SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, MAY 21, 1886. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 Those people who have thought that English- 

 men had already formed a society for every chari- 

 table purpose under the sun are now shown to 

 have been mistaken. A society has just been or- 

 ganized for providing amusement for children. 

 Of the eighty thousand children in London who 

 leave the elementary schools every year, only four 

 per cent have been willing to continue their edu- 

 cation in the evening classes which have been 

 provided by the education department. This un- 

 satisfactory state of things has led to the forma- 

 tion of the Recreative evening schools association, 

 whose object is to offer the children, who have 

 been at work during the day, such an enticing 

 evening programme that they will find it im- 

 possible to stay aw T ay. There are classes in musi- 

 cal drill, song, wood - carving, modelling, and 

 drawing, with lessons in history, geography, and 

 science, illustrated by the magic lantern. The 

 idea is an excellent one. An education which 

 ' children will cry for' is the ideal towards which 

 education at all ages should approach as nearly as 

 possible ; and until that ideal is reached, the edu- 

 cational reformer will not find himself without an 

 occupation. Sowing and reaping have not come 

 any nearer in these days to being as great sources 

 of enjoyment as foot-ball and tennis ; but schools 

 are very different from what they were when our 

 fathers were young, and it is quite possible to 

 hope that we shall learn in time how to give 

 children a life of purely happy activity. 



Complaints of the overcrowding of the medi- 

 cal profession in the United States are constantly 

 becoming more numerous, and there is certainly 

 some ground for them. When the relatively 

 greater increase in the number of graduates than 

 of the population is taken into consideration, 

 there is every reason to fear a far more severe 

 struggle for existence as the lot of the average 

 physician in the near future. Statistics give 8,675 

 as the number of medical students graduating in 

 1885, and the number will probably be increased 

 the present year. Already the United States has 



No. 172. — 1886. 



a larger proportion of physicians to its population 

 than any other country in the world, averaging 

 one to less than six hundred. To keep up this 

 proportion, taking into consideration the natural 

 increase of population, an annual increment of 

 but little more than two thousand annually would 

 suffice for some years to come. It is evident that 

 a large part of the yearly graduates must either 

 drop out by the wayside, or struggle for a very 

 moderate subsistence. 



But for this actual and threatened overcrowding 

 there is a remedy whose necessity and importance 

 are fast being recognized ; viz., stricter require- 

 ments on the part of the state and of the medical 

 colleges. The requirements for graduation in 

 many medical institutions have been disgracefully 

 lax : a few months' attendance upon lectures, an 

 oftentimes worthless certificate of study, an hours 

 superficial examination, and the candidate is ad- 

 mitted to the degree of doctor of medicine. But 

 it is interesting to observe the appreciable effects 

 of state legislation in this direction. No one 

 factor has exercised so much influence in elevat- 

 ing the standard for medical graduation as the 

 action of the Illinois state board of health. Illi- 

 nois was a good place to begin, for no city in the 

 world turns out more irregular practitioners than 

 Chicago ; and the board of health, by securing the 

 passage of laws requiring the registration of phy- 

 sicians with evidence of fitness as shown by the 

 possession of a diploma from some college of a 

 given grade or by examination, has undoubted- 

 ly exerted wide-spread influence. The number 

 of graduates in 1885 was less than in 1884 ; and 

 nearly every college, ostensibly at least, now re- 

 quires a preliminary examination ; and not a few 

 have raised their standard of requirements for 

 graduation, and lessened the number of their 

 graduates. 



The subject of industrial education in common 

 schools has been often broached of late, and any 

 able work upon it is sure to attract attention. 

 There lies before us a pamphlet on this subject 

 by H. H. Dinwiddie of the Agricultural and 

 mechanical college of Texas ; but we are com- 

 pelled to say that it sheds no new light on the 



