Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/274

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256
MEDICAL EDUCATION

(9) St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons. Organized 1869. An independent institution.

Entrance requirement: Nominal.

Attendance: 224.

Teaching staff: 49, of whom 25 are professors, 24 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees only, amounting to $16,035 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: The school occupies a badly kept building, the inner walls covered with huge advertisements. A single ordinary laboratory is provided for chemistry; there is a make-believe laboratory for experimental physiology; for the school owns the equipment stipulated by the state board, though the dust-covered tables do not indicate use. Rows of empty reagent bottles are also to be seen. The "museum" consists of some cheap photographs and drawings and a few badly preserved wet specimens,–all carefully arranged so as to occupy as much space as possible. Microscopes appear to indicate a laboratory of pathology or bacteriology; but the "individual lockers" were empty. It was explained that "students have to bring slides, holders, and cover-glasses with them, for they furnish their own and keep them at home." Anatomy was "over"—only empty tables were found in the dissecting-room, the sole access to which is by way of a fire-escape.

Clinical facilities: A small, poorly lighted, badly ventilated, and overcrowded hospital is part of the school building. Its operating amphitheater is good. Clinics of slight value are also held at the City Hospital. A few other opportunities of inferior importance are obtained in the usual way.

A dark and dingy suite of rooms serves for a dispensary. The room devoted to gynecology, for instance, is without a window, and contains no equipment except a deal table covered with a sheet.

The school is one of the worst in the country.

Date of visit: April, 1909.

(10) Barnes Medical College. Organized 1892. An independent institution.

Entrance requirement: Less than a high school education.

Attendance: 124.

Teaching staff: 64, of whom 39 are professors, 25 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees only, amounting to $12,400 (estimated).

Laboratory facilities: A huge "chemical laboratory, the largest in the world devoted to medical education," is the most striking feature; its equipment suffices for elementary work only; another large room with ordinary equipment is devoted to bacteriology, histology, and pathology. A physiological laboratory is equipped