guage is concerned, would absolutely bar them from admission to the ordinary high school.

The place to prevent the study of medicine, or other professional study, by such students, is at the very beginning of the work. An efficient preliminary examination would have prevented them from having wasted years in a vain attempt to master the deeper sciences before acquiring a mastery of the rudimentary branches.

Much improvement has been made in these matters within a few years past, partly because the American Association of Medical Colleges has raised the standard of admission, and partly because by the concerted action of the various state licensing boards, led on by the Illinois State Board of Health, steps were taken to refuse recognition to the medical graduates of any school not requiring a proper preliminary examination. If sufficient power could only be granted to the authorities mentioned, the matter would be easily settled.

But the standard is still too low, and, from the best information that I can obtain, I judge that it is no higher in the other professional schools, if the average be taken. The real secret of the matter lies in the fact that many of the schools in question depend largely for their existence upon the fees received from students, and, unfortu nately, teachers are apt to look with great leniency upon any shortcomings as to preliminary education in applicants who are able to pay lecture fees. Johns Hopkins University, with a boldness born of large endowments as much as of high aims, requires the equivalent of the B. A. degree for entrance to her medical school. To the best of our knowledge, few other schools require more than the equivalent of the ordinary high school diploma, and more than ninety per cent of the American medical colleges require much less than this; and, as a whole, the condition regarding the schools of law and theology is but little better.

As regards the holding of the bachelor's degree as a prerequisite for admission to professional study, it should be understood upon the threshold, that, if any great proportion of those studying medicine are to meet such a requirement, it can be only by such a shortening of the course for the bachelor's degree as shall enable students to enter upon medical study at nineteen or twenty years of age. The constant falling off in the proportion of college-bred men in the medical department of Harvard University during the past dozen years teaches us that this must be so, if we would attract these desirable candidates to our ranks.

The time has certainly gone by, in my opinion, when we can reasonably ask of candidates for professional courses many years' study of Latin and Greek. Before the present development of science there were fewer studies demanding the student's attention, and these

branches undoubtedly filled an important place in education, as did the higher mathematics. Not that, in any way, these things are objectionable now, but it is obvious that they cannot all be required without making the start in the business of life too late; and, to most of us, this is most important.

Concerning all mathematics beyond the ordinary college course in trigonometry, if we except something in the way of astronomy, we may speak as we have of advanced Latin and Greek, for, however valuable they may be, there is not time for them in this age.

The plan suggested some years since, by the faculty of Harvard Medical School, of granting the degrees of A. B. and M. D. after a combined course lasting seven years, thus saving a year to the student, is, I think, a good one, but not sufficiently radical. Even this modification met with no support from the university authorities.

My own suggestion would be, that, for medical study at least, the preparatory course, regardless of the degree to which it may lead, should contain not over two years' study of either Latin or Greek, and no mathematics beyond the point indicated. A portion of the time saved could be much better spent in the acquisition of a speaking knowledge of German and French, which are of infinitely more importance to the physician than the studies indicated, and, I think, equally valuable as elements of proper training. Natural sciences, and especially general chemistry, which will soon be required for entrance to the better medical schools, will also need attention beyond the point reached at present.

Such a course as indicated, which would furnish a really liberal training, whether it led to the degree of A. B., S. B., or otherwise, might be finished by the age of nineteen years, and would, I believe, meet the present requirements better than anything we have. As it is now, many students, discouraged at the time taken to obtain the college degree, leave after one or two years of study to enter the medical schools. The plan proposed is meant to be a step toward leading these men to complete their college work by offering a course equally valuable for professional study, which may be taken without the sacrifice of time incident to the present arrangement. Whatever the advantages of the latter, we cannot afford to assume a position which drives many of the best college-men from our ranks, because of the time consumed in getting ready for the work of a lifetime.

I have the honor of being a member of the American Academy of Medicine, the prime object of which was, at the time of its foundation, to encourage the taking of the degree in arts or its equivalent before entering upon the study of medicine. I do not wish to appear in the light of attempting to oppose such an end, for I am heartily in sympathy with it. I wish, rather, to try to indicate what steps we must

take, in my poor judgment, to avoid driving from our medical schools, and hence from our profession, many excellent men who cannot afford to study medicine as things are at present arranged, and who would, provided they did take up the study, come too late to their life work to make the best practitioners of the healing art. It is to be understood that we wish to train scientists, but that the thing of first importance in our labor is, that we shall so train them that they shall be able to work in harmony with their surroundings, to the attainment of the greatest good for the community, and not to the end that they shall be able to accumulate the greatest amount of abstract knowledge.

THE RELATION OF A COLLEGE COURSE TO THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS.

BY T. R. BACON, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

The subject of which I have undertaken to speak is one of the most perplexing problems which is now vexing those who have the interests of the higher education at heart. It is so complicated that I can hardly hope to do more than state it, and perhaps state one or two more principles which must govern its solution without undertaking their complete application. It may be said that the problem involves the whole theory of education; certainly in that phase of the theory which is just now engrossing attention, viz., the relations of liberal culture and specialization.

In order to understand fully the present conditions, it is necessary to recall some facts in the history of the higher education in America, the purpose for which our earliest colleges were founded, and how the first professional schools came to be. Without such knowledge in mind, it is impossible for us to apprehend the terms of the problem.

Our first colleges were founded for purposes of liberal culture; not for technical or professional education. While the orginators of Harvard and Yale had especially in mind the provision of an educated ministry, the curriculum was not molded with special reference to theological training, but rather with a view to such learning as would produce cultivated men, who might subsequently build up their professional training upon the broad basis afforded by the college course. The aim was to produce cultivated men without reference to their subsequent pursuits. On this principle the curriculum

was constructed. It consisted in the main of the ancient languages, mathematics, dialectics, and so much theology as was then considered an essential part of the education of a gentleman. When we consider the aim and the conditions of time and place, no one can think that the curriculum was ill-conceived.

The student, having graduated in the arts, then set himself to the study of his profession. Whether he chose theology, medicine, or law, the obvious, and, in fact, the only feasible, plan was to put himself under the tuition of some successful practitioner of the profession. A man who was distinguished both for his professional eminence and for his skill as a teacher would gather around him a little group of students, which really constituted a professional school. Such was the theological school that grew up at Bethlehem, Conn., whose pupils sat at the feet of Joseph Bellamy; such was the famous law school at Litchfield, opened in the latter part of the eighteenth century by Judge Tapping Reeve, and carried down well into the nineteenth by Judge James Gould. Such schools, of a more or less formal character, dotted the hills and valleys of New England at different times for parts of two centuries. Commonly they grew with the fame and power of a single teacher, declined with his declining years, and died with his death. The school at Litchfield was an accidental exception as regards permanence. What was thus true of New England-the cradle of American education—was true in varying degrees elsewhere, the variation being in a ratio to the general interest in education.

As these earliest professional schools were purely private, the terms of admission varied with the judgment or whim of the instructor. It was universally admitted that a college course constituted a proper basis for professional studies, but there was no power which could possibly restrain any man from receiving pupils who had not this qualification. The judgment of the instructor was the sole power which could determine the fitness of an applicant for professional instruction. If the applicant could not satisfy the instructor as to his fitness, it was easy for him to find another who was not so squeamish. The preliminary college course was rarely dispensed with in theology, somewhat oftener in law, very commonly in medicine. But whatever might be the practice, the theory was held with tenacity, that the proper training for a professional man was four years of humanistic study in college and a technical training of such length as circumstances might favor or require.

The rise of the professional schools from such beginnings was natural and easy, as was also their establishing of organic relations with the colleges. From an ephemeral school with a single instructor the transition was inevitable to a school in which two or more should

associate themselves to divide the work and the profits; and in this increase of the teaching force the principle of permanence was almost necessarily involved, as it was unlikely that the whole faculty would die on the same day. It was inevitable, also, that such schools should gravitate toward the colleges, and at last enter into close relation with them. This is what happened. Some of the professional schools which are a part of our older universities were originally started as more or less private enterprises, and were adopted by the institution on whose doorstep they were left by their parents. Others were organized in connection with the college. In either case, they carried over into this new relation the old characteristics, and in many of the professional schools of our own time we may trace some of the faults of their remote ancestors. For a long time after the professional schools were brought into these new relations, the requirements for admission were almost as vague as in the old days of the independent instructor. Indeed, the policy was commonly adopted of admitting any person who showed a pious desire, and allowing him to take his chances of profiting by such instruction as was given. It is only of late years that we have begun to see a considerable degree of strictness in the requirements for admission, and the steady tendency is toward a high standard in this regard. As we glance over the catalogues of some of our Eastern universities we find that some of the professional schools (a very few) require a college course, or its equivalent, as a condition of entrance. Such are the Harvard Divinity School and the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Others require a high school course or its equivalent, and others are satisfied with a preparation requiring much less time. It is but right to say, however, that these last-mentioned stand frankly upon the principle that it is well to take anyone who comes, and let him make good his position, if he can.

A good deal might be said for this principle were the means of ascertaining the pupil's progress in the school at all adequate. Unfortunately another inheritance of the professional schools from their forebears was an almost total lack of examinations worthy of the name. When professional students were private pupils, living under the eye, and often in the household, of their instructors, formal examinations were entirely unnecessary. When formal examinations were introduced with the full-fledged professional school, all the emphasis was laid upon the formality and none upon the examination. The older ones among us can remember the time when examinations in a professional school were regarded as a farce. This is a condition of things which is rapidly passing away. In our best professional schools, especially those which are attached to the leading universities, the examinations are of great and ever-growing strictness. It