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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 980 



the mass of the students invariably going to 

 the medical school which offered the med- 

 ical degree in the shortest and cheapest 

 manner. In the later days of the proprie- 

 tory school, some of the faculties divided 

 their fees so that each professor who had 

 taught four hours 'a week, during five 

 months in the year, received eight or ten 

 thousand dollars for his services. 



The schools not being endowed could not 

 exist with a high standard. At first they 

 served an excellent purpose in the widely 

 separated and rapidly growing communi- 

 ties in which they were situated. It must 

 be remembered how different the conditions 

 were from those existent in the densely 

 settled countries of Europe with their well- 

 endowed institutions of learning. 



Prior to 1870, no laboratories existed ex- 

 cept those of anatomy, so that the expense 

 of maintenance of the proprietory medical 

 school could always be kept at a minimum, 

 and large sums could be distributed among 

 its beneficiaries. This was the general con- 

 dition of affairs as late as fifteen years ago. 

 Professorial positions were often obtained 

 by the ability to control a hospital service, 

 family influence or personal friendship. 

 These conditions persist, in part, to-day. 

 Many able men were thus drafted, but also 

 many mediocrities achieved thereby un- 

 earned distinction in the community. The 

 conditions existing in Harvard, one of the 

 best schools, during the regime of the two- 

 year course, showed that the student was 

 compelled to listen to as many as five suc- 

 cessive lectures on a single day between the 

 hours 'of nine and two o'clock on such di- 

 versified subjects as materia medica, chem- 

 istry, medicine, obstetrics and anatomy. 

 The last hour was assigned to anatomy, for 

 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was the only 

 one who could hold the exhausted student's 

 attention.^ 



2 ' ' Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes. ' ' 



The old-time school, now little more than 

 a memory, has been dwelt upon because of 

 the powerful influence it has had in yield- 

 ing a mass of mediocre physicians whose 

 existence can not, in any other manner, be 

 explained. Some American physicians 

 kept abreast of the world's knowledge, but 

 conditions were such that the great mass of 

 their pupils were started ill-educated on 

 their careers on account of lack of oppor- 

 tunity and lack of the inculcation of the 

 right ideals. This faulty education could 

 only be remedied in a few instances by per- 

 sonal industry or by foreign study. Emi- 

 nent professors assured their students that 

 they were receiving the best education the 

 world afforded, and yet, in 1871, Germany 

 had eighteen of its present twenty regu- 

 larly established institutes of physiology, 

 at the same time that Bowditch, fresh from 

 Ludwig's laboratory, modestly offered to 

 senior medical students "opportunities for 

 original investigations in the laboratory." 

 It was also in 1871 that Eliot introduced a 

 graded three-year course at the Harvard 

 Medical School. This was symptomatic of 

 the broader cultural development of a pro- 

 vincial people which followed the struggles 

 of the civil war, and yet it is only within 

 the last ten years that laboratories, other 

 than those of anatomy and gross pathology, 

 have become acknowledged essentials of 

 medical schools of the highest class. It is 

 due to this fact that the discipline in anat- 

 omy was always strong and rigorous. The 

 controlling influence over the anatomical 

 department was the professor of surgery 

 who had advanced directly through that 

 path, and the younger men in charge of 

 the dissections were practising surgeons 

 who hoped to become skillful through exact 

 anatomical knowledge. All emphasis was 

 laid upon practical application, and a huge 

 mass of memorized details were crowded 

 into the brain of the submissive student. 



