(18) Illinois Postgraduate School. A stock company.
Entrance requirement: The M.D. degree.
Attendance: 6 to 8 at any given time.
Teaching staff: 36, of whom 26 are professors, 10 of other grade.
Resources available for maintenance: Fees.
Laboratory facilities: Practically none.
Clinical facilities: The school offers courses at the West Side Hospital, a private institution of 86 beds occupied mostly by surgical cases. There is a large dispensary.
Date of visit: December, 1909.
General Considerations
The city of Chicago is in respect to medical education the plague spot of the country. The state law is fairly adequate, for it empowers the board of health to establish a standard of preliminary education, laboratory equipment, and clinical facilities, thus fixing the conditions which shall entitle a school to be considered reputable. In pursuance of these powers, the board has made the four-year high school or its equivalent the basis, and has enumerated the essentials of the medical course, including, among other things, clinical instruction through two annual terms.
With the indubitable connivance of the state board, these provisions are, and have long been, flagrantly violated. Of the fourteen undergraduate medical schools above described, the majority exist and prepare candidates for the Illinois state board examinations in unmistakable contravention of the law and the state board rules. These schools are as follows: (1) Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery (Valparaiso University), (2) Hahnemann Medical College, (3) Hering Medical College, (4) Illinois Medical College, (5) Bennett Medical College, (6) Physio-Medical College of Medicine and Surgery, (7) Jenner Medical College, (8) National Medical University, (9) Reliance Medical College, (10) Littlejohn College of Osteopathy. Of these, only one, the National Medical University, has been deprived of "good standing" by the state board. Without exception, a large proportion of their attendance offers for admission an "equivalent," which is not an equivalent in any sense whatsoever; it is nevertheless accepted without question by the state board, though the statute explicitly states that it can exact an equivalent by "satisfactory" examination. In the case of the night schools,[1] for instance, one or two years' requirements are satisfied
- ↑ Even supposing the night schools enforced an entrance standard and actually provided laboratories and hospitals of the right kind, the teaching of anything but didactic medicine at night is practically impossible, because : (1) The time is too limited. The day school is in operation all day long and the student has his evenings for study; the night school can at most secure three or four hours when the student is already physically fatigued. (2) Laboratory work by artificial light is bound to be unsatisfactory, even if the lighting is good, which is not usually the case. (3) Hospital clinics, operations, etc., must be very limited at night, when the interest of the patient requires that he be allowed to rest. Children's diseases cannot be studied at night at all. (4) The situation is rendered even more absurd by the fact that, in addition to all these handicaps, the night school student frequently has to make up some conditions in preliminary studies.
