could very properly perform this duty; elsewhere, an equally satisfactory arrangement could be made with an endowed institution. Whatever the standard fixed, it would thus be intelligently enforced. The school catalogues would then announce that no student can be matriculated whose credentials are not filed within ten days of the opening of the session, and that no M.D. degree can be conferred until at least four years subsequent to complete satisfaction of the preliminary requirement. These credentials, sent at once to the secretary of the state board, would be by him turned over to the registrar of the state or other university, whose verdict would be final. A state that desired to enforce a four-year high school requirement could specify as satisfying its requirements:
(a) Certificate of admission to a state university requiring a four-year high school education;
(2) Certificate of admission to any institution that is a member of the Association of American Universities;
(3) Medical Student Certificate of the Regents of the University of the State of New York;
(4) Certificates issued by the College Entrance Examination Board for 14 units.
In exchange for such credentials, or for high school diplomas acceptable to the academic authorities acting for the state board, a medical student certificate would be issued; in default thereof, the student must by examination earn one of the aforesaid credentials, in its turn to be made the basis of his medical student certificate. In the southern states, the legal minimum would be necessarily below the four-year high school; in Minnesota, above it. But the same sort of machinery would work. The schools would have nothing to do with it except to keep systematically registered the name of the student and the number of his certificate; the state board or the university acting for it would keep everything else, open to inspection.
This is substantially what takes place in New York, where the State Education Department superintends the process. What is wanted in other states is an agency similarly qualified. For the present nothing can so well perform the office within a given state as its state university, or, in default thereof, the best of its endowed institutions. This suggestion is perfectly fair to all medical schools, for the credentials would pass through the hands of the state board to the reviewing authority without information as to the purpose of the applicant. The directions required would take up less space in the medical school catalogues than the complicated details they now contain. It should be further provided that the original credentials of every student be kept on file in the office of the state board or the reviewing university, and that they shall be open to inspection, without notice, by properly accredited representatives of medical and educational organizations. These simple measures would introduce intelligence and sincerity where subterfuge and disorder now prevail. The beneficial results to the high school and the medical school would be incalculable. Nor would the poor boy be subjected to the least hardship; for by exercising forethought,
