836 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. ! 



them welcome the careful study of methods 

 and standards by the state universities, 

 since their own conditions often do not 

 permit them to engage extensively in the 

 investigation and solution of complicated 

 educational problems. 



It would be unfortunate for the common- 

 wealth, however, if the entire energies of 

 any college in its state university were ex- 

 pended upon the establishment of stand- 

 ards for proper training, and upon the ap- 

 plication of those standards to a limited 

 number of students. The state must look 

 to the college for direction in those tech- 

 nical and professional matters that are en- 

 tering more and more every year into the 

 organization and development of our com- 

 plex civilization. Municipal and state offi- 

 cers meet problems that they can not possi- 

 bly solve without the advice and assistance 

 of expert workers in various lines. There 

 is a well-marked tendency to seek such con- 

 sulting experts within the limits of the state 

 university faculty; and where formerly 

 men of no connection with the state or 

 responsibility for the problem other than 

 that indicated in the acceptance of a fee 

 for a professional opinion, were summoned 

 from a distance to solve the educational 

 or engineering or hygienic problems of the 

 community, to-day, states are looking for 

 their help in determining the form of legis- 

 lation, the principles of education or or- 

 ganization, and the methods of applied sci- 

 ence in every field, to the universities that 

 have been founded and developed at public 

 expense. Such a tendency is not only 

 natural .but inevitable. There should be 

 nowhere better trained and better informed 

 men in any field than those who are called 

 to serve the highest educational institution 

 of the state in a particiilar line of work. 

 There are nowhere men freer from bias, 

 men more untrammeled by private influ- 



ence or better calculated to resist insidious 

 and insistent pressure, or men more devoid 

 of other interests and more thoroughly de- 

 voted to the public welfare than those who 

 have taken upon themselves the duties of 

 teaching in the public university. 



It is hardly necessary to take time to 

 apply this principle in detail to the work 

 of the medical college. Trained experts 

 are nowhere more seriously needed and un- 

 fortunately also more difficult to secure 

 than in the field of public health with its 

 manifold relations to municipal sanitation 

 and individual and community hygiene. 

 Here it is that the research man justly 

 maintains his preeminent position. If the 

 water supply of a great city is contami- 

 nated, and the health of the entire com- 

 munity is threatened, it is the bacteriol- 

 ogist to whom municipal authorities rightly 

 turn for information as to the precise 

 source of the difficulty and advice as to the 

 best methods of correcting it. If the ex- 

 ploitation of the public by unscrupulous 

 purveyors of adulterated foods is to be 

 prevented, a campaign must be based on 

 the definite evidence which is furnished in 

 the laboratory of the chemist. The public 

 can not be protected unless it can assemble 

 on its side a force of consulting experts and 

 professional investigators whose training 

 is broad enough and whose standing is high 

 enough to enable them to compete success- 

 fully with the paid experts who can be sum- 

 moned by great corporations and important 

 interests and who by their partial exposi- 

 tion of the truth becloud the issue and pro- 

 tect the wrongdoer at the expense of the 

 whole people. The state must have and 

 must use the expert stafE of its medical 

 school in the service of the public. 



There is a third function of the state 

 professional school which I consider to be 

 equally important, although less generally 



