The first floor of the college hospital building is used as a dispensary. Though its equipment is still slight, it represents a great advance over the conditions that preceded.
Date of visit: January, 1909.
(9) Meharry Medical College. Colored. Organized 1876. The medical department of Walden University.
Entrance requirement: Less than a four-year high school education.
Attendance: 275.
Teaching staff: 26, of whom 12 are professors, 14 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: $23,946, representing income from endowment of $35,000, subscription from the Freedman's Aid Society, and fees, the last item being $20,310.
Laboratory facilities: The school possesses fair laboratories for chemistry and physiology and highly creditable laboratories for bacteriology, histology, and pathology, the outfit including animals, microscopes, microtome, and pathological material in excellent order. A separate frame building, well kept, is devoted to anatomy. The equipment and general conditions reflect great credit on the zeal and intelligence of those in charge of the school and its several departments.
Clinical facilities: These are restricted. The school has access to Mercy Hospital, 32 beds.
Date of visit: January, 1909.
General Considerations
The state of Tennessee protects at this date more low-grade medical schools than any other southern state. It would be unfair and futile to criticize this situation without full recognition of local conditions. A standpoint that is entirely in order in dealing with Cincinnati, Chicago, or St. Louis is here irrelevant. The ideals held up must indeed be the same; but their attainment is much further in the future. The amount of money available for medical education is small; the preliminary requirement must be relatively low. Practically all that can be asked of Tennessee is that it should do the best possible under the circumstances.
This it does not do. The six white schools value their separate survival beyond all other considerations. A single school could furnish all the doctors the state needs and do something to supply the needs of adjoining states as well. Low as the entrance standard must be, it has been made lower in order to gather in students for six schools where one would suffice. The medical schools solicit and accept students who have not yet made the best of the limited educational opportunities their home provide; and to this extent, not only injure the public health, but depress and' demoralize the general educational situation.
