crude boy or the jaded clerk who goes into medicine at this level has not been moved by a significant prompting from within; nor has he as a rule shown any forethought in the matter of making himself ready. He is more likely to have been caught drifting at a vacant moment by an alluring advertisement or announcement, quite commonly an exaggeration, not infrequently an outright misrepresentation. Indeed, the advertising methods of the commercially successful schools are amazing.[1] Not infrequently advertising costs more than laboratories.[2] The school catalogues abound in exaggeration, misstatement, and half-truths.[3] The deans of these institutions occasionally know more about modern advertising than about modern medical teaching. They may be uncertain about the relation of the clinical laboratory to bedside instruction; but they have calculated to a nicety which "medium" brings the largest "return." Their dispensary records may be in hopeless disorder; but the card system by which they keep track of possible students is admirable. Such exploitation of medical education, confined to schools that admit students below the level of actual high school graduation, is strangely inconsistent with the social aspects of medical practice. The overwhelming importance of preventive medicine, sanitation, and public health indicates that in modern life the medical profession is an organ differentiated by society for its own highest purposes, not a business to be exploited by individuals according to their own fancy. There would be no vigorous campaigns led by enlightened practitioners against tuberculosis, malaria, and diphtheria, if the commercial point of view were tolerable in practice. And if not in practice, then not in education. The theory of state regulation covers that point. In the act of granting the right to confer degrees, the state vouches for them; through protective boards it still further seeks to safeguard the people. The public interest is then paramount, and when public interest, professional ideals, and sound educational procedure concur in the recommendation of the same policy, the time is surely ripe for decisive action.
- ↑ One school offers any graduate who shall have been in attendance three years a European trip.
- ↑ See chapter viii., "Financial Aspects of Medical Education," especially p. 135.
- ↑ A few instances may be cited at random:
Medical Department, University of Buffalo: "The dispensary is conducted in a manner unlike that usually seen. . . . Each one will secure unusually thorough training in taking and recording of histories” (p. 25). There are no dispensary records worthy the name.
Halifax Medical College: "First-class laboratory accommodation is provided for histology, bacteriology and practical pathology" (p. 9). One utterly wretched room is provided for all three.
Medical Department, University of Illinois: "The University Hospital . . . contains one hundred beds, and its clinical advantages are used exclusively for the students of this college" (p. 56). Over half of these beds are private, and the rest are of but limited use.
Western University (London, Ontario): Clinical instruction. "The Victoria Hospital . . . now contains two hundred and fifty beds, and is the official hospital of the City of London," etc. (p. 14). On the average, less than thirty of these beds are available for teaching.
The Medical Department of the University of Chattanooga: "The latest advances" are taught "in the most entertaining and instructive manner;" professors are chosen for their proficiency; ulative research pertains" to the department of physiology : the department of pathology is "provided with a costly collection of specimens and generous supply of the best microscopes " (one, as a matter of fact); "the hospitals afford numerous cases of labor”!
