REVIEWS. 575 



the same opportunities as Harvard and Tufts; as a matter of fact no 

 member of the faculty * * * has a staff appointment in the city 

 hospital, and teaching there is utterly impossible otherwise. * * * 

 A limited attendance is required at a miserable dispensary, more than an 

 hour's journey from the college building." 



There is no need to make a list of all the schools the resources of 

 which are wholly from fees, and mostly diverted to stockholders pockets, 

 or the laboratories of which are nil, or "hopelessly meager," "absurdly 

 inadequate," "make-believe," "dirty," or "filthy," or whose clinical 

 facilities are utterly inadequate. Suffice it to say that the good schools 

 are very much in the minority, and yet there are a sufficient number of 

 them to supply the country with all the doctors of medicine needed. The 

 pity of it all is that almost every student at every low-grade medical 

 school is earnestly desirous of a good education, is paying for it, and 

 believes he is getting it. It is not until he has graduated that he learns 

 that his education has been defective. How defective is vividly illustrated 

 by the class of "post-graduate" schools which have sprung up in order 

 to catch these very men under the guise of helping them to overcome their 

 deficiencies. For example, notice the report on one post-graduate school 

 of medicine. "A post-graduate institution organized as a stock company. 

 Offers special courses to graduate physicians. Attendance : Perhaps 30 

 at &nj given time; a total of 350 in the course of a year. Teaching staff : 

 92, 30 being professors, 62 of other grade. Resources available for 

 maintenance : Fees. Laboratory facilities : A small clinical laboratory, 

 the instruction in technique being given by a first-year student in one 

 of the night schools; in the absence of the instructor he also conducts 

 classes. Clinical facilities : The main reliance is the hospital of the 

 institution, of 80 beds, two-thirds of them surgical." Apparently the 

 average post-graduate college has little real help to offer the physician. 



The report does not attempt to give the histories of any institution, 

 only what they are now. There is a general historical account of medical 

 education in the United States, followed by a thorough discussion of the 

 laboratory branches and the relations of the medical school to the hospital 

 and dispensary. A chapter is devoted to the financial aspects of medical 

 education, and finally the all-important subject of reconstruction is 

 discussed. The plan proposed is admittedly theoretical, yet it is specific 

 in that the favorable locations of the medical colleges of the future are 

 pointed out. As long as medical schools are left to organize and reorgan- 

 ize as they please, to establish their own entrance and graduation stand- 

 ards, and to determine freely the amount of practical clinical work 

 necessary, so long will many doctors seize the opportunity for advertise- 

 ment and reputation which connection with the staff of any sort of a 

 school affords and so long will poor schools remain with us. The ignorant 

 student who will be attracted to these schools in spite of the presence of 



