Faculty of Medicine

“ Our excellent Faculty, in entire accordance with these views, commence their patient and laborious work with a sustained enthusiasm which recognises the difficulties in our way, but is resolved to conquer them. They share the large and liberal views of modern medicine. They belong to no ‘pathy,’ to no narrow and bigoted sect. They are members of that great catholic community of science which, from the ‘Father of Medicine’ onwards, in every age and country, under the most diverse practical forms, has sought for truth through observation, experiment and calm deduction ”

“ A medical school is defined as a medical school or college which requires a previous examination for admission to its courses of study, and which requires for granting the degree of “M.D.” attendance on at least three courses of lectures of six [176] months each, no two of said courses to be held within one year, and having a full faculty of professors in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, toxicology, pathology, hygiene, materia medica, therapeutics, obstetrics, gynæcology, principle (sic) and practice of medicine and surgery, and clinical instruction in the last two named. ”

“ Medical science comprises several branches, of which the following are the principal; viz., Anatomy, Surgery, Materia Medica, Chemistry, the Theory and Practice of Physic. On these subjects, lectures are given in several colleges and universities in Europe, and in the United States. In this country, an attendance on two regular courses of lectures entitles the student to the degree of Doctor of Medicine, provided he can sustain with sufficient ability, an examination before the professors, or, as they are usually termed, the medical faculty. ”

“ Medicine also has its eminent representatives, who not only give splendour to the medical faculty of the University, but also exercise a most beneficial influence on the reform of the town's sanitary arrangements. ”

“ The only branches of medical science, for the teaching of which special departments have not yet been established, are pharmacology (action of drugs) and public health.
“As regards the third part of the medical curriculum, viz., instruction in the practice of medicine, the University had adopted the principle that the two or three years which its students must devote to their purely professional studies must be spent where the existence of great hospitals affords opportunities for seeing medical and surgical practice in all its branches. ”

“ The head of the department should be a man familiar with the problems of clinical medicine, trained preferably as a pathologist, and with sufficient knowledge of the possibilities of physiology and chemistry to apply the methods of these subjects to clinical problems. I say preferably a pathologist because the pathologist is more apt to combine clinical training with a knowledge of pathology, bacteriology and the principles of immunity than is the physiologist, chemist or pharmacologist, though any one of the latter might well head such a department. ”

“ But, while we have many special advantages for giving a comprehensive and practical course in the department of preventive medicine, it must not be thought that clinical medicine and surgery are to be neglected. On the contrary, we have ample advantages for clinical instruction in the various hospitals of the city and a corps of competent and experienced professors who are prepared to give practical instruction in all branches of medicine and surgery. ”

“ College Physiology and Hygiene.—Some colleges offer courses in physiology which are dilute presentations of medical school work. Thus, in one course, the student may be taught something of human anatomy, physiology, hygiene and medical bacteriology, all of which may be useful for those who are not intending to study medicine. It is wholly undesirable for the medical student to take time from other college work for the sake of such courses. ”

“ These men were alive to the value of original investigation, their field offered too many opportunities to be neglected by scholars of their caliber, and it was therefore in the Medical School that the first research laboratories were developed. As the numbers in the Medical Department and its prestige increased, this influence grew, so that it may be said that for many years the strongest impulse toward research and the highest scholarship, particularly in the new fields of science, came from the men of the Medical Faculty. ”

“ If, then, the laboratory and the hospital are the tangible means of progress in medicine which our universities offer, how may research in the university be best served and what advantage does the university gain by fostering research? ”

“ The entrance requirements were simple; a fair high school education, with Latin and Greek sufficient for the understanding of medical terms. For graduation, at least three years' study with a reputable physician was required; but this might include the two six-month courses of lectures which comprised the work of the Department. Even this very slender medical preparation was not required of college graduates, or of students who had already practised medicine four years, for whom one course was deemed sufficient. ”

“ The students of Medicine, who almost exclusively support the Professorship of Chemistry, are induced to do so in consequence of its application to Pharmacy and the different branches of Medicine, viz., Physiology, Pathology, Therapeutics, Materia Medica, and the Practice of Physic. ”

“ In Europe, the shortest period of study required for a physician's degree is four years, and at least ten months of each year must be spent in attendance upon the course of instruction. This course comprises not only lectures on the different branches of medicine, but thorough practical study of chemistry, botany, anatomy, etc., in the laboratory, gardens, museums, etc. Attendance on the hospitals is also required, where, for several years, the student is occupied with subordinate medical and surgical duty. ”

“ The same system of specialties is observed in the departments of a medical college. The professor who would assume to lecture in all the departments with equal ease and proficiency would be severely ridiculed by his colleagues; and yet it is just as absurd to suppose that the general practitioner can keep himself informed of the many new methods of treatment that are being constantly devised and adopted in the several departments of medicine and surgery.
PROGRESS IN MEDICINE.
In no other science is more rapid and real progress being made at the present time than in that of medicine. ”

“ In the latter, clinical medicine or medical practise seeks to lay hold of the acquisitions of experimental science and to utilize them in the interpretation of symptoms. The clinical or hospital laboratory approaches medical problems from the professional side and is thus an extension of medical practise into a territory where science and practise meet and shade into one another. Here the future physician should receive most careful training when he begins to direct his studies toward some branch of medicine. ”

“ It is clear, therefore, that a university and its antecedent, the school, may best co-operate with the medical school by making due provision for the study of those branches of knowledge which lie at the foundation of medicine.
At present, young men come to the medical schools without a conception of even the elements of physical science; they learn, for the first time, that there are such sciences as physics, chemistry, and physiology, and are introduced to anatomy as a new thing. ”

“ A person wishing to enter upon the practice of medicine must present to the board of medical examiners a diploma from some medical college in good standing as provided by sec. 1, or shall present himself to the said board for examination upon anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pathology, surgery, obstetrics, and therapeutics. ”

“ Statesmanship as well as professional ability is expected of physicians in the leading European cities, more particularly of those connected with health departments. There it is not felt that a medical degree is of itself a qualification for sanitary or health work. After the professional course, physicians must take courses in preventive hygiene and in health administration. Medical courses include such subjects as vital statistics, duties of medical officers of health, sanitary legislation, state medicine. ”

“ Its professors often came from a distance and had travelled extensively for purposes of study; they attracted patients of high rank from nearly every part of Europe, and these were generous in their patronage of the school. Students came from all over, from Africa and Asia, as well as Europe, and when abuses of medical practice began to creep in, a series of laws were made creating a standard of medical education and regulating the practice of medicine, that are interesting anticipations of modern movements of the same kind. ”

“ He was now engaged in the composition of his great Treatise on the Practice of Medicine, of which he speaks so modestly in the preface; and had an eye, moreover, to the professorship of that department in the University. The office of physician to the Hospital was, therefore, desired, not only for the more satisfactory investigation of disease and the acquisition of practical knowledge, but also for the further object of acquiring ease and readiness in clinical instruction ”

“ The former was planned to encompass the collections of materia medica, pharmaceutical equipment, and all material related to the history of pharmacy, toxicology, pharmacology, and biochemistry, as well as the Hall of Health which was opened November 2, 1957, and which emphasizes man’s progressing knowledge of his body and the functions of its major organs. [18] The latter Section was planned to include all that belongs to the development of surgery, medicine, dentistry, and nursing, especially in relation to hospitals. ”

“ For the second time in the history of the University a lady has been admitted to the degree of Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, and for the first time ladies have been admitted to the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Master in Surgery and Bachelor of Arts. ”

“ With the power and authority , under the direction and sanction of the regents , to teach the science and practice of medicine in all its branches by lecture, experiments , demonstrations , clinical instructions and examinations , and to recommend for graduation therein such students as may attain the requisite proficiency in the knowledge and practice of medicine . ”

“ After the year 1910 most of the large universities in this country will not admit further students to their medical departments unless they have a college degree or its equivalent, that is, unless they have devoted four years to college undergraduate work. It is generally understood, that in the last year of his undergraduate course the student who intends to take up medicine may elect such scientific studies in the college department as will obtain for him an allowance of a year's work in the medical school. ”

“ Realizing the necessity for a permanent change of occupation, he decided to devote himself to the scientific side of medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1886, then studied in the department of bacteriology in King's College, London, in the State College of Medicine, London, and in Pettenkoffer's Laboratory of Hygiene, Munich. ”

“ In 1826 he became professor of materia medica and botany in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and later was appointed professor of medical jurisprudence in the same institution, holding these two professorships for many years. He was one of the founders of the New York Medical and Physical Journal and of the New York Academy of Medicine, also president of the New York Medical Society, and for ten years one of the physicians to the New York Hospital. ”

“ Is it any wonder, then, that those of us who have the best interests of American medicine at heart are watching with careful solicitude the movement that is now reforming medical education in this country? The one hope of medical education is, and always has been, organic connection with a university. Real University Medical Schools, that is medical schools as the genuine Post-Graduate Departments of Universities with the fine training that they give, have opened our eyes to what is needed in medical education in this country. ”

“ No man can teach Pharmacy unless he has had some knowledge of the Practice of Medicine, and the application of Chemistry to Physiology; and the other branches of medical science above mentioned can only be taught by a chemist who understands them.
“The teaching of Chemistry in this University has hitherto been confined to the Professors of Medicine ”

“ The only difference between the schools is in the remedies employed, the size of dose administered, and the results attained. These are insufficient grounds for bitter sectarianism. We are all fellow laborers in the same field. Before us lies a boundless expanse for exploration. There are new conditions of disease to be learned, new remedies to be discovered, and new properties of old ones to be examined.
We do not deplore the fact, that there are different schools in medicine, for this science has not reached perfection, and they tend to stimulate investigation. ”

“ When we discover that three years of preparatory university work was required before the study of medicine could be begun, and four years of medical studies were required, with a subsequent year of practice under a physician's direction, before a license for independent practice could be issued, then the scientific character of the medical schools and therefore of the universities to which they were attached is placed beyond all doubt. ”