5i6 
Hozv  to  Study  Medicine. 
( Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
(  November,  1913. 
to  submit  to.  On  the  face  of  it,  this  is  a  concession  to  the  poor 
boy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  not  only  an  insult  to  his  intelli- 
gence, but  its  real  purpose  is  to  serve  the  weak  and  ill-prepared 
medical  schools  which  can  live  only  by  drawing  to  their  doors  a 
mass  of  uneducated  and  unfit  men,  the  great  majority  of  whom 
are  turned  out  from  these  low-standard  institutions  at  the  end 
of  one  or  two  years.  The  fact  is  that  a  poor  boy  has  no  right 
to  go  into  the  practice  of  medicine  with  any  lower  qualification  than 
the  rich  boy.  The  practice  of  medicine  is  one  of  the  great  human 
professions  which  affect  profoundly  not  only  the  health  but  the 
moral  and  social  lives  of  a  community.  No  man  has  a  right  to  go  into 
it  unless  he  will  fit  himself  fairly  for  the  work.  Educational  op- 
portunities in  America  are  to-day  so  generous  that  any  poor  boy 
with  the  right  stuff  in  him  who  desires  to  enter  medicine  can  secure, 
not  only  the  necessary  medical  education,  but  the  requisite  general 
education.  It  is  only  a  question  of  his  persistence  and  his  courage 
and  his  energy ;  and  the  young  man  who  allows  himself  to  be  per- 
suaded into  the  profession  by  the  advertisement  of  some  school  which 
offers  to  provide  a  short  cut  for  the  poor  boy  may  feel  sure  that  in 
the  end  he  will  find  himself  in  a  profession  in  which  he  will  be  utterly 
outclassed  and  in  which  he  can  obtain  only  such  practice  as  may  not 
be  desired  by  the  competent  practitioner. 
To-day  the  medical  colleges  of  the  country  are  graduating  many 
more  physicians  than  can  possibly  find  places  for  a  fair  practice. 
Little  towns  which  could  support  in  comfort  two  competent  prac- 
titioners are  called  upon  to  support  half  a  dozen,  and  this  means 
usually  a  half-dozen  incompetent  men.  The  boy  who  is  looking 
toward  medicine  may  well  take  these  facts  into  account,  and  fairly 
face  the  further  fact  that,  unless  he  has  a  good  education  and  unless 
he  will  go  to  a  well-equipped  medical  school,  he  can  have  no  real 
opportunity  for  a  useful  and  satisfactory  life  in  this  profession  in  the 
future.  As  to  which  medical  schools  are  prepared  to  teach  medicine 
in  the  modern  way,  the  medical  student  who  is  in  earnest  can  learn 
from  any  well-informed  practitioner  in  his  own  neighborhood.  Only 
let  him  be  sure  to  get  his  advice  from  some  man  who  knows  the 
medical  teaching  of  the  last  two  decades,  not  from  one  who  makes 
his  recommendations  from  his  recollections  of  the  didactic  medical 
teaching  of  twenty-five  years  ago. 
There  is  one  other  word  which  the  man  who  has  to  do  with 
education — and  this  is  quite  as  much  a  question  of  education  as  it  is 
» 
