is, then, from the standpoint of the public interest no reason why a great number of physicians should be produced; there is no reason why any physician should be graduated unless his entrance into the profession will actually improve it. Further dilution would be unpardonable.
Of the four medical schools in the state none is at this time satisfactory. The osteopathic school at Des Moines is a disgrace to the state and should be summarily suppressed. In the absence of police power to terminate its career in this way, its graduates, undertaking as they do to treat all sorts of diseases, should be compelled to meet whatever standards are applied to other practitioners. The medical department of Drake University and the homeopathic department of the state university are well intentioned but feeble institutions that only a large outlay could convert into acceptable and efficient schools. Elevation of standards will probably embarrass rather than aid; for the urgent necessity of additional outlay will coincide with a decrease in the revenues on which Drake, at least, wholly depends. It would be the part of wisdom to retire from a contest to which the institution is clearly unequal; at any rate, it ought to be content to limit its endeavor to the work of the first two years.
The homeopathic department of the state university has now a small attendance on a relatively low entrance basis. As its students receive their scientific instruction with the classes now on a one-year, and hereafter to be on a two-year, college basis, it is clear that the entrance standard of the homeopathic department must be correspondingly elevated. The already slender enrolment is therefore destined still further to shrink. For so small a body of students the state is not likely to provide increased clinical facilities and a resident faculty of its own. Wisdom would therefore counsel the adoption in Iowa of the Minnesota plan: the two medical departments of the state university should be consolidated, with a provision for special teaching in materia medica and therapeutics for students who desire the homeopathic diploma.
The two university hospitals could thus be added together; the smaller would perhaps be devoted to obstetrics; the larger, with the additional wing now to be added, would provide comfortably for general medical and surgical clinics. The creation of a strong resident faculty, and the adoption of a liberal and enlightened policy in dealing with the sick poor of the state, would place Iowa City in position to duplicate the honorable record which the University of Michigan has, under similar circumstances, made at Ann Arbor.
KANSAS
Population, 1,663,438. Number of physicians, 2650. Ratio, 1: 628.
Number of medical schools, 3.
LAWRENCE-ROSEDALE: (Population: Lawrence, 13,678; Rosedale, 3270—suburb of the two Kansas Cities, population, 286,074).
