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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE PEOGBESS OE SCIENCE 



THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AND THE 

 COLLEGE 



The marble palaces which American 

 millionaires have built for the Medical 

 School of Harvard University are justi- 

 fied by their beauty. They will house 

 part of the meetings of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of 

 Science and the affiliated societies dur- 

 ing convocation week at the end of the 

 present month, and it would be worth 

 while for scientific men from a distance 

 to attend the meetings if their only 

 object were to see these beautiful and 

 stately halls. But these buildings have 

 not solved the complicated problems of 

 medical education; they have, to a cer- 

 tain extent, fossilized the system of 

 sequestering the medical school from 

 the university. Reinforced cement at 

 Cambridge might have accomplished 

 more for training and research in the 

 medical sciences than marble on the 

 Boston fens. 



President Eliot appears to be in 

 large measure responsible for sepa- 

 rating the medical school from the 

 university both in space and time. 

 Shortly before his retirement, he ap- 

 pointed a dean of the school who to a 

 certain extent shares his views. Dean 

 Christian, in his address at the dedi- 

 cation of the Medical Department of 

 Stanford University, said that the in- 

 stitutions which have adopted a com- 

 bined academic and medical course 

 " have succeeded in rendering the A.B. 

 degree of less value and significance 

 than formerly and have sacrificed one 

 or two years of college work while 

 seeking to conceal this fact by the 

 award of the two degrees, A.B. and 

 M.D." 



President Lowell, who does not hesi- 

 tate to express educational theories at 

 variance with those of his predecessor, 



agrees with him in wanting to base the 

 professional schools on the college, and 

 apparently would have the professional 

 schools so ordered that "every college 

 graduate ought to be equipped to enter 

 any professional school." In his in- 

 augural address he says : " Our law 

 school lays great stress upon native 

 ability and scholarly aptitude, and 

 comparatively little upon the particu- 

 lar branches of learning a student has 

 pursued in college. . . . Many pro- 

 fessors of medicine, on the other hand, 

 feel strongly that a student should 

 enter their school with at least a rudi- 

 mentary knowledge of those sciences, 

 like chemistry, biology and physiology, 

 which are interwoven with medical 

 studies; and they appear to attach 

 greater weight to this than to his 

 natural capacity or general attain- 

 ments." 



It may be doubted whether in the 

 Harvard Medical School or elsewhere 

 there are professors who attach greater 

 weight to rudimentary knowledge of 

 certain sciences than to natural ca- 

 pacity and general attainments. But 

 there are those in the Harvard Medical 

 School, as appears from an extended 

 article filling half the Harvard Bul- 

 letin for November 3, Avho do not ap- 

 prove the attitude of the administra- 

 tion in determining the relation be- 

 tween the college and the medical 

 school. It is there argued that stu- 

 dents in the college should be per- 

 mitted to study in the college the sci- 

 ences required by the medical student, 

 as they now can the sciences prelim- 

 inary to engineering, and that it 

 should be possible for the student to 

 complete both his college work and his 

 medical course in six years. 



President Lowell apparently wants 

 a four-year college course, followed by 



