May 22, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



805 



practise become 'as petrified as his ar- 

 teries. ' He is incapable of constant study, 

 of adding tO his knowledge or of keeping 

 up with the feverish strides of medicine. 

 He ought then to be relieved of his cares 

 and his duties. If no rule exists, he is 

 allowed to continue his inefficient or even 

 disastrous work, or by some harsh sugges- 

 tion is compelled to give place to another 

 more competent man. A rule is a condi- 

 tion accepted when he is appointed, and 

 just as in the army and navy, when an 

 officer reaches 64 or 62 years of age he 

 is retired on reduced pay, and because it 

 is a rule he does not feel hurt or humili- 

 ated; so in a college or a hospital, when 

 time and the rule brings us to the period 

 when we must gracefully retire, no one's 

 reputation is injured or his feelings lacer- 

 ated. 



I have ascertained that the following 

 rules are now in force in some of the larger 

 institutions : 



At Harvard, the age when a professor 

 may request to be retired is 60, provided 

 he has been in the service of the university 

 for 20 years, with a reduced pay ranging 

 from one third to two thirds of his salary. ' 

 At 66 he may be retired by the president 

 and fellows partly or wholly. The details 

 of the plan are admirably arranged. 



At Chicago, while no plan is yet in 

 force, largely, I presume, because of its 

 recent establishment on the present basis, 

 such a plan will soon be- made operative. 



At Columbia the retiring age, after 15 

 years of service, is 65, either at the request 

 of the professor or upon motion of the 

 trustees, and on half pay. 



At Yale the retiring age is 65, after 25 

 years of service, and on half pay, but the 

 retirement is not compulsory. It will 

 probably be made compulsory before long. 



At Cornell the retiring age is 70, but 

 the pension fund will not be available until 



1914. The retiring pension will then be 

 $1,500. 



At the University of Pennsylvania and 

 at Johns Hopkins no retiring age is fixed. 



The only hospitals I know of in which 

 a retiring age is fixed are the Massachu- 

 setts General Hospital and the Boston City- 

 Hospital. At the former the compulsory 

 retiring age of the surgeons is 63, and of 

 the physicians 65. At the Boston City 

 Hospital the visiting surgeons are retired 

 at 65, but the physicians, gynecologists-. 

 and all the other medical officers continvie 

 in service indefinitely — a very curious 

 anomaly. 



These varying but in the main identical 

 provisions, when any exist, show the trend 

 of thought and practise. They generally 

 apply to the medical department, except 

 that in case a professor is engaged in the 

 practise of his profession and so has a 

 private income, the provision for continu- 

 ing a portion of his salary does not apply. 

 This is right and fair. Of course, in all 

 hospitals where there are no salaries, no 

 provision as to reduced salary would ob- 

 tain. 



The point I wish to emphasize is, how- 

 ever, that the age limit (which in my 

 opinion should be 65) should be compul- 

 sory and so not be invidious in any given 

 case. It will be objected that not a few 

 men are in full intellectual and physical 

 vigor at 65, and it will be a detriment to 

 the institution to lose their services when 

 their ripe experience and admirable teach- 

 ing are most desirable. I admit it. But 

 for every one siach case of harm done by- 

 compelling a man to stop, there are a score 

 of instances of men who are doing vast 

 injury by their inefficiency. Moreover, in 

 the very few cases in which it might be 

 allowable, as boards of trustees make rules 

 they can unmake them, and in special eases 

 they could pay a graceful compliment and 



