MEDICAL PEDAGOGY. The theory of education in its application to medicine still is mostly traditional, like many of the subjects it includes, for the pedagogy of the great num ber of medical schools has no steady, carefully arranged and planned-for, fought-for, curric ulum based on personal and educational psychology and knowledge of the modes in which a young (or old) person learns. Both the method and the curriculum at present are largely traditional, like much of medicine in general.
The origin of this method has a certain amount of historic interest. As every one knows, a century ago and less the becoming "doctor" received all that he knew of medicine before approaching his victims from long and intimate attendance on one or more, usually one, more or less successful practitioners. It was the same condition as obtained and is still in use in the study of the law, only here the young man was more dependent on his "pre ceptor" than in the case of the "reader" and the old judge in his law office. The remnants of this old preceptor-system, as late as the year 1900, say, were to be seen in the medical schools even in New York City.
Some of the more ambitious and some also of the more lazy students joined a tutoring or "quiz" class in each of the important subjects of the curriculum; they were vigorously quizzed once or twice per week and enthusiastically "crammed" before the carefully.calculated ex aminations. Some students took in small classes, as many as six or eight of these pri vate courses, and the cost of each ranged from $5 to $25 for a year's quizzing. The preceptor, usually a college-bred, successful, wide-awake practitioner, was often young, always energetic, was called a "quiz-master," and, much admired by his students (to whom often he gave much personal and social care and help), he was at least tolerated by the colleges, already aware that their course was in a sad lack of recita tional reviews. Not infrequently the instructors held private quizzes.
When systematic laboratory work developed, largely in the richer medical schools, and reci tations began to be systematically held, this preceptor-system— employing a practitioner to be guide, philosopher and friend, as well as tutor— gradually disappeared, except as still maintained in or about all institutions of learn ing in some form or other. In this pedagogic
respect, then, the medical school tends con tinually to imitate more and more successfully the didactic methods of the university, which, of course, are ancient.
requirements for admission to and graduation from colleges holding membership in the Association of American Medical Col leges are 14 units of high school work and two years (60 semester hours) of college work.
Colleges may reduce the number of hours la any subject not more than 20 per cent, provided that the total number of hours in a division is not reduced. Where the teaching condiuow in a college are best subserved, the subject may he, for teaching purposes, transferred from one division to another. When didactic and labors tory hours are specified in any subject, laborr tory hours may be substituted for didactic hours.
Women in During the past year there were 581 women studying medicine, or 29 less than last year, but 15 more than in 1916. The percentage of women to all medical students is 4.3, a percentage approximating those of previous years. This is true also in regard to women graduates. There were 106 women graduates this year, 47 less than last year and 28 less than in 1916. Of all the women matriculants, a smaller percentage were in at tendance at the two medical colleges for women, while 511 (87.9 per cent) were matricu lated in the sixty coeducational colleges. From the two women's colleges there were 12 gradu ates while 94 secured their degrees from co educational colleges. This increase of women students in coeducational colleges is not sur prising, since in recent years some of the lar gest and oldest medical schools, as Columbia, Tulane, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard (and McGill University in Canada), have thrown open their doors to women." (Journal American Medical Association, Vol. 7, No. 7, 17 Aug. 1918).