838 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 361. 



students was between 70 and 80. The an- 

 nual attendance then fell to an average of 

 between 30 and 40 for the four decades from 

 1850 to 1890. Since 1895 it has for the first 

 time exceeded 100. Up to 1894 the largest 

 class was that of 1822, which numbered 92, 

 the largest number of graduates in any year 

 up to 1897 being 36 in 1829. Of the 1,221 

 graduates of the medical department up to 

 and including 1900, 27.6 per cent, were also 

 college graduates, and of these three-fourths 

 were graduates of Yale College or the Shef- 

 field Scientific School. The highest ratio 

 of college graduates (40.6 per cent.) was in 

 the decade 1881 to 1890, when the total 

 number of graduates was smallest. 



It is pleasant to recall that the medical 

 department, established through the efforts 

 of the first President Dwight, entered upon 

 a second era of prosperity in the adminis- 

 tration of the second President Dwight, who 

 in his annual reports has forcibly presented 

 the needs and the possibilities of this first 

 offspring of the College . 



The standards of the Yale Medical School 

 have always been kept high in comparison 

 with those prevailing at the time, and at cer- 

 tain periods the School has taken the lead 

 in movements to improve medical education, 

 which from about the end of the third to 

 the middle of the eighth decades of the 

 past century was in a woeful plight in 

 America. 



At the beginning the course of medical 

 lectures here extended through six months, 

 a longer period than obtained at the time 

 in any other medical school in this country. 



The first organized effort to raise the 

 standard of requirements for medical edu- 

 cation in the United States was made by a 

 Convention of Delegates from Medical Soci- 

 eties and Medical Schools which met in 

 Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1827. The 

 Yale Medical School faithfully conformed 

 to the recommendations of this convention, 

 and went to the trouble of securing in 1829 



from the Legislature an amendment of its 

 charter whereby the period of medical study 

 was increased to four years for all who were 

 not college graduates, and to three for grad- 

 uates, and knowledge of Latin and of nat- 

 ural philosophy was required for matricula- 

 tion. The Medical College soon found itself 

 standing almost alone, ' faithful among the 

 faithless,' and, in order to preserve its own 

 existence, it was compelled after three years 

 to return to the old order as regards the 

 length of the period of medical study, al- 

 though it retained the preliminary require- 

 ments, which, however, afterwards became 

 inoperative, as they were so far above the 

 demands of other colleges. 



The inadequacy of the system of didactic 

 lectures for the training of medical students 

 was nowhere in this country earlier recog- 

 nized than here. In 1855 the course was 

 supplemented by daily recitations, and, as 

 their advantages were realized, they re- 

 ceived in the following years greater and 

 greater emphasis, until they in combination 

 with laboratory practice became, at least as 

 early as 1867, a distinctive, and certainly a 

 valuable feature of the school. 



In 1879 the Yale medical department 

 placed itself in the front rank, as regards 

 its standards, with only a few companions at 

 that time, by introducing a stated matricu- 

 lation examination and a three years' graded 

 course, lengthened in 1896 to four years. 

 Clinical instruction and the recitation and 

 laboratory plan of teaching, which had been 

 early adopted, continued to be the basis of 

 the course. The thoroughness of the train- 

 ing is attested by the unusual success of the 

 graduates of the Yale medical depai^tment 

 in competitive examinations for positions 

 in the army and in hospitals, and in State 

 Board examinations for license to prac- 

 tice. 



With the laboratory building erected in 

 1893, and the clinical building now in 

 process of construction, the teaching re- 



