Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/622

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

beyond this, mechanical engineering, with space for enlargement. This expansion will be towards the back of the grounds and towards the railway. Near this will be placed the laboratories that involve the handling of very heavy weights and the power plant.

Coming again to the esplanade the buildings that surround the minor court to the east will be devoted to general studies and biology, the latter occupying the inner wing parallel with the esplanade. Chemistry will occupy the long building on the farther side of the great court and mining, engineering and metallurgy will occupy the northeast corner. Electrical engineering finds its place behind the general library, and this situation will permit its incomparable collection of books to be essentially a part of the general library.

THE POSITION OF PROFESSORS IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

The Johns Hopkins University has played a great part in the development of higher education and scientific research in the United States. When Johns Hopkins established a university in Baltimore, he presumably had in mind an institution for boys of Maryland and the south such as Princeton or Amherst, but through the initiative of its first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, a university was created of the kind that has given Germany its leadership in scholarship and research. Each of the first professors—Gildersleeve in Greek, Sylvester in mathematics, Rowland in physics, Remsen in chemistry, Martin in physiology—was a man of distinction called to advance his science in his own way. Buildings, administration and routine teaching were subordinated to the personality of such men.

An advance of equal importance was made by the same university when the medical school was opened in 1893 and placed on a true university basis. Chiefly under the guidance of Dr. William H. Welch a faculty of distinguished men was brought together, and only students—including women, it may be noted—were admitted who were adequately prepared. At that time nearly all the medical schools in the United States were proprietary institutions conducted by the professors for the financial profit which the connection gave them in their practise. The Johns Hopkins University placed the laboratory sciences—physiology, anatomy and pharmacology—on a proper basis, and Dr. Welch led the way in this country in giving pathology a similar status. The clinical chairs were also filled by men of distinction, such as Dr. Osier and Dr. Halstead, and the medical school and the hospital formed an integral institution.

Other universities, notably. Harvard, have followed the lead of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and remarkable progress has been made in medical education and research in the United States in the thirty years which have elapsed since the opening of the school in Baltimore. But in this country, as in Great Britain, and to a large extent in Germany and France, the professor who teaches in the medical school and has charge of the wards in the hospital, receives no salary or a nominal salary for these services and earns his living by his private practise. A few exceptional men have the force of character which enables them to limit their practise to eases which it is desirable for them to see in the interest of their university work. As a rule, however, the reverse holds and the university and hospital position is sought and used to promote a private practise and a large income. When a university professor travels forty-eight hours in the train for a consultation, one may be pretty sure that it is for the fee rather than for the service or for the experience.

At the present moment the Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital are undertaking to reform this unsatis-