no set time when candidates must appear. They drop in as they please, separately: now, before the medical school opens, again, long after; sometimes with their credentials, sometimes without them. There is no definite procedure. At times, the examiner concludes from the face of the papers; at times from the face of the candidate. The whole business is transacted in a free and easy way. In Illinois, for example, the law speaks of "preliminary" educational requirements; the state board graciously permits them to become subsequents. Students enter the medical schools, embark on the study of medicine, and at their convenience "square up"[1] with one of the examiners. An evening call is arranged; there is an informal talk, aiming to elicit what "subjects" the candidate "has had." He may, after an interview lasting from thirty minutes to two hours, and rarely including any writing, be "passed" with or without "conditions;" if with conditions, the rule requires him to reappear for a second "examination" before the beginning of the sophomore year; but nothing happens if he postpones his reappearance until a short time before graduation.[2] Besides, a condition in one subject may be removed by "passing" in another! "No technical questions are asked; the presumption is that the applicant won't remember details." Formerly, written examinations were used in part; but they were given up "because almost everybody failed." And it may at any moment happen that an applicant actually turned down by one examiner will be passed by another. The most flagrantly commercial of the Chicago schools[3] operate "pre-medical" classes, where a hasty cram, usually at night, suffices to meet the academic requirements of the Illinois state board: "the examiner's no prude, he'll give a man a chance," said the dean of one of them.
In Pennsylvania there was until quite lately no high school requirement by law; but recent legislation fixes the high school or its equivalent, on which the better schools had previously agreed, as the legal minimum. Its value has hitherto varied. In the first place, the examiners have accepted three-year high school graduates: "They come every day and are not turned down." In the second place, the alternatives in the matter of studies are so many that he must indeed have had narrow op-
- ↑ Quotation marks indicate throughout words taken down on the spot in the course of interviews with officials.
- ↑ New York, while dealing strictly with applicants for practice who have been educated in New York state, deals somewhat more leniently with the outsider. The New York law provides that to be "registered as maintaining a proper medical standard," a school must, among other things, "require that before beginning the course for the degree, all matriculates afford evidence of a general preliminary education equivalent to at least a four-year high school course," etc. (Handbook 9, April, 1908, p. 45.) As a matter of fact, a student who received his degree from a school on the accredited or registered list (ibid., pp. 48-70) may, on applying for registration in New York, find his preliminary education to have been below the New York standard. In certain circumstances, he may be allowed to make good his defects, provided they are of limited scope. He is thus bringing his "preliminary" education up to standard, after he has received his M.D. degree. This is a concession that the New York Education Department makes to the loose educational administration of other states. It is to be hoped that after due notice given it may be discontinued. The offending schools may very properly be excluded from the list.
- ↑ Bennett Medical College, Illinois Medical College, Jenner Medical College, Chicago Night University, Reliance Medical College.
