Comments upon the Medical Curriculum

1921-22. At the beginning of the last academic year a radical change was made in the curriculum. It has been a time-honored custom to assign students who are just commencing the study of clinical disease at the beginning of their third year, to the out-patient clinic where they obtained a fleeting glance of a multitude of individuals in many stages of health and disease, while the Seniors in their fourth year were admitted to the wards to study individually and at length disease in bedridden patients. For many reasons it has been decided to reverse this order, and the result of the change has been most gratifying. The criticism has been justly made of medical education that its conception of disease is too restricted and that only after graduation does the physician acquire a knowledge of the life history of disease. Too often in his school years the student's attention is monopolized by hospital cases which manifest only a stage in the history of the patient, and the larger field as it may present itself in the ambulatory clinic frequently is utilized only for minor courses of physical diagnosis, except in certain specialties. By reversing this old order it is felt that a step forward has been taken.