but they seldom have any knowledge worth while concerning educational theory. An as sistant or teaching fellow in almost any univer sity department of education would be of more use in a really conscientious medical school than the wealthiest and most dignified of these committees.
The principles of pedagogic fatigue, of over work, and of under-recreation are ignored in most medical schools, with a consequent great waste of mental energy. As has already been hinted, the medical student needs normal recre ation as much as any other student, if not more. A course in the economics of learning should he given in the first semester of every medical freshman year.
This suggests medical psychology in general. The everyday psychology of the emotions, for example, especially in relation to the functions of the body and its growth, should be studied and even understood by every medical man while yet a student. The present writer hap pens to be one of the early ones to say this, namely in Science in July 1901. Medical psy It is distinctly disclaimed that in the fol lowing remarks there is any intention of find ing "fault" with the present and bettering methods of medical education. This mode of discussion is the most convenient one, that is all, for pointing out the present pedagogic status of ustudyin' to be a doctor? It would be invidious to find fault with so good a sys tem without offering something to replace it; ideally to destroy without immediately after ward reconstructing the plan in a better form; and it may frankly be said that no such recon struction is contemplated in this little article, or, even hinted at.
Many medical schools need, and as much as anything else at all, except it be finance, an adequate survey by some wise and practical professional educator—one who would point out, for example, some of the inconsistencies and the lack of co-ordination between the dif ferent courses. "Visiting" committees fre
quently try to demonstrate to chance readers of their reports their own personal importance, chology was offered year after year, the Tufts College 1901-02 catalogue-announcement of this pioneer course being as follows: "Normal medical psychology — An optional course in normal medical psychology will be given to the fourth-year class in weekly lectures during the first half-year. Its aim is to discuss in their general relations certain topics of great practical importance to the medical practi tioner: such topics for example as suggesta bility and hypnosis, temperament, mood, the numerous habits, sexual mental differences, will-power, the emotions, pain and pleasure. Knowledge of subjects such as these prepares the student better to understand his patient as an individual and so better to treat his disease. But, in addition to this, the chief value perhaps of such information, the lectures will afford a brief basis of general psychology, which will tend to make the mental phenomena of the dis eases of the mind and nervous system more easily understood" (Professor Dearborn).
In nearly a score of years the curiously in herent materialism of the medical schools has begun to soften, without a doubt, and to-clay some of the very best medical colleges realize practically that education, any kind of educa tion, that has ignored the study of mind and motive and behavior is incomplete and false in quite the most fundamental kind of way. This common lack of adequate psychology, however, seems still to be the chief pedagogical defect of medical education—man is both mind and body.
Whatever just criticism may be made of American medical education, it still remains the best in the world, its monetary wealth having put it practically ahead even of the famous old schools of England.