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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 503. 



need scarcely be pointed out to this audi- 

 ence that to be a thinker is the salvation 

 of the physician. 



To the plea that the acquirement of a 

 college degree takes up too much time and 

 requires too much money, the material an- 

 swer can be given from other sources to 

 the effect that 'the men vrhom you are sur- 

 prised to find holding such important posi- 

 tions in factories, though not much over 

 thirty years, are the very men who did not 

 leave the technical college till they were 

 twenty-three or twenty-four; the graduate 

 may have been twenty-five before he donned 

 a jumper, but in five years he learned more 

 with the college training he had as a foun- 

 dation than the regular journeyman of 

 fifteen years of actual woi-k in the shop.' 

 The experience of teachers who have 

 watched the alumni agrees in that the col- 

 lege graduates get quick returns and soon 

 acquire a position of independence. 



The poor boy, therefore, need not be de- 

 terred, for if he has the spirit and energy 

 to work his way through four years, two 

 years or three years more will be but very 

 little in the final summing up. If the stu- 

 dent only knew that the purchase of the 

 best education, whether reckoned in time or 

 money, was the most economical investment, 

 in that as to the former, a thorough educa- 

 tion at first is time-saving in later years, 

 and as to the latter, the money outlay is 

 returned more quickly, in more immediate 

 M^ork and larger pay. 



There should be one educational require- 

 ment—the equivalent of that for which a 

 first-class college degree stands, whether re- 

 ceived at a high school or university. 



After entering the medical school with, 

 it is presumed, the proper educational at- 

 tainments, his career the first year should 

 be closely watched. That school has too 

 many students if it does not have enough 

 instructors in the first year to be able to 

 judge with a reasonable degree of accuracy 



of the character and moral stability of the 

 men. This is not to be taken in a prudish 

 sense or with too critical a scrutiny of hab- 

 its which are the overflow of the animal 

 spirits or the expiring exuberance of the 

 boy approaching manhood. This can be 

 said, that a student who does not play fair 

 in his exercises, Avho cheats in one demon- 

 stration or evades another, who does not 

 show manliness, frankness and truthful- 

 ness in his first-year duties, wiU not be a 

 good diagnostician. He will cheat himself ; 

 he will cheat his patient. The teachers of 

 the first year, or at least the second, should 

 know this and block the student there and 

 then. It would be a kindness. Let us 

 then agitate whether we should not have a 

 certificate of manliness, a certificate of 

 health as well as a certificate of mental 

 proficiency, before we admit students to our 

 medical schools or permit them to go be- 

 yond the first year. Let us not be decoys, 

 alluring them on to later destruction, but 

 rather be guardians, wrapping the strong 

 arm of experience about them to lead them 

 to the fitting pathway. 



Having permitted the student to pass 

 further in his pursuits, we still owe him 

 much. We must see to it that such course 

 is given him the first two years of his stu- 

 dent career that he will acquire such fond- 

 ness for the science of medicine, such rever- 

 ence for the exploration of its truths, that 

 until his dying day devotion to it will be 

 his stimulus and solace. As a corollary, 

 we must insist that medical schools secure 

 the best men in the market for these places 

 and pay them salaries commensurate with 

 their ability — good living salaries. 



It is in the first and second years of his 

 career that the foundations are laid where- 

 by the student becomes the medical thinker. 

 To quote again: "The power of thinking 

 should not be of a base and barren char- 

 acter. The thinlring should represent and 

 be concerned with a fine and rich content of 



