Attendance: 99, mostly from Georrgia. Twenty-six of these hold free county scholarships, in addition to which number the dean admits as many more as he pleases, generally at the request of congressmen. Eighteen students were admitted free in this way last year. Hence 44 of the 99 students are free.
Teaching staff: 33, of whom 18 are professors.
Resources available for maintenance: The institution has no resources but fees, amounting to $6835.
Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a building which contains an exceedingly foul dissecting-room, a meager equipment for elementary chemistry, a fair equipment for histology and pathology, and practically nothing for bacteriology. There is a small museum and a collection of several thousand books of mainly antiquarian interest.
Clinical facilities: The city hospital adjoining, containing 100 beds,—less than half of them occupied at the time of the inspection,—offers most of the clinical facilities; the Lamar Hospital is also available, but is more than a mile off, though described in the official catalogue of the state university as "located only a short distance from the college." At the city hospital the students get no obstetrical work because "the cases mostly come at night and you can't get the students;" at the Lamar Hospital they get none because "they are too busy." There is no evidence anywhere of clinical laboratory work. It was learned that at the city hospital there had been "two post-mortems in six years."
There is a dispensary at the city hospital, but no records are kept.
Date of visit: February, 1909.
General Considerations
The situation to be dealt with in this state is so simple that there is no room for difference of opinion as to what ought to be done. That every state in the south is overcrowded with doctors is generally admitted. Florida alone of surrounding states lacks a medical school, and there is an excess of doctors there (ratio 1:865). The two eclectic schools, as utterly incapable of training doctors should be summarily suppressed. The Augusta situation is hopeless. The is no possibility of developing there a medical school controlled by the university. The site is unpropitious, the distance too great. The university ought not much longer permit its name to be exploited by a low-grade institution, whose entrance terms—if the phrase can be used—are far below that of its academic department. It should snap the slender thread; the medical school will not long survive amputation.
Two schools remain at Atlanta, a growing city in close proximity to the university at Athens. It would be easy to consolidate these two institutions to form the
