Sanity

"Any one in public life who has received a large so-called 'nut' mail is conscious of the high percentage of cranks in our civilization.--Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur. Dr. Wilbur is Secretary of Interior, president of Stanford University and chairman of the American Medical Association's Council on Medical Education and Hospitals. As medical educator he was in Chicago last week for the council's annual meeting with the Federation of State Medical Boards and the American Conference on Hospital Service. Chicago was in its usual noisy municipal primary campaign with mayoralty candidates howling obscenities at each other. The doctors began their discussions with the subject of mental hygiene. Dr. Wilbur, polite and politic as ever, avoided plain statement, restricted himself to a philosophic: "Democracy demands at least a majority of competent citizens with orderly habits and balanced, temperate minds. Disaster awaits any people with too high a percentage of the insane, mentally defective, or emotionally unstable. In sanity lies safety." But sharp Dr. William Alanson White, despite his Government job-holding (superintendent, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington), roughly commented: "For Chicago's sake, I hope the most competent of the lunatics is elected. I should say, though, that really the antics and illogical, name-calling speeches of the candidates are a comment upon the mental caliber of the voters. The candidates are experienced politicians and act after the fashion of lunatics in their speeches because they think that is the way to get popular sympathy and gather in the votes." Dr. George Burt Lake of Highland Park (Chicago suburb), editor of Clinical Medicine & Surgery, declared: "I have no doubt that at least one or two of the candidates are psychically abnormal." Dr. Albert Moore Barrett, professor of psychiatry* at the University of Michigan Medical School: "I am sure that the idiotic campaign speeches, the circuses and the rest of it, are a comment upon the people of Chicago rather than upon the candidates for mayor." The problems and programs of medical education were not neglected at the conference. In 1904 the American Medical Association began examining the qualifications of U. S. medical schools. Its inspection gradually changed to a sort of supervision. It approves no medical school which lacks a high standard of teaching and equipment. It has reached down to the premedical colleges to urge that their courses provide the prospective doctor with a sound foundation of learning and culture. It has reached up to the hospitals where medical graduates, to have the confidence and respect of practitioners, must now spend at least one year as internes. Every high grade, that is "acceptable," medical school now requires at least two years college work from its matriculants. A few require four years and a baccalaureate degree (A.B. or B.S.), a policy initiated by Johns Hopkins in 1893. College, medical school and interneship bring a medical student (about 22.000 are now preparing themselves in the U. S.) to almost 30 before he or she is considered fit to practice medicine. "All wrong," insisted Surgeon William James Mayo. He believes college courses tend to dull the student's mind when it is most receptive. Dean Wilburt Cornell Davison of young Duke University's School of Medicine had definite suggestions. The essentials he would require of a student entering medicine are innate intelligence and a sound knowledge of mathematics and English. Said he: "The modern high school provides nearly as broad an education as was given by colleges in 1893."

*In Manhattan last week the Board of Education discussed hiring a psychiatrist. Dr. Leta Stetter Hollingworth, Teachers College professor of education, objected. She knew of no set qualifications for being a psychiatrist, thought that any physician who wishes to do so can call himself a psychiatrist.

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