Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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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

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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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SYMPTOJIS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION. 31 is not a court inithe land but would issue a mmwlamus on such a showing. His conclusion was as follows : - Lct me sum up this whole matter, then, by saying that the objections to the proposed amendment are many, and, in my estimation, insuperable and unanswerable. I have shown, or endeavored to show, that it is contradictory to the letter i11 many places, and also to the general spirit of the code as it now stands, that it is grossly illogical, and in its reasoning is discreditable to the scholarship of this Associa- tion, that it is now, and must of necessity always be, inoperative, not only as a matter of every-day practice, but also by reason of certain well-defined legal limitations in which this Association' is without jurisdiction, that it is based upon a fallacious assumption, to wit, that teaching truth and science tends to build up and strengthen irregular and exclusive systems of medicine, that to establish the principle embodied in the amendment - that truth in medicine must not be taught to unbelievers - would prevent the teaching of truth in any department of human learning to skeptics and unbelievers, that the experiences of history are clear and convincing that error, slowly it may be, but surely, disappears before the promulgation of truth, that it is a part of the old-time policy of intolerance and persecution, whose only effect will be to build up and strengthen sectarian medi- cine, and finally, that, by the proposed course, we lay ourselves open to the charge of a want of faith in our own system, and confess our inability to compete with a school of medicine which we believe, both in theory and practice, to be largely based on error, or at all events, to state it as mildly as possible, on a misconception of the truth. By all these considerations, then, I appeal to you, gentlemen, to reach your conclusion with great care and deliberation, make your decision solely with the view of upholding the lasting honor of our noble profession, and take no step that can be construed by the world at large as a confession of a want of faith in the strength and per- petuity of rational medicine, but rather, with a far-sighted, wide- reaching, more generous, and an infinitely wiser policy, let us make a public profession of the faith that is in us by boldly declaring our willingness to educate, and thereby to elevate, every one up to that standard of truth before which error must ultimately and inevitably disappear. Do this, and we shall have no occasion to regret the work of to-day, for it will remove in a large degree the reproaches so often heaped on us for our intolerance and bigotry, and it will open up a new era of generosity and toleration in the treatment of exclusive and irregular systems of medicine. Do the opposite, and adopt this amend- ment, and- it is a stride centuries backward in the historic march of medicine, for it places us right alongside those old worthies -the As-