will be still in the hands of the present writer, to whom communications are requested to be addressed, as well as books for review, etc.

Matters relating to the business of the Record will hereafter be addressed to Professors Callender and Maddin.

SHELBY MEDICAL COLLEGE.-CHANGE IN THE FACULTY.

PROFESSOR RICHARD O. CURREY has vacated the chair of Chemistry in this faculty by resignation. His resignation having been accepted, Professor Henry Erni was unanimously elected to fill the vacancy. Prof. Erni is a gentleman of high scientific standing. Having been known to the great Agassiz, while in Switzerland, as an analytical chemist of great ability, he was, by his recommendation, on his arrival in this country, placed as first analytical assistant in the laboratory at New Haven, Connecticut, which is under the direction of Professor Silliman. From both these gentlemen he holds high testimonials as to scientific merit.

He has since held the chair of Chemistry in the Medical and Literary Departments of the University of Burlington, Vermont, besides lecturing in various literary institutions. His marriage with a Southern lady determined him to make the State of Tennessee his home, and enabled the Faculty of Shelby Medical College to secure his valuable services, to the students in which institution his lectures will, we think, be both profitable and interesting.

A NEW MEDICAL COLLEGE.

WE have received the "First Annual Announcement of the Medical Department of the Lind University at Chicago, Illinois, for the College Session of 1859-60." This is the new organization resulting from the secession of Professor Davis and his friends from the faculty of Rush Medical College, Chicago, announced in our last number.

When Dr. Davis first devoted himself to the business of remodelling the system of medical education throughout the United States, he denounced the multiplication of new colleges and unrestrained competition as the beginning of evil-the origin of all the enormities which he undertakes through his agitation in the National Association to remedy. We are bound to suppose, therefore, that it is not without some great improvement in view that he is now engaged, for the second time in his

life, in the organization of another new one, especially when we are informed, by an article from Professor Brainerd's pen, that, so far from there being a demand for more colleges in Chicago, the united efforts of the faculty there have as yet not completed a museum and library for the college already existing.

Let us not be misunderstood. We are not opposed to an increase in the number of medical colleges. We do not look upon unrestrained competition as an evil, but Dr. Davis does. It is evident, therefore, that we are justified in calling upon him to show cause why he, who protests so earnestly against the multiplication of colleges, is always engaged in starting new ones.

To do him justice, he does state a case in answer to the summons, and, apart from the reasons above stated, we should open any document with interest which proposed a subject for consideration in which we felt as much concern as we do in the improvement of medical education. We have done so, and we will frankly say, that there are many things in it we like, which we will specify, but others which we deem fatal to the usefulness of the school, and which we shall just as candidly speak of.

We address ourselves to the pleasanter part of our task first. We have long advocated a succession of two courses instead of one course repeated, and we find this made a prominent feature in the Announcement. A Senior and a Junior Department are to be organized, consisting respectively of students attending their first and second course of lectures.

The lectures for the first course are Descriptive Anatomy, Physiology, and Histology, Materia Medica and Therapeutics, General Pathology and Public Hygiene, Inorganic Chemistry and Practical Anatomy, under the Demonstrator-the ordinary instruction of the dissecting-room, we pre

sume.

Those for the second course are, Principles and Practice of-Surgery, Surgical Anatomy, Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, Practice of Medicine, Organic Chemistry and Toxicology, Medical Jurisprudence, Clinical Medicine and Surgery in the hospital, and Dissections again.*

At first, on throwing an eye over the long list of professors, we supposed that a separate corps of professors was to teach the respective classes, but on examining the list we find that Dr. Rutter is an Emeritus Professor, and therefore it is to be supposed that he does not teach; and again, that the Professors of Inorganic Chemistry and of Organic Chem

* Though we find dissections put in as included in both courses, we find, on turning to the Requirements for Graduation, that the student is not required to dissect more than one session.

istry and Toxicology are one and the same person. We do not say this in disparagement; it will be presently seen that we think the increase in the number of professors an evil rather than a good under all the circum

stances.

To return, however, to the plan of a double session. We have always advocated a double examination, the passing of that which takes place at the end of the first course being essential to the student's being received afterwards as a second-year student. This we consider essential to the whole plan, believing that without it the old one is better, as the average of medical students can be induced to study by nothing but the fear of an examination, the great majority of them not beginning to study in earnest till the first course of lectures is over; and as those who have been examined in this way are not to be examined in the first-year subjects at the final examination, there will be no security for their being acquainted with them at all; and among these are branches so indispensable as Anatomy, Chemistry, Physiology, and Materia Medica, in the programme now before us. In short, without this provision, the new plan will virtually provide no examination at all in elementary branches, as an examination which does not determine academical standing is virtually no examination at all-nothing better than the daily and weekly quizzes with which now-a-days most professors accompany their lectures. All that we find stated upon this subject is, that the students in the Junior Department "will be examined at the end of the term on the branches taught in the course, and if such examination be satisfactory, it I will be final for those branches." If not, we suppose they are to be examined in the subjects of both courses at the end of the second year, having received no additional instruction on the branches in which they were found deficient: not a very promising method for thorough grounding in the elementary, which are far the most important branches.

The absence of this provision we deem, then, fatal to the proposed scheme. In justice, however, to its author, we acknowledge that the adoption of such a provision will be an impossibility unless it be adopted in concert by all the medical colleges-a thing which cannot be done until the colleges have their own permanent council and organized association, apart from the agitations and spasmodic efforts of the American Medical Association. Such an organization we hoped to see grow out of the Teachers' Council which met at Louisville last May, but all hopes of such a result were at once frustrated by the insane attempt, with Dr. Davis at its head, to throw back the matter into the halls of the Association, leaving all improvements to be accepted at the dictation of that body—a dictation which the body of medical colleges will never submit

to-not if the agitation which attempts to compel them to it be kept up for a century.

With every disposition to accord to Dr. Davis the credit of sincerity in desiring the improvement of our educational system, we must give him at the same time the credit of having been practically the worst enemy which that cause has had to contend against for the last ten years.

Another feature, and we have finished our notice.

The increase in the number of professors we consider in all respects the reverse of an improvement. As far as we can see behind the parade of names in the programme, there are ten actual working professors, the chairs not generally provided for separately being, 1. General Pathology and Public Hygiene; 2. Medical Jurisprudence; 3. A second surgical professorship.

1. General Pathology is so closely associated with the fundamental principles of Physiology that we have always considered those two sciences are best taught by one man: he who knows in what attitude the students have learned to contemplate the great principles of Physiology, is the only one who can tell the most advantageous method of presenting those of General Pathology. As for Public Hygiene, while we admit that it is very desirable that there should be in every large city physicians capable of giving sanatory counsel to the public authorities, (counsel, however, which is very rarely asked for, or acted upon when proffered,) we deem it preposterous to require a knowledge of it before granting a diploma, or to occupy in disquisitions upon such a subject the time which students would much more profitably devote to more elementary topics.

2. Medical Jurisprudence is made a separate branch, and assigned to a gentleman who, as he is designated H. G. Spafford, Esq., is, we presume, a lawyer, not a doctor. A fatal mistake, we think, for the facts and principles with which, under the head of Medical Jurisprudence, it is desirable for a physician to be acquainted, are matters on which the lawyer needs to be instructed by the physician, not the physician by the lawyer; they are nice and accurate points in chemistry, physiology, and obstetrics, which are at present taught as collateral information by the professors of those departments. To occupy the time devoted to a whole season's course with such instruction on these matters as a lawyer can give, seems to us an appropriation of time and study that can be ill spared from the necessarily limited period of our medical curriculum.

3. The division of the chair of Surgery between two professors still less recommends itself to our judgment, especially as both surgeons are to lecture in one session. Nothing but confusion, we should think, could

arise to the students; indeed, we can see no possible line of demarcation to separate two departments, one of which includes operations of surgery, and the other clinical surgery.

But for another reason we foresee dangerous results in this multiplication of professors.

In proportion to the emoluments and honors attainable will be attainments and professional standing of those who devote themselves to medical instruction as their leading occupation. A few romantic exceptions may occur of men, who can afford it, devoting themselves to the business without expectation of remuneration, but they will be the exceptions, and, like amateurs in most other lines of employment, do more harm than good, by diverting from the occupation those material resources which ought to sustain it. The usual arrangement is seven professors, with the tuition fee of $105; here we have ten, with a tuition fee of $50, dropping each professor's receipts from $15 per student to $5. This is competition downwards with a vengeance-a thing which we perceive showing itself in other quarters besides Chicago, to such an extent as to threaten, more than any other of present adverse circumstances, the degradation of the medical colleges. We look upon underbidding as no whit more respectable in medical teaching than in medical practice, and as being one of the abuses which call loudly for a code of ethics for the medical colleges, which can only emanate from an association of these institutions-it must proceed from the colleges, not be dictated to them.

Finally, we are glad to see Professor Davis engaged in elaborating reforms himself, instead of dictating them to others; endeavoring to improve his own practice instead of reflecting on that of others; practically aiming at the improvement of the profession rather than traducing it by invidious comparisons with the profession in other countries, which, as a body, is not really so enlightened as that of America.

WE SINCERELY DESIRE HIS SUCCESS.

The plainness with which we have spoken of him will lead him to doubt this; it is nevertheless strictly true. We believe he will have to change and change again many things in his present scheme before he attains it, but we exhort him to labor at his adopted task with all the industry he has hitherto devoted to the attempt to dictate to others. Frankly, we believe he has a hard road to travel if he is really in earnest, if he really desires the intellectual advancement of the profession; for we believe it is much easier to harangue about proposed changes than to devise them wisely, and conduct them to a successful result.

When he has completed his work, and really satisfied himself that he has succeeded in turning out better students than are produced under the