by the operation. The unendowed medical schools of the state cannot survive such a wholesome treatment of the state's philanthropic obligations. The extension of their hospitals would be prohibited; even their maintenance would be imperiled.
It is thus clear that a reasonable——not a high— standard of admission and a righteous public policy in dealing with charities would soon reduce the schools of the state to two,—. the University of Pittsburgh, provided it secures endowment, and the University of Pennsylvania, whose resources available for medical education would also require to be increased. Fortunate indeed would it be, if broad views might bring about this increase in part through consolidation of the tinge large schools of Philadelphia, one or two of the three being liquidated as a means of liberating a considerable sum, applicable thenceforth to the development of the single surviving school. Into such a scheme—inevitable, in any case, unless the independent schools accomplish the heretofore impossible task of procuring endowment—the Polyclinic would easily fall. The day of independent and elementary Postgraduate instruction is rapidly passing; the Postgraduate school of the future will crown a substantial undergraduate school of medicine. The outcome here suggested can be averted only if the independent schools secure endowment, — for which there is no precedent in America, —or if some university outside Philadelphia form an alliance there. There is just now no academic institution in the state whose resources would warrant this step. Whatever these medical schools now offer, they would, singly or combined, shortly prove a drain on any university endeavoring to apply to medicine the standards and ideals cultivated in its other departments. Moreover, as two schools—one at Pittsburgh, the other at Philadelphia— can supply the state with physicians, no other university is justified in entering the field unless its resources, free to be applied to medicine, are sufficient to insure as a consequence a real advance in medical knowledge and practice.
South Carolina
Population, 1,510,566. Number of physicians, 1151. Ratio 1:1324.[1]
Number of medical schools, 1.
CHARLESTON: Population, 56,659.
Medical College of the State of South Carolina. Founded 1823. An independent institution.
Entrance requirement: Nominal.
Attendance: 213.
Teaching staff: 34, of whom 11 are professors 3 of other grade. There are no wholetime teachers.
- ↑ Polk's statistics make the ratio 1: 1168.
