REVIEWS. 573 



The simpler forms, including the chick or the frog, are generally taken 

 up first as they are supposed better to help us to understand the more 

 complex forms, including man. 



In reading the book through, the impression was gained that, with the 

 above limitation, it is well suited for students of embryology who have 

 had a well-grounded preliminary training or an introductory course in 

 embryology, in institutions which possess a good embryological museum, 

 a good technician, and a graduate staff of instructors. Elsewhere it well 

 deserves a place in the library as a book of reference, but not as a laboratory 

 text of embryologj'. 



Elbert Clarke. 



Medical Education in the United States and Canada. A Report to the Car- 

 negie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bulletin No. 4. By 

 Abraham Flexner. With an introduction by Henry S. Pritchett, President 

 of the Foundation. Paper. Pp. xyii+346. 576 Fifth Avenue, New York, 

 1910. 



~No publication of the year 1910 has occasioned so much interested 

 comment, and none will be the cause of so much general good to the 

 community as this report to the Carnegie Foundation on Medical Educa- 

 tion in the United States and Canada. -If a Noble prize were to be 

 awarded for the most stimulative and the most courageous publication of 

 the year, Doctor Flexner should have first mention. It has required no 

 minor quality of courage for the president of the Carnegie Institution 

 and the author of the report to attack so boldly the evils of our medical 

 educational system. Educational authorities are no less firmly intrenched 

 behind the barriers of their self-esteem and the customs of the past than 

 are the "malefactors of great wealth," and the principle upon which rest 

 the people's campaign against unjust corporations and this newly organ- 

 ized war upon unfit educational institutions is the same, namely, that 

 all institutions which fail to serve the people well and with undivided 

 interest must make way for such as shall. 



In regard to medical education, we are begining to realize the fact that 

 those who pay the bill for the education of a physician are not those who 

 furnished the modest amounts necessary to meet the registrar's fees, but 

 the members of the community among whom the physician lives after 

 receiving his license to practice the art of healing ; and a costly education 

 it proves for many a community which is plagued by an illy equipped, 

 ignorant, unskillful doctor instead of being benefitted by the skillful 

 physician it has the right to expect. Eeading the pages of this report 

 intensifies the horror most of us have of being obliged to call in a doctor 

 of whom we know nothing except that he has the degree of M. D. 



"The day has gone by when any university can retain the respect of 

 educated men, or where it can fulfill its duty to education, by retaining a 



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