income of successful men in pri- 

 vate practise. It should, moreover, be re- 

 membered that with the successful consult- 

 ant, for instance, nearly one half of his 

 gross income is often absorbed by the legiti- 

 mate expenses of his practise. The burden 

 of these expenses is lifted from the shoul- 

 ders of the university professor whose fixed 

 income represents a revenue of nearly twice 

 that size with the consultant. 



But the salaries of university professors, 

 whether in clinical or scientific branches, 

 should be materially — very materially — 

 larger than they have been in the past, if 

 these men are not expected by outside activ- 

 ities to add to their incomes. I can, how- 

 ever, see no reason why the salary of a pro- 

 fessor of medicine or surgery should be 

 larger than that of a professor in a so-called 

 scientific branch. In business circles it is 

 true that the salary depends purely upon 

 the immediate market value, so to speak, of 

 the individual; that he who can in the 

 world of affairs earn but a modest sum is 

 able to demand a far smaller salary than a 

 man with larger practical earning capacity. 

 The physiologist who devotes himself single- 

 heartedly to his teaching and his researches 

 might, if thrown on the world to gain his 

 living, have but a relatively small earning 



capacity; the clinician, if he have attained 

 a popular reputation, may, on the other 

 hand, be in a position to make a consider- 

 able revenue. 



Universities often obtain the undivided 

 services, let us say of the professor of physi- 

 ology, for an amount which was once but 

 is not to-day a proper living salary for a 

 man whose abilities and contributions to sci- 

 ence entitle him to a comfortable and prom- 

 inent position in the community ; that posi- 

 tion which it is to the advantage of the uni- 

 versity that he should occupy. And such 

 professors in many institutions sacrifice 

 much to the cause of science. 



This seems to me fundamentally wrong. 

 These distinctions must eventually be re- 

 moved, unless our universities are to re- 

 main as short-sighted as our national gov- 

 ernment and bring it about that our pro- 

 fessorships, like our diplomatic posts, shall 

 come to be situations which only men of 

 independent means can fill. 



But to return to the question of the pro- 

 fessorships in the clinical branches. If the 

 salary be adequate, there should always be 

 efficient men whose ambition will be to 

 occupy chairs of medicine and surgery even 

 though they realize fuUy that the chances 

 of the acquisition of a large income are 

 small. 



Tihe objection that is so commonly raised 

 as to the injustice and unwisdom of any 

 understanding or agreement by which the 

 directors of the departments of medicine 

 and surgery should abstain from private 

 consulting practise is orte which, as a 

 teacher and practitioner, has interested me 

 greatly. As has been indicated before, it 

 is not easy to see how the director of a mod- 

 ern university clinic, or the chief of a serv- 

 ice in a large hospital organized on a similar 

 basis, can give any essential part of his time 

 to outside consultations. According to the 

 tastes and character of the man, he will 



