Dr. Maclean's Facts

To the Editor of The Reoistek: Sib: - In response to your challenge, or perhap8 I should say, your generous invitation, permit meto slate that the fac's and figures presented by Drs. Vaughan and Herdman, together with their quotation8 from my own published docuraents, simply prove that by dint of persistent and arduous labor a considerable nuinber of rare, peculiar, and difficult chronic surgical and eye cases are attracted to the Ann Arbor clinic- only this and nothing more. The labored and inflated argumenta of these gentlemen also prove that so far as the numerous and important additional departments of professional practice are concerned, there is and always has been an almost abgolute dearth of cases. Dr. Frothingham and I would certainly be either more or less than human if we did not feel proud of the extent to which our respective clinics have been built up iu Rpite of the many obstacles we have had to contend w ith. At the same time we have always deplored th fact that even in our branches the clinic ia a partial and in many ways an uneatisfactory one. But our chief regret as true friends of the J University and of medical education, has been and is now that in many other most essential] particular?, viz.: medical cases, nervous, skin, obstetrical, diseaseg of women and children, in brief, the many varieties of ordinary, every-day cases which our graduates must come in contact with and stand or fall at the outset of professional life. Our clinic always has been and always will be practically destitute. Drs. Vaughan and Herdman have had so very little actual experience with clínical matters, that I consider them more to be pitied than blamed for the position they have been induced to take in this matter. They professed to draw comparisons between the clinical resources of Ann Arbor and Detroit, to the disadvantage of the latter, and they pounced upon Harper hospital as their text. Now, the fact is that Harper hospital is only one of several hospitals in Detroit, and it is one which has never enjoyed the essential advantage of organic connection with a medical school. Harper hospital as it is now, and Harper hospital as it certainly would become with the University of Michigan as its ally, ure two very different things. But why did not Drs. Yaughan and Herdman have something to say about St. Mary's, which is the clinical hospital of Detroit? Si. Mary's has an out-door clinic for the benefit of the Detroit Medical college, with an average of sixty patients a day, or nearly, if not quite, twenty thousand a year! Harper hospital has a capacity of more than two hundred beds, cost upward of two hundred thousand dollars, it has a reoently established out-door clinic which is growing rapidly, and all it requires to develop it into a magniñcent scientiñc charity is the association with itofsuchafacultyasthemedcaldepartment of the University could command if once established in the metropolis of the state. These are not by any means all the clinical facilities available in Detroit; but I think they are enougb to convince any convincible person that any man who places obstacles in the way of the University availing itself of them and thereby keeping her "cribbed, cabined and oonfined," in Ann Arbor, where patients have to be paid in order to get them there, is an enemy alike of the University, of medical education, of humanity, and of common aense 1 Drs. Yaughan and Herdman approve ot importing, at the price of twenty-five dollors a head, abondoned women for the purpose of manufacturing an obstetrical clinic at Ann Arbor, while among the respectable married women of the poorer classes in Detroit, hundreds of such cases would hail with pleasure and gratitude such services from our students at their homes, where there would be no expense to the University or any body else. In brief, there is at Ann Arbor no genuine clinical field, and there never can be: in Detroit there is a magnificent one which it is simply a crime for the State-supported medical school to neglect, or fail to cultívate to the utmost advantage. The question has been asked, Why has not this great field been cultivated by the Detroit medical colleges ? We answer it is very plain to any one who really understands the situation, as Drs. Herdman and Vaughan ought to do. The University of Michigan medical department, with its State aid, and the prestige of a great University, has so overshadowed the private enterprises in Detroit that they have lacked the power to do full justice to the opportunities which the city presents. By inaugurating a wise and liberal and conciliatory policy in this matter the University has now an opportunity not only to libérate itself from the great expense and annoyance of maintaining an unnatural and unsatisfactory clinic at Ann Arbor, but also of securing a field for true clinical charity which would at once elevate it to the position of being the greateet and best charity in the state and one of the most complete and efficiënt medical schools in the world. A medical school in Detroit, independent of and separate from the University, is as tnuch at a disadvantage as a bird with one wing, while a medical school at Arm Arbor, without the clinical and other facilites of Detroit, is as badly ofiF as a bird without lega. The combination of the two, Ann Arbor and Detroit, 8 absolutely indispensable if we are ever to have a complete and real medical school in this state. A new and eniarged hospital at Aon Arbor would obstruct rather than promote this most desirable confummation. Towards the realization of tbe great humanitarian " idea " comprehended in this clinic extensión soheme, I am rea}y and anxious to relinquish my salary ap a professor in the University and to pledge my services in the same capacity gratis so long as I am capable of performing the duties of the office. Dr. Frothingham, it is well known, stands In the same position, and a full and complete corps of expert practitioners and teachers can easily be secured on similar terms. The point has more than once been made that no definite offer or proposition has ever come from Detroit to the University authorities, and no doubt this is true; but I am in a position to declare that the föllowing statement volunteered to me today by one ot the most prominent officihls of Harper hospital and of the Detroit medical college, accurately representa the state ot the case so far as Detroit is concerned : ''Let the Hon. Board of Regents once officially express a desire for the extensión of the clinical department to Detroit, and they would immediately be flooded with propositions and offers oL a 8 -tance but so long as they say in pi n English that they want to have nothing to do with us, what can we do but hold Detroit, Mich., May 15, 1889.