school, it suddenly became, in 1909, nominally the medical department of the University of Southern California, when the former medical department of that institution cut loose in order to become the Los Angeles clinical department of the University of California. The seriousness with which the University of Southern California treats medical education may be gathered from this amusing performance.
Entrance requirement: High school graduation or "equivalent."
Attendance: 32.
Teaching staff: 41, 28 being professors. The teachers are practising physicians; no one gives his entire time to the school.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $4075 (estimated).
Laboratory facilities: The school is ordinary in type. It possesses a small chemical laboratory, a single laboratory in common for pathology, histology, and bacteriology, with meager equipment and supplies, and no animals; a dissecting-room with sufficient anatomical material, and clay for modeling bones; a limited number of wet specimens, and a small number of books in a room that is locked, though opened to students on request. There is no laboratory for physiology or pharmacology. The building is new, attractive, and fairly well kept.
Clinical facilities: A considerable part of one floor is used for a dispensary. The rooms are poorly equipped and cared for; there is no clinical laboratory. The attendance is very small, for the neighborhood is decidedly well-to-do.
The school adjoins a private hospital in which many of the teachers are interested. It is, however, of no teaching use. The catalogue describes it as "not a charity hospital by any means. ... In fact it is a twentieth century classy hospital." For clinical instruction the students have access to the County Hospital, several miles distant, where the school has the use of 100 beds, holding clinics for senior students two days weekly. In surgery, students witness an operation without taking part in it; in medicine, the students make brief histories, which are, however, no part of the hospital records. Autopsies are done by the internes, who have no connection with the medical school. Students are not admitted to the obstetrical ward. Clinical facilities are thus extremely limited, for the management of the hospital is in no essential respect controlled by educational considerations.
Date of visit: May, 1909.
(2) University of California: Clinical Department. Up to March, 1909, this school offered a four-year course as the medical department of the University of Southern California ; it has now become a second clinical department of the University of California, and will therefore offer after June, 1910, only the third and fourth years' work. See (6).
