and bacteriology. The laboratory of the state board of health is in the department. There are a small museum and a small departmental library.
Date of visit: November, 1909.
OKLAHOMA CITY: Population, 49,899.
(2) Epworth College of Medicine.[1] Organized 1904. A stock company, nominally the medical department of Epworth University.
Entrance requirement: Nominal.
Attendance: 51.
Teaching staff: 42, of whom 28 are professors, 14 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees, amounting to $4285.
Laboratory facilities: These are hardly more than nominal: a little apparatus hasbeen procured for each of the several subjects, but all is disorderly and neglected.
Clinical facilities: Clinics are held in a private hospital, where perhaps 30 beds, mostly surgical, are available.
There is no school dispensary.
Date of visit: November, 1909.
General Considerations
The new commonwealth of Oklahoma may, if wise, avoid most of the evils which this report has described; for though they have already appeared, they have not taken deep root. Immigration—of physicians, among others—has been so rapid that the state has easily three times as many doctors as it needs. They pour in from the schools of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago. If, however, the state wishes a high-grade supply only, it must speedily define a standard such as will (1) suppress commercial schools,—as, for example, that now nominally belonging to Epworth University,—and (2) by the same action exclude inferior doctors trained elsewhere. Having done this, only an institution with considerable resources, derived either from taxes or from endowment, will even attempt to conduct a medical school in the state : which is as it should be.
The state university is of course marked out for the work. Its present modest beginning must be developed. Perhaps it will have at once to occupy Oklahoma City with a clinical department so as to obtain control of the field; though, if its sole right could be established without that, the project might well be delayed for a time. A good medical school is so costly that a new university does not want to anticipate the responsibility. Possible expenditures on such a department have in a way been crippled in advance by the absurd duplication of state institutions. There are
- ↑ As this report goes to press, it is stated that this school has been consolidated with the medical department of the state university, which thus becomes a complete school of the divided type.
