238 Puls—Need of a Medical Faculty in the University . 
The need of higher, graded medical schools in America is 
strongly felt among the profession, and it is only a question of 
time when the inferior medical colleges will cease to exist. 
The American Association of Medical Colleges has taken steps 
to lengthen the course of instruction from three to four years. 
Likewise in the German universities a change from ten to 
twelve semesters for medical departments is a subject for dis¬ 
cussion in the Reichstag. 
The Confederation of the Medical Examining Boards has un¬ 
der advisement the expediency of prescribing a higher degree of 
preliminary education for admission. President Eliot of Har¬ 
vard, after congratulating the Alumni Association of the med¬ 
ical department of Harvard University on its initiation of the 
fourth year course, says: “The next thing for our medical 
schools to do (I would urge this on all medical schools), is to 
require for admission a first degree in arts, letters or science, ” 
and, he continues: “The American universities have long been 
peculiar in that their professional schools were wide open to 
any passer-by in the street, whereas the colleges were guarded 
by rigid examinations, but now our leading professional schools 
should no longer be open to persons of no academic training 
whatever. ” 
The Johns Hopkins University is the only schoo at present 
requiring a bachelor’s degree for admission, and its medical de¬ 
partment is modeled after the German university. 
The tendency to-day in medical investigation is toward the ap¬ 
plication of the researches of laboratory work. Each practitioner 
should be made an independent investigator. Medicine is rapidly 
becoming an exact science. Surgery seems to have reached its 
limits and internal medicine is harvesting the fruit of labora¬ 
tory work. Private schools unless well endowed will not in 
time be able to compete with state schools nor meet the require¬ 
ments of examining boards. To ensure and to promote the fur¬ 
ther advance of medical learning, it is absolutely necessary to 
hold the protection and support of the government and state for 
the American medical schools. 
Milwaukee , Wis ., December 29, 1896. 
