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buildings, and the cost of the equipment necessary to instruct students
p r o p e r l y b o t h i n s c h o o l a n d h o s p i t a l , a r e s u c h t h a t n o p r o v i n c e w o u l d b e
p r e p a r e d t o p r o v i d e a c o r r e c t s t a n d a r d o f b u i l d i n g s a n d e q u i p m e n t f o r m o r e
than one or two schools. Perhaps more important still is the matter of
the teaching staff. Except in the two largest cities where the services of
a well-qualified staff can usually be obtained on a voluntary basis, there
is not yet in any province a sufficiency of medical men, highly qualified
enough to be considered of medical education standard, to staff more
than one or two medical schools in addition to the medical colleges. If,
t h e r e f o r e , w e m u l t i p l y m e d i c a l s c h o o l s t h e y m u s t , a t a n y r a t e f o r t h e
present, be inferior in several respects. It is a matter of policy to be
decided therefore whether we should have several inferior or a few satis-
factory schools and different provinces have followed different lines, while
the same province has apparently changed its policy with the times. The
Madras Presidency formerly had 6 or 7 medical schools, but now (1935)
has only 3, two Government and one private. The Bengal Presidency
h a s 9 s c h o o l s , 6 G o v e r n m e n t a n d 3 p r i v a t e , a n d s o m e o f t h e m o f
r e c e n t e s t a b l i s h m e n t . W h i c h i s t h e c o r r e c t p o l i c y ? I t m a y b e a r g u e d
that many cheap doctors are wanted for the villages, to replace inferior
practitioners or supply some sore of medical aid where none exist; that
it is no good sending expensive doctors there because the people
cannot pay them; that it is better to send out registered medical men
with some sort of qualification, however inferior, than to leave the rural
population to ignorant and unqualified practitioners. It has even been
said we should multiply compounders and send them to the villages since
doctors will not go and cannot get a living. This question was considered
at length in Madras in 1929 when a Medical Education Committee was
established that decided that the Presidency did not so much need more
doctors as better doctors. Experience seems to show that the average
medical man, if not properly educated, when he is let loose on the world
to practise his profession, himself tends to degenerate and to become
hardly better than the man he is intended to replace. It is only the
exceptional man who, without a satisfactory education, can make good
and educate himself until he becomes a really good doctor. If that is so,
it certainly seems better to have a few satisfactory schools rather than
several inferior ones and that seems to be the generally accepted policy,
because the average number of medical schools per province or State area
works out to about 2½.
"Before examining the tabulated statement we may consider what
standard in certain respects we should try to attain. From what has been
said above it will be expected that most of the medical schools will be
overcrowded with students, and indeed that is so, except in the case of a
few schools for women. This is certainly regrettable, because overcrowd-
ing of students in proportion to laboratory accommodation and equipment,
amount of clinical material, and number of teaching staff, are the most
potent causes of inefficiency of education. The province with the largest
number of schools has them even more overcrowded than the other
p r o - v i c e s .