The Huttig news., 1907-09-21
MEDICAL FAILURES.
An Authority Says Three-Fourths of Graduates Are Unfitted to Practice.

0rdouateS Are Onntteo 10 FraCtlCe.
 That 5000 out of the 4,000 gradu. ates turned out by the Medical Col leges each year are wholly unfitted to practice medicine and are menaces to the communities in which they set tie was stated by Dr. Chester Mayer, of the State Board of Medical Exam tners of Kentucky at meeting of the American Medical Associations Com mittee on Medical Education, held ill Chicago not long ago. Dr. Mayer said that only 25 to 2S per cent of the graduates are qualified. Fifty-eight per cent of the graduates examined in 2S states were refused licenses. With few exceptions these failures took a second examination in a few weeks and only 30 per cent of them passed.
 This does not mean that deficien- cfes in their training were corrected in those few weeks" Dr. Mayer said. It 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. M. Clayton Thrush, a professor in the Medico Chirurgical College in Philadelphia said: Many doctors turned out of the Medical Schools are so ignorant in matters pertaining to pharmacy that they know nothing about the properties of the drugs they prescribe for their patients!o Dr. Henry Beats, Jr., Pres ident of the Pennsylvania State Board of Medical Examiners, after scrutiniz- ing the papers of class of candi- dates for licensure said: About one quarter of the papers show degree of illiteracy that renders the candi- dates for icensure incapable of l.n- 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- 5nos1ns. ..esUrfb..1s' 1ispeIsfng rugs regarding the properties of f hich they know nothing and then signing death certificates that are ot passed upon by anyone unless the , 'roner is called in. Probably there t
 not a grave yard from one end of { e country to the other that does not 'ntain the buried evidences of the istakes or criminal carelessness of competent physicians. During the last year there have zen perhaps, half a dozen known lses where surgeons, after perform g operations have sewed up the in- /, sions without first removing the :, auze sponges used to absorb the ood, and in some cases forceps and zen surgeons scissors have been 1t in the wound. How many of ese cases there have been, where e patient died, there is no means
 knowing and comparatively few :,
 the cases where the discovery is ade in time to save life become gen. :. ally public. Reports from Sanita- ums for the treatment of the Drug abit show that members of the medi- l profession are more often treated
 these institutions than members
 any other profession, and that a ajority of the patients, excluding the lysicians themselves, can trace cir downfall directly to a careless lysician. How many criminal operations are .. by physicians is also alter of conjecture. Operations of is class are, unfortunately, very :. equent in large cities. Some gradu- : ed and licensed physicians, many
 them of supposed responsibility, ake an exclusive practice of crim- al medical and surgical treatment. r. Henry G. w. Rheinhart, Coroner's lysician of Chicago, estimates the : imber of criminal operations, annu- !, fly, in Chicago alone at 1000. How any resulted fatally are unknown,
 when death results, the real cause
 disguised in the death certificate, V hich the physician signs, and which one but himself and a clerk sees. Probably not one case of malprac- oe in 1000 ever becomes the subject
 law suit but in the last year ap- oximately 150 cases wherein the aintif has alleged malpractice have e zen reported in the newspapers, and q wing to the social prominence and e favored positions of many physi- ( ans not more than half the new its stated, probably, result in any 9wspaper publicity, but it would obably not be an eXaggeration to I ate that the total cases of malprac- n ;e, not involving criminal operations
 criminal medical practice, would V mount to 150,000 or more than one 7 se to each physician in the country. Y ais estimate is, of course, more or F ss conjecture. Untimely deaths and ; disabilities are frequent,
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