DARTMOUTH MEDICAL SCHOOL
In the development of the resources of the school, in addition to minor betterment in each department, there have been two notable advances during the year. Of these the more important is the establishment of a department of instruction in Pharmacology, in charge of Dr. Walter L. Mendenhall, formerly professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Drake University Medical School, and later Austin Teaching Fellow in the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mendenhall began his work with us after the Easter recess, offering a concentrated course for which provision had been made in the schedule. With the opening of the next session the course will be continued throughout the second year, and will include Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Materia Medica in addition to Pharmacology. Accommodations for Prof. Mendenhall's department were provided by subdividing the large hall in the Nathan Smith Laboratory, equipped in 1910 by Dr. E. H. Peaslee as a reference library, into a large students' laboratory and two smaller rooms, one an operating room, the other a chemical and pharmaceutical laboratory. To these was add- ed a fourth room adjoining the private laboratories, and serving as an office for the head of the department. The work of reconstruction and of equipping the rooms with gas, electric light, plumbing and specially designed laboratory furniture was carried out under Prof. Mendenhall's direction but prior to his arrival, so that no time was lost in getting the work of the department under way.
With the unhesitating consent of Dr. Peaslee the reference library and as much as possible of the library equipment were transferred to the main floor of the museum, where cases fully in keeping with the furnishings of the room have been provided to hold some fifteen hundred volumes, freely accessible to the students at all times. The remainder of the ten thousand or more books that constitute the Medical Library had already been gathered together, catalogued and arranged in the wall cases of the main floor, the specimens and models of the pathological collection being placed in the cases in the gallery. The present setting for the library is therefore an attractive one, and well suited to its purpose. As a reading room it provides quiet, comfort, and good natural and artificial light. The card catalogue is complete, and is kept where it may readily be referred to. Books in the open cases of the reference collection may be taken out at any time by members of the school without any other formality than the making of an entry. Books in the closed cases of the "stack" may be obtained by applying to the librarian. The aim has been to make the library as available to each man as if it were his own private collection, and the resulting increase in the use of the books seems to justify the hope that this problem, for the present at least, has been solved.
With the one hundred and eighteenth annual session, just closed, Dartmouth Medical School initiated the new policy of offering only the courses of the first and second years in Medicine. With this comparatively short time as a basis for prediction as to the success of the plan it may seem rash to offer any forecast for the years to come. There are, however, many indications that the work of the school is to be carried on with classes that fall little short of the numbers for which its laboratories are equipped, and quite as large as may be handled efficiently without division into sections and the consequent loss in effective teaching.
In the second year class during the year 1914-1915 there were nine men, of whom seven were graduates of the College, and two were seniors, graduating in 1915. In the first year class there were fourteen men, one graduate, seven seniors and six juniors. Of these fourteen men ten will return for the work of the second year, the other four transferring to medical schools in their home cities, two in Washington and two in Boston.
With classes of this size, and particularly in the case of the second year class, with not a poor man in it, the work of instruction has been a delight unknown to the teacher of larger groups of men. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that classes twice as large could still be accommodated by the various departments of the school. Fortunately there seems to be every evidence that these comparatively small classes were low in numbers because of the difficulties and uncertainties of the transition period of the last few years. The classes to follow will undoubtedly be larger.
By the end of the College session twenty-eight men had registered as members of the first year class in Medicine for the year 1915-1916. Of these one is a graduate, thirteen will be seniors in College, and fourteen, juniors on the so-called six year combined course. For the year to follow no exact figures can be given, but in the freshman class in the College there were twenty-nine men who indicated their choice of Medicine as a profession in drawing up a tentative scheme for their four years in College, a number well below the traditional nine percent of Dartmouth's graduates who practice Medicine.
The situation with regard to the transfer of our men to schools in the larger clinical centers for the completion of the work of the third and fourth years is improving noticeably each year. This will continue to improve with a growing recognition of the work done by an increasing number of medical schools offering only the courses of the first two, or pre-clinical years. Further, the problem presented by the varying content of the courses of the first two years in the medical schools to which our men wish to transfer, is being met by the introduction of a limited number of elections in our own course. The department of Chemistry was the first to make this possible, by allowing men to substitute a full year of Organic Chemistry for the half year of Organic Chemistry and half year of Quantitative Analysis that our schedule calls for. Other changes of a similar nature are in order, and will doubtless be brought about as the need for them definitely arises.
Dartmouth Medical School is in a particularly favored position to offer the courses in the fundamental of the two pre-clinical years in .Medicine. With classes of such a size that the men are always under the direct supervision of the instructor in charge of the course, with ample equipment for the work, and with a freedom from distracting interests not found in larger medical centers, we believe that we are able to turn out a type of man whose training will be a guarantee of later success. The members of the teaching staff are using every effort to improve their unusual opportunity, regardless of the amount of work involved, and with only a decent and proper consideration for expense.
