Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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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.

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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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30 Bosroiv UNIVERSITY YEAR Booze. l to the second State Medical Society, and to offer to stu- dents a university freedom of election between the two, the members of the first State Society have been not a little disturbed. To narrate all their efforts to compel those of their number who constituted the original Medical Faculty at the University to refuse to serve the State, unless they could monopolize the work of instruction as at first, would require much space. Enough, that on June 6, 1878, at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, - a body composed of delegates from the so- called 4'regular societies and colleges in the United States,-the quarrel culminated in the proposal of the following amendment to paragraph first, Article I. of the second division of the Code of Ethics of the body :I And hence, it is considered derogatory to the interests of the public and the honor of the profession for any physician or teacher to aid in any way the medical teaching or graduation of persons, knowing them to be supporters and intended practitioners of some irregular or exclusive sys- tem of medicine. This being a proposal to amend the organic law of the Association, it was laid over, under the rules, for one year. At the last meeting of the Asso- qiation, held at Atlanta, Ga., May 7, 1879, the proposed amendment was taken from the table, and put upon its passage. During the discussion Professor Dunster deliv- ered the able and extended argument cited at the head of this paper. In it he opposed the amendment both on technical and general grounds. One of his arguments was thus expressed: But it may be inoperative in another respect,--a purely legal one. For if a student who is a supporter of 'some irregular and exclusive system of medicine,' to quote the words of the amendment, were to apply for admission to any college holding a charter from the State, and comply with their published requirements, and were to be refused admission, he could, if so disposed, compel the college to admit him 5 for I am informed by one of the most eminent jurists in the country, that there