the University of Pennsylvania and advanced them to the classes to which they had been denied promotion by the teachers who knew them best; at the same time the Jefferson Medical College[1] itself accepted and in the same way advanced failures from New York University and the University of Pennsylvania; Tufts admits as "specials" students failed at Dartmouth, Queen's (Kingston, Ontario), and the Medico-Chirurgical of Philadelphia; the medical department of the University of Illinois (College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago) fairly abounds in rejected students from other schools, and in emigrated students from the low-grade institutions of Chicago and elsewhere; of the same character is a large part of the enrolment of the medical department of Valparaiso University. Failures from Ann Arbor are regarded as worthy of advancement by Northwestern (Chicago). The Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore gives time and subject credit—after "examination," of course—to failures turned out of the University of Buffalo, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Jefferson Medical College, and Yale; the University of Maryland is equally indiscriminate, advancing to the classes which they had failed to reach students from most of the same institutions and some from the local College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Baltimore Medical College, besides. Other Jefferson Medical failures, not to be found in the two Baltimore schools just named, should be looked for in the Baltimore Medical College, together with failures from Tufts, Long Island Hospital Medical College, etc. The upper classes of two Baltimore schools — the Maryland Medical College and the Atlantic Medical College—are largely recruited by emigration from other schools;[2] the latter of these had (1908-9) a senior class of 31, a freshman class of 1,—and every member of the senior class had been admitted to advanced standing from some other school.[3]
Is this the best that can be done? Will the actual enforcement of a real and adequate standard starve any section of the country in the matter of physicians?
The question can be answered without guesswork or speculation. The south requires something like 400 doctors annually.[4] How high a standard can it enforce, and still get them? In the year 1908-9 there were 15,791 male students in four-year high schools in six southern states,[5] —Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Vir-
- ↑ This institution, like others, admits to advanced standing a considerable number of students from schools whose entrance requirements are much below its own; e.g., in the session above referred to, there were several students from the medical department of Fort Worth University, whose entrance requirement is nominal; from the University of Oregon, College of Physicians and Surgeons, San Francisco, Keokuk, Denver and Gross. At the same time, it deals severely with its own student body, for it refuses promotion annually to a large number, who emigrate chiefly to Baltimore.
- ↑ Mississippi Medical College, Meridian, was similarly recruited.
- ↑ Among other schools guilty of advancing students to whom promotion had been refused by their own schools may be mentioned: College of Physicians and Surgeons, Atlanta, Georgetown University (Washington, D. C.), Denver and Gross, University of Colorado, George Washington University, Milwaukee Medical College
- ↑ The former secretary of the Southern Medical College Association calculated that 300 would suffice.
- ↑ For these figures we are indebted to a painstaking census conducted by the secondary school inspectors maintained in these states by the General Education Board.
