Another step which was equally important, and in some respects even
more so, has been the establishment of laboratories connected with each
branch of instruction. A laboratory of anatomy (the dissecting room)
every medical school has always had, but all the other laboratories are
recent additions. Among these may be named a laboratory of clinical
medicine, a laboratory of therapeutics, in which the action of drugs
is studied; a laboratory of chemistry, a laboratory of microscopy, a
laboratory of pathology for the study of diseased tissues, a laboratory
of embryology for the study of the development of the human body and
of the embryos of animals, a laboratory of hygiene, a laboratory of
bacteriology, a laboratory of pharmacy, a surgical laboratory, in which
all the operations of surgery are done on the cadaver by each student,
a laboratory of physiology, and in many colleges private rooms in which
advanced work may be done for the discovery of new truths.
In all these laboratories, instead of simply hearing about the
experiments and observations, each student is required to handle the
drugs, the chemicals, the apparatus, to do all the operations, to look
through the microscope, etc.; in other words, to do all that which is
necessary for the proper understanding of the case in hand. In fact,
it may be said that in view of the opportunities and the requirements
of modern hospitals, it is undoubtedly true that a hospital patient,
the poorest of the poor, often has his case more thoroughly studied and
more accurately observed than the wealthy patient who is attended at
his home. On the other hand, however, so many laboratories with their
expensive apparatus and a large staff of assistants mean an enormous
increase in the expense of a medical education, for which the student
does not pay anything like an equivalent. Hence the need in all of our
best modern medical schools for endowments, in order that such work may
be carried on properly, and yet the student not be charged such fees as
to be practically prohibitory, excepting for the rich, or at the least
the well-to-do. I do not hesitate to say that at the end of the second
year many a diligent student of to-day is better fitted to practise
medicine than was the graduate of half a century ago.