Teaching staff: At Oxford, 8 professors, 3 of whom give entire time to this department, and 3 assistants; at Vicksburg, 6 professors and 10 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: The department shares the general funds of the university. Its budget calls for $15,000. Fees amount to $3500.
Laboratory facilities: (Oxford.) Laboratories, adequate to the needs of the instruction offered, are provided for physiology, pharmacology, histology, and anatomy; pathology and bacteriology are less satisfactory. Chemistry is well cared for in the university laboratory. The teachers need a larger number of competent assistants and helpers; a beginning has been made towards a departmental library.
Clinical facilities: (Vicksburg.) The clinical end has been so recently started that no attempt will be made here to deal with it. It will probably be discontinued.
Date of visit: November, 1909.
General Considerations
Of the two schools, that at Meridian is without merit. At a time when the state has already more doctors than it needs, the starting of a didactic school, conducted by the local practitioners of a small town, is absolutely unjustifiable. The state laws ought to be promptly amended so as to make such ventures impossible.
The state is indeed not favorably situated for the entire training of its own doctors. The state university, the only institution to which the task could fall, is unfortunately located. Its present experiment with a divided school is even more problematical than similar ventures elsewhere; for to the inherent disadvantage of division is to be added the fact that Vicksburg itself is a small town. Moreover, the first half of the school, at Oxford, though distinctly creditable, is far from satisfying its faculty. It is a question whether the university would not do more wisely to concentrate its outlay on the Oxford branch.
Up to this time, the medical profession of Mississippi has been educated mainly in the proprietary schools of the southern states. It would be fortunate indeed if henceforth its members should get at least their first two years at Oxford. To make itself the main factor in the education of the physicians of the state, the university should keep its entrance requirement in touch with the secondary school system. Its present and prospective facilities do not really warrant a higher requirement. Besides, it can perform a more useful service by training a relatively large body of students at the high school level than by training a few on a higher standard. McGill and Toronto do not prove that a high school standard is as good as a college standard; but they do prove that where a high school standard, or even less, is enforced, well chosen teachers, well equipped and liberally sustained laboratories, are capable of producing a very useful type of physician. The present duty of the southern state universities is not to press prematurely to a standard that either cannot be enforced or that, if enforced, will relegate the main army of students to medical schools with-
