management there is no continuity. Birmingham is much closer, being only 56 miles distant, and promises to offer a larger supply of clinical material. If, therefore, the state is able to look at the question on its own merits, without regard to the rival claims of competing towns, it should establish a practice requirement that would automatically suppress proprietary instruction. For the present, the university might offer two years' work at Tuscaloosa, reserving to a more propitious time the entire question of organizing under effective university control a complete medical school at Birmingham, which is the nearest feasible location. As the state now contains one physician to every 924 inhabitants, the restriction or suspension of clinical teaching for some years to come involves no danger to the community.
Arkansas
Population, 1,476,582. Number of physicians, 2535. Ratio, 1: 582.
Number of medical schools, 2.
LITTLE ROCK: Population, 44,931.
(1) Medical Department, University of Arkansas. Organized 1879. An independent institution, not even "affiliated" with the state university whose name it bears.
Entrance requirement: Nominal.
Attendance: 179, 81 per cent from Arkansas.
Teaching staff: 35, 18 being professors.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $14,100 (estimated).
Laboratory facilities: After an existence of thirty years without any laboratory facilities except a dissecting-room and a laboratory for inorganic chemistry, a frame building has recently been supplied with a meager equipment for the teaching of pathology and bacteriology. The session was, however, already well started and the new laboratory not yet in operation. No museum, no books, charts, models, etc., are provided.
Clinical facilities: Hardly more than nominal. The school adjoins the City Hospital, with a capacity of 30 beds. From this hospital patients are brought into the amphitheater of the school building. There are no ward visits. The students see no contagious diseases; obstetrical work is precarious; of post-mortems there is no mention.
There is a small dispensary, of whose attendance no record is procurable.
Date of visit : November, 1909.
(2) College of Physicians and Surgeons. Organized 1906. An independent organization, formed by men not in the older school.
