The Nevada County picayune., 1907-09-19
MEDICAL FAILURES.
An Authority Says Three-Fourths of Graduates Are Unfitted to Practice.

practice medlClne and are menaCeS to the communities in which they set tie was stated by Dr. Chester Mayer, of the State Board of Medical Exam iners of Kentucky at meeting of the American Medical Associations Com mittee on Medical Education, held in | Chicago not long ago. Dr. Mayer said | that only 25 to 28 per cent of the graduates are qualified Fifty-eight | per cent of the graduates examined in | 28 states were refused licenses. With few exceptions these failures took a second examination in a few weeks and only 50 per cent of them passed. This does not mean that deficien- cies in their training were corrected in those few weeks" Dr. Mayer said. Tt probably shows that experience | showed them what the test would probably be and they 'crammed' for the examination. Dr. w. T. Gott, Secretary of the Indiana Board said: The majority of our schools now teach their students how to pass ex- aminations, not how to be good phy- SicianS."
 At the session of the American Medical Association held in Atlantic City in June, Dr. NJ Clayton Thrush, professor in the Medico Chirurgical College in Philadelphia said: Many doctors turned out of the Medical Schools are SC ignorant in matters pertaining to pharmacy that they know nothing about the properties of the drugs they prescribe for their patients.' Dr. Henry Beats, Jr., Pres ident of the Pennsylvania State Board of Medical Examiners, after scrutiniz- ing the papers of a class of candi- dates for licensure said: About one quarter of the papers show a degree of illiteracy that renders the candi- dates for licensure incapable of un- derstanding medicine"
 A great many more physicians and chemists might be quoted in support of the astounding charge that 5000 in- competents are being dumped onto an unsuspecting public each year, What the damage done amounts to can never be estimated for these in competents enjoy the privilege of di- agnosing, prescribing or dispensing drugs regarding the properties of which they know nothing and then not passed upon by anyone unless the coroner is called in. Probably there is not a grave yard from one end of the country to the other that does not contain the buried evidences of the mistakes or criminal carelessness of incompetent physicians.
 During the last year there have been perhaps, half a dozen known cases where surgeons, after perform ing operations have sewed up the in cisions without first removing the gauge sponges used to absorb the blood, and in some cases forceps and even surgeons scissors have been left in the wound. How many of these cases there have been, where the patient died, there is no means ot knowing and comparatively few of the cases where the discovery is made in time to save life become gen erally public Reports from Sanita- riums for the treatment of the Drug Habit show that members of the medi- cal profession are more often treated in these institutions than members of any other profession and that a majority of the patients, excluding the physicians themselves, can trace their downfall directly to a careless physician.
 How many criminal operations are performed by physicians is also a matter of conjecture. Operations of this class are, unfortunately, very frequent in large cities. Some gradu- ated and licensed physicians, many of them of supposed responsibility, make an exclusive practice of crim- inal medical and surgical treatment. Dr. Henry G. w. Rheinhart, Coroner's physician of Chicago, estimates the number of criminal operations, annu- ally, in Chicago alone at 3S,000. How many resulted fatally are unknown, as when death results, the real cause is disguised in the death certificate, which the physician signs, and which no one but himself and a clerk sees.
 Probably not one case of malprac- tice in 1000 ever becomes the subject of law suit but in the last year ap- proximately 150 cases wherein the plaintiff has alleged malpractice have been reported in the newspapers, and owing to the social prominence and the favored positions of many physi- clans not more than half the new suits stated probably, result in any newspaper publicity, but it would probably not be an exaggeration to state that the total cases of malprac- tice, not involving criminal operations or criminal medical practice, would amount to 150,000 or more than one case to each physician in the country. This estimate is, of course, more or less conjecture. Untimely deaths and permanent disabilities are frequent,