Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/234

216 (18). A stock company.

Entrance requirement: The M.D. degree.

Attendance: 6 to 8 at any given time.

Teaching staff: 36, of whom 26 are professors, 10 of other grade.

Resources available for maintenance: Fees.

Laboratory facilities: Practically none.

Clinical facilities: The school offers courses at the West Side Hospital, a private institution of 86 beds occupied mostly by surgical cases. There is a large dispensary.

Date of visit: December, 1909.

city of Chicago is in respect to medical education the plague spot of the country. The state law is fairly adequate, for it empowers the board of health to establish a standard of preliminary education, laboratory equipment, and clinical facilities, thus fixing the conditions which shall entitle a school to be considered reputable. In pursuance of these powers, the board has made the four-year high school or its equivalent the basis, and has enumerated the essentials of the medical course, including, among other things, clinical instruction through two annual terms.

With the indubitable connivance of the state board, these provisions are, and have long been, flagrantly violated. Of the fourteen undergraduate medical schools above described, the majority exist and prepare candidates for the Illinois state board examinations in unmistakable contravention of the law and the state board rules. These schools are as follows: (1) Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery (Valparaiso University), (2) Hahnemann Medical College, (3) Hering Medical College, (4) Illinois Medical College, (5) Bennett Medical College, (6) Physio-Medical College of Medicine and Surgery, (7) Jenner Medical College, (8) National Medical University, (9) Reliance Medical College, (10) Littlejohn College of Osteopathy. Of these, only one, the National Medical University, has been deprived of "good standing" by the state board. Without exception, a large proportion of their attendance offers for admission an "equivalent," which is not an equivalent in any sense whatsoever; it is nevertheless accepted without question by the state board, though the statute explicitly states that it can exact an equivalent by "satisfactory" examination. In the case of the night schools, for instance, one or two years' requirements are satisfied