Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. try is the fact that no one of the factors of true progress is at work aloneg but all are Working together in appro- priate and helpful methods. In any enumeration of these movements a prominent place should be given to the agitations which in many of the States have lately secured, or are now aiming to secure, new legislation more effectively protective of the public against uneducated and unprincipled practitioners of medi- cine.1 This is a good cause, in which the State, the School, and the Profession have cordially and most beneficently co-operated. The precise measures for which legal sanc- tion lias been sought have differed in different States, and at successive stages of the agitation in the same State. Thus the bill now before the Massachusetts Legislature is quite unlike the unsuccessful one of 1878. Still all pro- pose measures far in advance of the old laws, and greatly aid the efforts of those who are laboring for a more thor- ough general and professional training of physicians, and for impartial licensing boards. Moreover, the very effort to secure the new enactments has had most liberalizing effects upon all branches of the profession as at present organized. It has led the antagonistic medical societies to recognize each other, and to assent to the recognition long ago accorded by the State. It has contemplated and demonstrated the possibility of educated men of different views in therapeutics sitting upon one and the same Board of Examination and Registration. It has caused men conventionally debarred from consultation in 1 Since 1875 acts of ever-increasing stringency have been passed in each of the British Provinces, in New Hampshire, Vermont, California, Alabama, Illinois, Texas, and other Statesg and laws modelled on the best of these are now under consideration in Iowa and several other States. The effect of the Illinois law in the flrst year was to cause some fourteen hundred quacks to leave the State, or quit practiceg while hundreds of other partially-educated practitioners have entered medical schools to get degrees. Circular of Health Department of American Social Science Associa- tion. January, 1880. -The Illinois law and extracts from the first annual report of the State Board of Health respecting its working may be seen in The New England Medical Gazette for 1879, pp. 110-116.

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SYIIIPTOMS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION. 27 Thus, while England has long looked to France as pos- sessed of the true theory and instrument of medical re- form, France has been looking to Germany as showing a better plan g while Germany, in turn, has looked with envy upon the power and commanding leadership of medical societies in the Anglo-Saxon realm. In this way the agitation for medical improvement completes a circuit, returning upon itself. In each of the leading countries of Europe the current sets one way only,- and that a hope- ful one 3 but, studied in international relations, it resembles a vortexlquite as capable of sucking down existing excel- lences as of casting up superior substitutes? Three years ago in these pages, in a paper entitled The Gateways to the Learned Professions, it was shown that the entire and exclusive committal of the custody of these gateways, either to the Profession itself, or to the Scholastic Authorities by which its recruits are trained, or to the State, is fraught with evil, and that only by the co-operation of all these forces can the best results be attained? Precisely this is the impressive lesson of the attempted medical reforms now undergoing discussion in Great Britain, France, and Germany. And one of the fundamentally hopeful things characterizing present move- ments for the improvement of the profession in this coun- 1 As to the system-if such it can be called--of the United States, none seem so poor as to do it reverence. Every one here seems dissat- isfied, and abroad, while English writers are pointing out the superiority of the French or German systems, and French writers are demanding less centralization on the English plan, we nowhere find the system of the United States held up as a model. fzimerican Journal of the Medi- cal Sciences, July, 1878, p. 175.5-But for the symptoms of improvement which we hope to bring out in this paper, we should fear lest our medical education soon cease to possess'the negative virtue of insignihcance, and come to be indicted in the forum of the world's opinion as a nuisance of international dimensions. Already some of the more philosophical stu- dents of civilization have discerned the dehauching influence of our ex- ample upon the ideals and methods of professional education in Europe. See, for example, La Critique Philosophiquc, Politique, Scientyique, Litte- raire. Paris, 1879, pp. 289, 290. Apropos of an article by Ch. Dollfus in Le Temps of Oct. 1, 1879. 2 Boston University Year Book, Vol. IV. pp. 17-28.

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SYMPTODIS IN IWIEDICAL EDCUATION. 29 the sick-chamberlto confer most freely and amicably in the lobby and green-room. It is hardly too much to say that it has inaugurated the disintegration of exclusivism in dogma and in fellowship, and begun to draw the one true and valid line of separation,-that between the ignorant and conceited on the one hand, and the broad and thoroughly trained on the other. A second auspicious movement to be noted 'is the rapid liberalizing of the profession and of the public mind in respect to the desirableness of affording women facilities for obtaining a medical education and for engaging in medical practice. Within a few months, the last of the State Medical Societies of Massachusetts has opened its doors to female candidates for membership.1 The Over- seers of Harvard University have voted, sixteen to ten, t' That, in the opinion of the Board of Overseers, it is expedient, that, under suitable restrictions, women be in- structed by Harvard University in its Medical School. Reviewing the president's late Annual Report, ff The Na- tion resignedly remarks: tt That the Medica-l School will before long be opened to women clearly appears. 2 A large selection from the varied and almost numberless illustrations of the world's progress in this direction is given by Dr. Chadwick, a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, in the able paper named at the head of the present article. How the battle was first won in England is well told by Mr. Stansfield. Another remarkably hopeful symptom came to the light at the last meeting of the American Medical Association. Ever since the people of Michigan saw fit to establish in their State University a new course of training acceptable 1 In view of an alleged legal difilculty in the way of the proposed method of bringing about the change, the Councillors voted at their Feb- ruary meeting to reconsider. This means a trifling delay, but by no means defeat. , 2 The remarks of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal upon the sub- ject, and especially its unwarrantable and offensive personal reflections upon the President of Harvard Univc1'sity fJan. 22, 18801, betray far less of sweet reasonableness, and of resignation to the inevitable.