The situation is even clearer, in so far as it touches the rest of the country. We
estimate* that outside the south 1500 doctors annually graduated will provide for



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4S MEDICAL EDUCATION

. all the real and many imaginary needs. There are at this date something like 8000

Vpublic and over 1000 private high schools, so widely dispersed over the area under

>^ ^ consideration that on the average few boys need go over five miles to school.' In

\ y^ VV the public high schools alone there are enrolled 800,000 boys.' What excuse exists
^A-i ^'*'' ^<J^^iS under the high school? We con indeed do better than to accept aa the
^ y\ I basis of a medical education the high school "flaf" In the colleges, universities, and

t V \^ technical schools of the north and west, exclusive of preparatory and professional
departments, there were in 1908, 120,000* male students. The number swells with
unprecedented rapidity: long before the country has digested the number of doctors
now struggling for a livelihood, it will have doubled. Already in 1907, 903 of the
doctors graduated in that year held academic degrees; that is to say, fully one-half
of the number the country actually needed could conform to the standard that has
been urged, or better. There is at this moment absolutely nothing in the educational
situation outside the south that countenances the least departure &om the scientific
basis necessary to the successful pursuit of modem medicine.
