As a result we have nearly 100 fewer medics: schools, hut most of them doing serious work and 10,000 fewer medical students getting a better education. The medical schools which bear the names of universities are now actually under a university administration as a rule. In creased interest in medical education has brought about the enactment of a legal regula tion in many States requiring a fifth year of preparation for the practice of medicine which is to be passed in a hospital. The entrance re quirements are constantly growing higher and now two years of college work arc required as a preliminary to medical study in most places and a number of schools have adopted or are about to adopt the bachelor's degree as a pre requisite. Curiously enough this modern stand ard is nearly a replica of the old mediaeval re quirement that there should be three years preliminary study at the university before tak ing up medicine, four years at medicine and then a year of practice with a physician before the medical neophyte might practice for himself Fortunately our scientific developments in medi cal education were completed just in time to enable us to be independent of foreign medical teaching during the war and the magnificent de velopment of American surgery put us in a position to offer excellent opportunities for the higher study of medical and surgical problems from a thoroughly scientific standpoint • to students from Europe who after the war will find it impossible to go on with university studies under favorable circumstances over there because of the destruction wrought the war and the sad gaps in teaching staff: due to war losses involving so many of the progressive younger men.
Medical Education of The de velopment of medical education for women in America gave back to the world the opportuniry for feminine medical study which had beer freely granted in the Middle Ages and thee with so many other privileges was denied in modern times. The first woman student of medicine was Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell who after. being refused permission to study at most of the medical colleges in the country finalh secured the privilege at Geneva, N. Y.. when the faculty feeling sure that her application would be rejected put it before the students and thee i voted unanimously to allow it. She was grad uated in 1849. Her sister Emily was refused two years later at Geneva and Rush Medical College, •Chicago, was censured by the State Medical Society for receiving her for a terra She was graduated at Western Reserve, Cleve land. The women resolved to found medical colleges of their own. The first of these the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania wa; founded in 1850. It had a quasi predecessor in
the Gregory School of Medicine established to train women as midwives, founded in Boston in 1848 and lasting until 1874. The Woman's College of the New York Infirmary was opened in 1865 and closed in 1899 when Cornell opened its medical course to women students. The Women's Medical College of Baltimore was founded in 1882, that of Cincinnati in 1886 and that of Kansas City in 1895.
The University of California was a pioneer in opening its courses to women in 1869 and i was followed in this policy by all the universi ties of Western States. This development also included medicine so that the special need of medical colleges for women ceased in the West. When Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, opened its medical school in 1893 women were accorded the same privileges as men. Gradually preju dices disappeared and other medical schools opened their doors to women, but it was not until the great war brought home the need for physicians during and after the war that Har vard and Columbia removed the restrictions against women in their medical schools. No barriers to the medical education of women in the United States either in undergraduate or post-graduate work will remain after the war.
Bibliography,- Beck, 'Statistics of the Medical Colleges of the United States' (in Transactions of the Medical Society. N. Y., Vol. IV, Albany 1839) ; Davis, Nathan, 'His tory of Medical Education' (Chicago 1851) ; 'Medical Education in the United States' (Special Report, United States Bureau of Edu cation, Washington 1877) ; Bigelow, 'Medical Education in America) (Cantbridge University Press, 1871) ; Packard, 'History of Medicine in the United States) (Philadelphia 1902) ; Toner, 'History of Medical Education to The Revolu tion) (Bureau of Education, Washington 1874) ; Walsh, 'History of the Medical Society of The State of New York' (New York 1907) ; 'His tory of Medicine in New York 'State' (New York 1919) ; 'The Medicine of Our Fore fathers' (in Journal of the American Med ical Association 1913); Flexner, 'Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance ment of Teaching' (New York 1910); Gar rison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine' (Philadelphia 1913). For the ed ucation of women in medical science con sult Blackwell, Elizabeth, 'Pioneer Work in Opening The Medical Profession to Women' (New York 1895); Marshall, Clara, 'The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania' (Philadelphia 1894) ; Wollstein, 'The History of Women in Medicine> (Woman's Medical Journal, April 1908) ; Macy, 'Medical Women> (New York Medical Journal, 1916).