Entrance requirement: On a par with that of Dalhousie University.
Attendance: 63, 90 per cent from Nova Scotia.
Teaching staff: 33, of whom 16 are professors. There are no full-time instructors. (This does not include the instructors in the scientific branches furnished by Dalhousie University.)
Resources available for maintenance: An annual appropriation of $1200 from the provincial government and fees amounting to about $5000. Three-fourths of the fees are distributed among the professors; one-fourth provides, with the government grant, for all other expense. A bequest yielding $200 per annum supports the college library.
Laboratory facilities: This disposition of funds is reflected in the condition of the medical college: it possesses an ordinary, ill smelling dissecting-room and a single utterly wretched laboratory for pathology, bacteriology, and histology. A microscope is provided for each student. Though this same "laboratory" serves for the provincial board of health, no animals are used. There is no museum worthy the name, and no laboratory work in physiology or pharmacology. The laboratory sciences have been starved that small dividends might be paid to generally prosperous practitioners.
Clinical facilities: Clinical instruction is provided at the Victoria General Hospital,—a government institution of some 200 beds, open to the medical school. About 70 per cent of the cases are surgical. The staff appointments are made by the government for its own reasons; the medical college is forced to confer professorships on these appointees. Ward classes are conducted; individual cases are assigned, and the student's notes become part of the hospital records. Instruction in clinical microscopy is very limited.
Obstetrical opportunities barely suffice. Autopsies are performed in the presence of students, who report on them. The college has no dispensary, but students are required to attend the city dispensary,—an institution within which the medical school has no authority. The attendance is fair.
It has been stated above that except during part of the first two years Dalhousie University has no teaching responsibility for or connection with Halifax Medical College. On the other hand, students of Halifax Medical College are examined by the medical faculty of Dalhousie University and obtain the Dalhousie medical degree. The question may fairly be asked: What is the value of the Dalhousie degree in medicine, won by students whose opportunities have been provided by Halifax Medical College? The connection is, from the standpoint of Dalhousie University, highly objectionable.
Date of visit: October, 1909.
