the two years' work as the latter half of the A. B. course may, under these circumstances, distinctly weaken it from the medical standpoint. It is, of course, true that the German medical schools are without the sort of organization we are now emphasizing; but they have what we lack, ideals and traditions. Dispersion does not cost them their point of view. When our ideals are as sound, we too may be capable of dispensing with a more or less formal organization. Some of our schools may already be.[1] Would it, however, be equally safe even in Germany, if there were no clinics at all?
Take, for instance, the subject of pathology. The two-year school, remote from hospitals and autopsies, can provide museum specimens, models, and microscopic mounts. Under favorable conditions, animal experimentation can still further supplement its resources. But the pathologist will suffer from isolation; he is part of the college, but not part of a hospital, and what is hurtful to him cannot be helpful to his students. For them much depends on the arrangement of courses in the institution to which they emigrate for their third and fourth years. Meanwhile, in any case, at the fateful moment of their introduction to the subject, however admirably they may have been drilled in the specific content of the course, little advantage can be taken of their general absorptive power. For even a fair student, while learning his lessons in pathological histology, might assimilate incidentally much that goes beyond. Not infrequently what is most stimulating in his experience would be thus obtained. It would appear, then, that, while the college will surely gain, it is not certain that the medical curriculum may not lose when the first and second years are separated or detached.
There would be the less necessity for the cautious attitude here taken in reference to the two-year school if these departments were everywhere organized, as they have been by Wisconsin, Cornell, Missouri, and Indiana, with a keen appreciation of the difficulties to be surmounted and with financial resources capable of coping with them. Apparatus, books, animals, laboratory material, must be provided in abundance. In the institutions above mentioned they are. Too frequently, however, apparatus is limited, books are scarce, animals hard to get, running expenses reduced to a mere pittance. Skilled assistants and competent helpers may also be lacking. The teachers are young and well trained; but their professorial salaries are paid to them in part for menial labor. They care for apparatus, get it out, put it away, prepare all demonstrations and experiments, and clean up after class. Be the students ever so few, routine drudgery and isolation will wear out the enthusiasm of their instructors. The men will grow stale, the department sterile. As the two-year schools now generally re- y quire two years of college work for entrance, they cannot be parsimoniously organized. Yet their rapid spread seems to indicate a mistaken notion that the laboratory years can safely be conducted on a small scale at comparatively slight expense.
- ↑ The medical department of the University of Wisconsin, a half-school, combats the difficulty by appointing a professor of clinical medicine.
