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THE LABORATORY BRANCHES
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stepping-stones, not as scientific opportunities; laboratories are often slovenly and, except during class hours, entirely abandoned. Strange professorial combinations are found: anatomy and surgery, very commonly; clinical medicine and physiology, at the University of Maryland; orthopaedic surgery and pathology, at the Baltimore Medical College; medicine and pathology, at the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery (Valparaiso University); pathology and the physical directorship of the academic department, at Bowdoin. Scientific chairs are held by non-residents at the Universities of Colorado[1] and Vermont[2] and at the Medical School of Maine (Bowdoin);[3] and itinerant teachers, giving the same branches at several schools, are to be found in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. If the larger institutions under consideration chance to contain a full-time teacher, his time usually belongs equally to dental and pharmacy departments, developed as "business propositions" to keep the plant constantly going; despite the manifest incongruity, dental or pharmacy students mingle in the same classes with medical students at the Medico-Chirurgical College (Philadelphia), Temple University (Philadelphia), and the Creighton Medical College (Omaha).[4] Occasionally a non-practising teacher will be found who is simultaneously holder of a municipal office, to which he devotes his main thought. The medical school gets the few brief hours that it pays for. Thus the non-practising professor of chemistry at the Creighton school is the city gas inspector; the professor of bacteriology at Denver and Gross is city bacteriologist,[5] with his laboratory at the City Hall. In the few cases where a non-practising full-time professor is found,[6] he is swamped with work; for he has as a rule only student assistants to aid him in coping with several hundred pupils utterly inexperienced in laboratory manipulation.

For many years a school of this sort was a veritable gold mine to its owners. Fees were divided outright, or invested in buildings which the faculty owned. Once in a while the income was split: a large share went to the teachers, the rest was devoted to carrying mortgaged buildings held by the trustees. These structures themselves were not infrequently erected in pursuance of business policy. Recent agitation has forced increased expenditure on buildings and equipment. The schools

  1. Anatomy, by a non-resident surgeon.
  2. Physiology, pathology, and hygiene.
  3. Anatomy and physiology.
  4. Likewise at University of Maryland, Valparaiso University, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Chicago), Georgetown University, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Baltimore), Baylor University, College of Physicians and Surgeons (San Francisco), Barnes (St. Louis), Starling-Ohio, University of Texas, Toledo Medical College, Medical College of the State of South Carolina, Milwaukee Medical College, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Boston), Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons. Even at Harvard, dental and medical students are mixed in some classes, though it is admitted that “the Dentals don't do as well and are harder to teach.” Students are admitted to the Harvard Dental School on the basis of a four-year high school education. The discrepancy is there fore considerable.
  5. The same is true at the University of Oregon (Portland), though in this case the laboratory is in the medical college; it is also the only real laboratory there.
  6. Physiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons (Chicago); pathology, Creighton; chemistry, Baltimore Medical College.