charge of full-time instructors, for whose original work splendid provision has been made in laboratories of ideal construction and admirable equipment. McGill is in respect to full-time teachers somewhat less fortunate; but its great museum, recently much damaged by fire, proves that genuine enthusiasm may succeed contrary to all the established rules of the game. In both institutions the shortcomings of the student body, instead of excusing perfunctory work, have rather been regarded as an obstacle to be overcome, a condition to be met. The students have had little high school science: all the more reason, then, to provide excellent laboratories, skilful teachers, abundant assistants. In keeping with effective performance are their modesty and candor. The number of "greatest anatomists" and "greatest pathologists" teaching on small salaries in obscure places in the United States, and of laboratories "as good as Johns Hopkins," is nothing less than staggering. Nor is a boastful pride in mediocrity lacking even in institutions of some real merit. At Toronto and McGill one hears in the medical schools no such bravado. There they deprecate the defects, which they hasten to show for fear they may escape notice. The absence of competition[1]—be it business competition between schools conducted for profit, or academic competition between endowed or tax-supported institutions, mad to "make a showing” — may perhaps be responsible for their more guarded utterance and more assured ideals.
Perhaps a dozen institutions in the United States belong with greater or less right to the category under consideration. Regard being had to the quality of the student body, to the number of full-time teachers and assistants, and to the adequacy of laboratories, museum, and library, the best of them, in respect to the first and second years, are New York University, Syracuse,[2] Northwestern University, Jefferson Medical College (Philadelphia), Tulane University (New Orleans), St. Louis University, the University of Texas, handicapped though some of them are in one respect or another by resources inadequate to the ambition and competency of their faculties and by a student body of somewhat uneven composition. St. Louis University affords an excellent example of a brave, uphill contest, by no means barren of result. Unable for the moment to do all it wishes, it has, like a good general, concentrated its effort at critical points. It secures a pervasive scientific atmosphere in the first two years through the intensive cultivation of anatomy and physiology. The departmental head of the former subject stipulated that his routine work be kept in close bounds; with wise liberality he has been provided with an assistant professor, a draughtsman, and a competent helper; the productive department thus created has invigorated the entire school on the laboratory side.
To the schools just described we must look for such further facilities in high-grade medical education as the country still requires. Their ideals are correct; they lack only the means; and these they have already in comparative poverty shown the ca-
