About The Medical School

Without considering the grand principie upon which the public school system of Michigan Í8 founded, and of which system our University forms the erowning part, certain of our leading newspapers, urged on by men who, ■with marked good sense, keep their aamee from the public, are vigorously agitating a dismemberment of the institntion and the dividing and scatteriag of one of its most powerful and best established departmente over different portions of the state. They advise that the clinie and those claes exercises that ítrictly belong thereto be removed to Detroit, where it is claimed the advanfcages are better than here. A thorough investigaron has been made of the reasons for such a removal, ,ts effects upon the institution as a whole studied, the prevalent opinión of the upper-class men and graduates ascertained, so far as possible, and we have no fear in saying, for we have the data toback it up,that theplanfor there'noval of the clinie, or anyparl of the medital department, to Detroit, it bul part or pareel of a tcheme to better the interest! of a few individuáis, or at beit a imall comwmity. Xo sooner had the Board of Regenta attïeirlate meeting declared, with wisdom that not a single section of the state of Michigan questioned except a fiw individuals whose interests lie in "Wayne county, that Dr. Dunster's suceessor, whoever he may prove to be, aiuBs; reside in Ann Arbor, than theee same individuáis, seemingly finding !heir aims thwarted, began to clamor about the removal of the clinic to Detroit. It will be seen, too, that this same' faction strongly advocates the aeleetion of a Detroit man as Dr. Dunsters successor, paying no attention lo theyoiceof the present upper-class men, the alumni, or the present professors of the department. Will the success of iheir plans be made doubtful or their personal interests interfered with by seeing.B man in the position whose intereets must be confined to the Universit7-r It seemsso. Áfeain, a short time ago, the Regente passed a resolution forbidding discussion by the professors and other memb8 of the faculty in their classes, or through the papers, of subjects whose Tsusiness it was for the regents to disousa-and settle. Another resentful howl came up from Wayne, and in utter deSanoe of their request, and with not a littlë expressed ill-feeling, Dr. Donald -laclean, before his class in surgery, openly denied and defied their right to restrict his free speech in his classes apon any subject he might choose to tcruch upon; and the result was that that day the state paid an enormous price for a lecture on surgery and got half of it in abuse upon its officers. Tn that resolution the regents were aiming at benefitting the state and her edacational institutions, and in hiring mea to teach they wished to be under3tood as not hiring them to attend to juainess she had to pay others for carrj'ing on. But indirectly, perhaps. such a resolution aimed a severe blow against the removal of the clinic ; at any rate, the gist of the remarks at the time seemed to show that the schemers in this direction were disconcerted. Right here, by way of parenthesis, might be proposed a problem easy to be solved from what data there is on hand, whether a professor living in Detroit and engaged largely in practice there and throughout the state, is the cheapest and best man the University can Mre. To the salary given per year add the amount per ratio of time lost and ïime filled but actually spent in personal grievances, advice to students as to how to run a University, how much as.sistants should be paid, etc., and the result will be proof enough that such imported talent is expensive to student uid state. Tt has been argued, too, that on acj ,;ount of supposed poor clinical advantages many of thethird-year students go to the cities to gradúate, and thereby tbe TJniversity loses their support, and that for this reason,if for nothing more, the University should take advantage of Detroit'e clinical facilities. Those vho know more intimately the ings of the clinics have a little suspiciously raised the question : Are the clinics here all they could be made ? Is :here not Toom for a little investigation into this pointby the Board of Regents? And are not these complaints, after all, more imaginary than real ; and do not 'hese same studente often suck this statement and idea from bigger thumbs ikan their own ? The clinics in surgery and diseases of the eye and ear have been all that could be wished for, and even morenumerousin cases tban ninetenths of the students have been able to thoroughly post themselves upon. It has been The Register's experience in gathering data and listening to complaintson tbisground, that the students express the most dissatisfaction in not being able to receive practical instruction in obstetrics. Some few complain of the scaicity of acute diseases. Now, there is no reason why a "lying-in" hospital could not be established here and conducted as chet pi y and as successfully as at Detroit. The poorhouses of the state ought to furnish (as it is known they have all too many cases in their wards) abundant material for work. These cases could be supported and attended here during their confinement cheaper (for the physician's charge would be nothing) than they can in their own counties, and the county from which they come should be made to pay the patients' expenses here, which it would have to pay any way if the patients remained at their respective poorhouses, But the chief argument of all against the clinlc removal remains to be stated. We haveinferred that the public school sj'stem of Michigan, which, without a doubt, is the most perfect and complete of any system in America, is the practical carrying out of the well-founded idea of centralizing the education power of the state and nation. All the district and ward schools should point to the high school ; the high school should point to the University, which should govern and direct all, and where every science and art known to man and demanded by the patronizing students should be taught in its latest and most advanced stage. Such a centralized educational forcé will produce the best possible resultSj will furnish the highest grade of education at the least expense. But let the state dismember this institution and distribute its patronage among these various divisions located in different coinmunities of different political views and unequal political power, and the total expense at once increase8 while the power and efficiency decrease and dissensions arise. The practical question comes, Can a single department of the University be removed without severely crippling the rest, or can a part of a department be removed without crippling and injuring the efficiency of both parts of the original arrangement? No ; and the reasons are clear. A large number of the professors who do work in the medical department are engaged in work in other departmente. The clinics are matters referred to by lecturers every day, and these lectures are often illuBtrated by subjects from the hospitals or by reference to them. These same professors, of whom we can name Drs. Vaughan, Sewell, Stowell, Ford, HendrickB, Martin, Herdman, Langley, Prescott, Prof. Spalding, and others, with their assistants, are connected in important work in the other departments, as Homceopathy, Pharmacy, Dental, Literary, and Law. Most of them and perhaps all, and some, of course, more than others, use the clinics or make reference to them, while certainly the majority of their students are expected to attend them regularly. Take, far an example, one case with which we are familiar : Prof. Sewell lectures to the students of the Literary, Homceopathic, Medical, Dental, Hygenic, and sometimes Pharmacy departments ; and there is scarcely a lecturein which he does not refer to the clinics, often times, to be sure, in general terms, but fully as often in particular terms, and always with the heartiest and sincerest advice to the lower-class men to attend them and think upon what they see there with a view of understanding better the subject that he teaches. Exactly the same may be said in regard to Dr. Vaughan, whose students come from every department on the campus. The same will apply, too, in varying degrees to the others mentioned. It could not be supposed that without incurring tremendous expense these gentlemen could divide their work between Ann Arbor and Detroit. Without their work, too, as a supplement, what would the clinics amount to as benefitting the students, and without the clinics here it is easy to see how seriously crippled their work would be. All departments and every part of every department of the University are dovetailed into a wbole that cannot be dlsmembered without great injury resulting. Again, with all clinical work there mustbe done a large amount of reading. The medical library is inseparably linked with the general library, and is in frequent use by others than medical studente, and after clinics you will see scores of students take the few steps across from the clinical ampitheatre to the library to " read up" on the subjects they have just examined, and gain, perhaps, a better knowledge of things than they ever could from the hasty words of the operator who, in many cases, is not the best person in the world to make clear the whysand wherefores, however well he may know them himself. Is this library to be taken to Detroit, or instead of the short distance by the present arrangement from the operating room to the reading room will the students be expected to come from Detroii here to make use of the large number of medical periodicals and books which certainly are not so easy of access at De troit, if in fact they are to be found there at all. It is our opinión, arri ved at after much study and investigation, that the clinic, for the good of the state and its great educational institution, should remain here ; that the dissatisfaction, if in really any exists outside of these few reerred to, comes through personal interests and does not arise from causes inurious to the institution that cannot be remedied far short of taking such exreme measures as removing the clinic Trom the campus.