Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/306

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288
MEDICAL EDUCATION

Clinical facilities: These are entirely inadequate. The school formerly held clinics at the County Hospital, but the connection has been severed in consequence of a political overturning. It still has access to two hospitals: in one of them it holds a small number of clinics, both medical and surgical; in the other it conducts a surgical clinic twice a week. In neither of them can such material as exists be thoroughly used for teaching purposes. There is a wretched little dispensary in the college building. Date of visit: Fetrruar!, 1910. General Considerations 0F the eight m schools of Ohio one has already won a permanent place and two more have possibilities. The present administration of the state law is tightening about the other five,. and there is every reason to suppose that they will all shortly have to submit to the inevitable. Just why the law should be tenderly applied is not clear. The state is rich, prosperous, and well supplied with secondary schools, though the competition of state-supported institutions has hitherto interfered with their systematic organization; and two or three doctors now contest every field capable of decently supporting one. It would appear feasible at once to enforce a genuine four-year high school preliminary and forthwith to move towards the higher standard just declared in Indiana The most prosperous universities of the state are, from the standpoint of medical education, fortunately situated: Western Reserve, at Cleveland, the Ohio State University, at Columbus, the University of Cincinnati, at Cincinnati. Of the future of Western Reserve there is no doubt. It is already one of the substantial schools of the country. Its clinical problem has been solved on lines that create a precedent worthy to be generally followed. Its financial resources are, however, decidedly inferior to its deserts and ideals. A keener appreciation of its worth must surely result in substantial improvement of its Position .in this respect. The state of Ohio haa a duty in reference to medical education and publi c health, the performance of which is made comparatively simple by the appropriate location at Columbus of the most important of its three state universities. As for the rest, it is a question of money and ideals. The plant of the Starling-Ohio school can probably be readily secured. its educational value though not large may be readily increased; its laboratories could be easily consolidated, remodeled, and reorganized under trained teachen with paid assistants. On the clinical side, the diculties are more serious, though not improbably the present .Protestant Hospital could be developed into a good teaching hospital if the state supplied the necessary funds. The problem of procuring clinical teachers of modern type would stin remain. The city of Cincinnati seems definitely committed to the project of a municipal university. Coincident!y, the building of the new municipal hospital furnishes an unusual opportunity to its medical department. A municipal university has two oh-