BOSTON: Population, 629,868.
(1) Medical School of Harvard University. Organized 1782. An integral department of Harvard University.
Entrance requirement: The student has a choice between the bachelor's degree or certain definite requirements in science and modern languages representing two years of undergraduate work, provided that in the latter case a higher passing mark is required for graduation. In the present year, out of a first-year class of 62, 60 entered with the bachelor's degree.
Attendance: The total enrolment is 285; about 69 per cent from New England, 53 per cent from Massachusetts.
Teaching staff: 173, of whom 23 are professors; laboratory instructors as a rule devote their entire time to the department. Resources available for maintenance: The department has an endowment of $3,326,961; the fees are merged in the general income of the school. The annual budget is $251,389, of which $72,037 are derived from tuition fees.
Laboratory facilities: The laboratories are unexcelled in equipment and organization, in respect to both teaching and research.
Clinical facilities: Abundant clinical material is available at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the City Hospital, and elsewhere. But serious restrictions are felt in two directions: (1) While the university is free to secure laboratory men wherever it chooses, it is practically bound to make clinical appointments by seniority, in accordance with the custom prevailing in the hospital which it uses, or to leave its professor without a hospital clinic. In general it follows that the heir to the hospital service is heir to the university chair. In consequence there is a noticeable lack of sympathy between the laboratory and the clinical men. They do not represent the same ideals. There is no question but that an institution of this rank ought to work in the most intimate coöperation with a hospital; and that, if such were the case, the same principles would obtain in selecting clinical teachers as prevail elsewhere in the university. (2) The extent to which hospital material can be utilized is also limited, though less in surgery than in medicine. The teaching is in the main of the demonstrative character. Something more intimate is possible in a limited way with fourth-year students. The hospital services with one exception rotate at the end of periods of four months.
The school is now installing its own dispensary, likely to be of great value in its clinical instruction.
Date of visit: October, 1909.
(2) Tufts College Medical School. Organized 1893. Administratively an integral department of Tufts College, though actual scientific intercourse is not intimate.
