symptoms and treatment of diseases from the physicians to whom the care of health and life is intrusted. The profession must discourage unqualified men in their plans for hasty entrance into active practice and refuse to instruct them until they are able to understand the subjects they must study. The schools must improve their methods, extend their courses, and increase their requirements for admission and graduation. The movements in this direction have begun during recent years and are going on. The schools have advanced, through the sympathy of the people and the encouragement of the profession, until a writer familiar with the movement forward ventures the assertion that " a course of instruction which ten years ago was considered amply sufficient to enable the brains of Young America to digest the art and a handsome allowance of the science of a great profession, a course which received the indorsement of the leading men in the country, would now be disclaimed, if not openly despised, by any faculty having pretensions to standing." This is perhaps too enthusiastic. A calm and unprejudiced estimate of the relative present condition of education in medical colleges was recently given by William W. Green, M. D., president of the Maine Medical Association. He said: The medical colleges throughout the country have generally lengthened their lecture terms and enlarged the curriculum of study and in most cases are doing more thorough work. In many the standard for graduation has been raised, and a few require a certain amount of preliminary education as a prerequisite for matriculation. Most of the colleges have established supplemental courses of instruction under various names, which fill out the year, so that the student can, if he chooses, pursue his studies for the entire three years in the same institution. It is cause for congratulation and honest pride that, as compared with ten or fifteen years ago, better classes of men are annually graduated from the schools, and that the general tone and character of the profession has much improved and is still improving. * * * The report for 1881 of the regents of the University of the State of New York says: The most noticeable changes which have been brought about during the past year in regard to education have been observed in medical education. It is well known that, in common with medical colleges throughout the country, the terms of admission and of graduation in most of the medical colleges of this State have been lax and unsatisfactory. The regents note with great satisfaction a movement on the part of several of the more prominent of these colleges to insist on better preparation for entrance, more strict requirements as to attendance upon the medical instruction, and especially a more rigorous system of examination for graduation. It is gratifying to observe that in those institutions which have adopted the more rigorous system there is no indication of a falling off in the attendance, but on the contrary a healthy increase. This is an evidence that public sentiment is ready to demand a decided advance in the qualifications of those who are to be licensed as physicians and an evidence that those seeking to enter this profession have no desire to have the road made easy for them, but appreciate every well meant effort to give them a better training and a more advantageous start in their careers. TABLE XIV.- UNITED STATES MILITARY AND NAVAL ACADEMIES. In Table XIV of the appendix will be found the statistics of the examinations of candidates for admission to the United States Naval and Military Academies for the year 1881. TABLE XV.-DEGREES. Table XV of the appendix shows the number and kind of degrees conferred in course and honoris causa by the universities, colleges, and professional schools in 1881. The following summary exhibits the number of degrees of each kind and the grand total conferred by institutions in the several States, the District of Columbia, and Washington Territory: The number of degrees of all classes conferred in course was 12,093; honorary, 535. These were distributed as follows: In letters, 4,035 in course, 185 honorary; in science, 1,167 in course, 14 honorary; in philosophy, 376 in course, 49 honorary; in art, 29 in course, 2 honorary; in theology, 312 degrees and diplomas in course, 171 honorary; in medicine, 4,896 in course, 22 honorary; in law, 1,002 in course, 92 honorary. |