General Considerations
Texas is indubitably a state destined to a great development; its educational institutions must from time to time be readjusted to take account of its expanded needs. It is neither wise nor possible to provide now for requirements that will a generation hence become imperative. Sufficient for the people of Texas to-day to meet in the most effective way possible their own needs.
There is now only one educational institution in the state capable of maintaining a medical school whose graduates deserve the right to practise among its inhabitants; there is only one medical school in the state fit to continue in the work of training physicians. That institution is the state university; the medical school is its department at Galveston. The other three schools are without resources, without ideals, without facilities, though at Baylor the conjunction of hospital and laboratory might be made effective if large sums, specifically applicable to medical education, were at hand,—which is not, however, the case.
There is no indication on the face of things that any of the three inferior schools can live through the dry period to the opportunities of the future. Their enrolment is small; and the state is badly overcrowded with just the kind of doctor that they are engaged in producing. Should the loopholes in the present state standard be stopped up, all three would quickly disappear.
The course of the state university needs to be carefully considered. Whether a college requirement will soon be wise is a question to be pondered. The institution has not yet exhausted the possibilities of the high school standard; its laboratories—admirable for undergraduate teaching—need further development on the productive side; its hospital must be enlarged; more effective teaching methods can be introduced into it; the dispensary is not yet effective. It is worth asking whether from the four-year high school basis the university will not be wise to get complete control of the field, driving out the low-grade schools, educating the people of the state to regard it as their main source of supplies in the matter of doctors and the active conservator of public health, before endeavoring to push ahead to a higher standard, which may not be so well adapted to local conditions in a relatively new country.
Meanwhile, to the outsider it seems a regrettable mischance that located the medical department away from the university. Were it placed at Austin, it would apparently gain in every way: the town is as large, and various state institutions there would strengthen its clinical opportunities; it would be easier to attract and to hold outsiders in teaching positions; the stimulus of the university would assist the growth of a productive spirit. Whether at Galveston the school will ever be creative is a question; should it become so, isolation increases the liability to slip back into an unproductive groove. Perhaps it is not yet too late for the people of the state to concentrate their state institutions of higher learning in a single plant.
