General Considerations
The medical department of Tulane University is one of a very few existing southern schools that deserve development. The south is in general overcrowded with schools with which nothing can be done; for they are conducted by old-time practitioners, who could not use improved teaching facilities if the were provided. The case is different at Tulane. Its recent reorganization has put imported men of modern training and ideals in charge of the most important departments, laboratory and clinical. There is no question that if properly supported, they will quickly bring the institution to a position of commanding influence. To achieve this result, the school must be freed of the necessity of so largely relying upon fees for its support. For once rendered by endowment comparatively independent, it can use its superior opportunities as a lever to brace up the general educational situation of the southern states. It could compel those seeking these opportunities to improve their preparation at least to the full limit of local possibilities. The urgent need of the south is an object lesson in medical education, such as will prominently embody what is sound and desirable; and such an object lesson the medical department of Tulane could readily be made: it possesses already the laboratories and the hospital; it requires only the means that will enable it to utilize them fully.
Flint Medical College is a hopeless affair, on which money and energy alike are wasted. The urgent need in respect to the medical education of the negro is concentration of resources slender at best on a single southern institution. Much the most favorably situated for this purpose is Meharry Medical College at Nashville.
Maine
Population, 724,508. Number of physicians, 1198. Ratio, 1: 600.
Number of medical schools, 1.
BRUNSWICK-PORTLAND: (Population:[1] Brunswick, 2321; Portland, 58,512).
Medical School of Maine. Organized. 1820. A divided school, being the medical department of Bowdoin College.
Entrance requirement: Four-year high school diploma Or equivalent, ascertained by examination, conducted, however, under the auspices of the medical school, not by Bowdoin College, and below the college standard. Certificates are accepted far below standard in value.
Attendance: 81, 86 per cent from Maine.
Teaching staff: 35, 14 being professors, 21 of other grade.
- ↑ Census Bureau without data.
