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With one physician to every 800 citizens, the U. S. medical profession feels itself crowded. In Chicago last month four national medical bodies, meeting under the leadership of Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, determined to cut down the influx of new men into the ranks in at least one direction : from schools abroad. Last week the Federation of State Medical Boards announced new regulations to govern U. S. students who, unable to get into a U. S. medical school, study abroad, go home to practice. Such a student now must:

1) Before he goes abroad, get from his State board of medical examiners a certificate that he has fulfilled U. S. standards of premedical education; 2) get a license to practice medicine in the country where he was graduated (France in February announced that only French citizens will hereafter be licensed to practice medicine in France); 3) prove that he studied medicine four years.

About 2,000 U. S. citizens are currently studying medicine abroad. They will be exempt from the new regulations but not from the sharpened prejudice of State examiners against foreign-educated applicants for licenses.

Other points made at Dr. Wilbur's Chicago meeting:

P: Specialists should be certified as such by their special societies. First examinations for the certification of skin specialists will be conducted this year. Obstetricians & gynecologists, ear & throat men and eye experts already have such examining boards. Last month the New York Academy of Medicine, by making requirement for fellowship rigorous, in effect certified that its fellows henceforth are adepts in their specialties. Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Physicians signifies highest professional ability.

P: To stop overproduction of new nurses and provide work for those already trained, abolish hundreds of the 2,000 U. S. nursing schools.

P: Only 696 of the 6,600 U. S. hospitals approved by the American Medical Association are worthy of training medical school graduates to be practicing physicians.

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