College and the Medical School.

It may not be generally known that a plan has been under serious consideration to change the University course for those intending to study medicine. A rumor to this effect started in the Medical School last spring and soon spread among the college men who were interested in the subject. At first it was thought to have no foundation, but it now seems to have had good authority, and bids fair to be carried out before another year.

It has long been the desire of the University government, and especially of the medical faculty, to make the regular course at the Medical School a four-years' course. But the difficulty has been that very few men thought that they could spare the time to give four years to a college course and four years to their professional studies. Life seemed too short to them for that.

So the medical faculty, realizing that in the advanced stage of medical science a man really needed a four-years' course, formed this plan. A man intending to study medicine as his profession may, if he wishes, leave college at the end of his junior year and give the next four years to the Medical School-the three-years' course at the Medical School having been done away with-and will there receive his degree of A. B. when he receives his M. D.

The plan has been talked of very freely by the medical profession in Boston and the East, and has received universal commendation. The Boston medical journals have come out with editorials endorsing the plan. The medical faculty of the University is unanimously in favor of it, and it seems likely to be put through.

Is this a good plan? It certainly seems to be, yet it has its advantages and disadvantages. The science of medicine has become so far advanced that three years is not long enough time to devote to the study of it. Three years are not sufficient to make a man thoroughly acquainted with all that a skillful physician should know. Well-educated, scientific physicians are needed, and such men Harvard should send out, but three years is too short a time to accomplish this in. Yet most of those who have spent four years in a college think that they have neither time nor money to devote to another four year's course, so they try to do all the work in three years. They do not realize that there is plenty of room for well-educated doctors, but no room for poorly-trained ones Nearly all of Boston's doctors are in favor of the plan, and their experience should count for much in considering the question.

For those men then who wish to perfect themselves in the science of medicine and who have limited time the plan is very advantageous. Some might say that a great disadvantage would be that a man's college life and pleasures would be shortened, and the social life of his senior year spoiled, no graduating with his class, no class day honors. Yes, in a measure his social life in college would end with his junior year, but would that small consideration be sufficient to offset the splendid advantages and added time for his life work.

It surely seems as if this was a step in the right direction, entirely in harmony with the progressive reputation of our university, and a step eminently advantageous to those intent on the medical profession.