the same terms as the loan of act approved May 17, 1888, of which $125,000 is to be used in finishing and equipping the main university building at Austin, and $75,000 in finishing and equipping the medical school building at Galveston.

One reason for hoping that the State would make this loan, say of $200,000, was based on the fact that the State had received nearly $1,000,000 indemnity money from the Federal Government for frontier defense.

Following the action of the twentieth legislature, all the last legislature would do for the university was the adoption of the following, in the general appropriation bill, approved April 8, 1889:

"For the support and maintenance of the State University, all of the available fund to be under the control of the board of regents, less the appropriation herein made for the Agricultural and Mechanical College, for purchase of grounds in the city of Galveston for the location of the medical branch of the University of Texas, the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, to be paid out of general revenue, or so much thereof as may be necessary: Provided, The city of Galveston, or its inhabitants, shall donate the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars to be used in addition to the fifty thousand dollars heretofore appropriated by the State for the construction of buildings for said medical branch at the city of Galveston.

"For support of the university out of the general revenue: Provided, The university spend an equal amount out of the available university fund for completing and furnishing the university building at Austin, twenty-five thousand dollars."

The regents promptly arranged for the early organization of the medical department as soon as the buildings could be completed, and on as substantial basis as the outfit provided admitted. The buildings have since been finished and well equipped. The recent gift of the Brackenridge dormitory, and the improvements of the college, and the hospital provided by the John Sealy heirs have added largely to the general advantages of the medical department of the university.

A most notable feature in connection with the hospital is the ladies' training school for nurses. They have supreme control, in harmony with proper regulations, of the nursing of all white patients, both ward and private, and are discharging such duty most efficiently and satisfactorily to the management. For their special benefit a course of lectures was inaugurated, embracing such topics in medicine as are necessary for a trained nurse's education. This auxiliary alone is calculated to give important prestige to the institution. It can not be otherwise with such prominent and enterprising ladies as are at the head of the movement: Mrs. B. Adoue, Mrs. R. B. Hawley, Mrs. J. G. Goldthwaite, Mrs. George Ball, Mrs. S. Hartley, Mrs. George Sealy, Mrs. J. H. Hutchings, Mrs. W. F. Ladd, Mrs. M. Kopperl, Mrs. John Sealy, Mrs. Andrew T. Mills, Mrs. Walter Gresham, Mrs. Aaron Blum, Mrs. Robert Irvine, Mrs. P. J. Willis, Mrs. J. C. League, Mrs. Charles Fowler, Mrs. George Mann, Mrs. L. Fellman, Mrs. W. Zeigler, Mrs. T. J. Groce, Mrs. J. F. Roecke.

The institution is fairly complete in its outfit, is in charge of a lady superintendent appointed by the university regents, and is a great desideratum for the college as a medical branch of the university.

The following brief review of the medical department was contributed by the late Dr. T. C. Thompson, one of the university regents:

GALVESTON, TEX., February 23, 1895. When the medical college was built at Galveston four years ago the city of Galveston contributed a block of ground for hospital purposes, and the old city hospital, and $25,000 in money, a total gift of about $100,000; and through private generosity the John Sealy Hospital, costing about $75,000, was added. To this sum of $175,000 the State contributed $25,000 for the purchase of the adjoining block of ground and $50,000 toward the construction of the college building. The entire plant as it now stands, including the improvements and equipments, represents something over $300,000, considerably more than half of which has been acquired to the State, without cost, from private source and from the municipality of Galveston.

The twenty-second legislature authorized the board to open the school, and appropriated $74,000 for the payment of salaries of professors, demonstrators, and employees, and for the maintenance of the various departments.

The twenty-third legislature appropriated $62,400 for recurrent salaries of the various officials and for general maintenance and support.

The school, thus established and moderately equipped, stands to-day at the very front of medical institutions of the South and West, and is widely recognized as one of the most worthy and reputable medical colleges in the United States. Frequent commendatory notices in various publications and complimentary expressions from many sources attest the truth of such a claim. Nor is the school to be compared to the prophet in the proverb-" never without honor save in his own country," for the classes, increasing slightly in the second year of the school's existence, have during the last two sessions grown to a number six or seven times as many as during the first and second sessions.

A better idea of this rapid growth may be had when it is stated that whereas in its first year the attendance of the school was almost the lowest in the United States and Canada, it to-day ranks thirty-sixth in attendance in the group of more than 120 medical schools of this country and Canada.

Nor are the schools which have thus rapidly been passed in growth inconspicuous and unworthy of regard. Their number includes such well-known institutions as the medical departments of Yale University, Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins University, of Baltimore; University of Georgetown, University of Virginia, University of California, Western Reserve University, of Cleveland; University of Colorado, Medical College of Virginia, of Richmond; Medical College of South Carolina, of Charleston; University of Buffalo, University of Missouri, and many others of as excellent reputation. All of the institutions which outrank this school in attendance are much older, many several generations older, some a century and a half older; many have much lower requirements, and therefore attract a large but low-grade class of students, but none can point to the same percentage increase in the last one or two years.

That such phenomenal growth has not been attained at the expense of the standard of requirements may be argued by the fact that of numerous applicants for advanced standing, coming from various medical colleges, but one person succeeded in attaining the grade sought in the Texas school upon examination; while of an equally large number of students from the school at Galveston seeking entrance to advanced classes in other schools (among which were the University of Pennsylvania and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, of New York), not a single individual is known to have failed.

In the statistics of medical institutions published last year by the board of health of the State of Illinois this school is shown by the proportion of graduations to

matriculations to have maintained with unusual strictness the established require

ments.

From such considerations as the above, aside from their personal knowledge of the excellence of the work accomplished by the school, the regents of the university feel that they may point with pride to the medical department, and further that they are abundantly sustained in the belief that within a few years the school will be generally accepted as one of the really great medical institutions of the land, both in point of attendance and of reputation.

It may be added here that the school is open for women upon the same terms as men, and that this year for the first time the privilege has been accepted by female students.

The last appropriation was too small to permit many additions to the equipment of the department, owing to the rapid increase in the number of students. At present it is with utmost exertion that the class can be accommodated in the different laboratories, and many complaints are heard of insufficient accommodation, especially in the clinical and operative departments.

The number of students for the present session is 183. It will be an utter impossibility to provide for the rapidly increasing class, unless there be added a moderate amount to the permanent equipment in apparatus, chemicals, etc., aside from the urgent requirements for enlargement of laboratory and clinical room.

Much of the remarkable growth of the school is unquestionably due to the fullness and excellence of the practical instruction in the various laboratories. It is largely this feature of teaching which distinguishes the higher grade medical schools from the common medical "diploma mills." It is, too, to the work done in the laboratories that the greatest contributions to medical knowledge are due in recent years; it is the laboratory physician who is intrusted with the minute study of the causes of disease for the purpose of discovering means of combating them. All over the world at the present time the wonderful success of the new preventive and curative antitoxin of diphtheria is being lauded. It was only after years of patient and continuous laboratory work that this was accomplished, but the result in the saving of human life ought to justify the expense of all the laboratories in existence for all time to come.

From the laboratory Pasteur, Koch, and other renowned scientists, by their investigation and researches, have made all the recent great strides in medical science. The alleviation of pain, the relief to suffering humanity, and the eradication of contagious diseases, such as yellow fever, rabies, diphtheria, smallpox, cholera, etc., have and will have to come through the patient devotions and intelligent skill of the laboratory savant.

In the selection of a faculty the chief aim of the regents was merit and qualifications, regardless of locality, as the worth of all schools is measured by their teaching capacity; ordinary teachers make ordinary schools, good teachers good schools, and the value of good teachers is held at a premium all over the literary world.

Practitioners of medicine are, as a rule, not good teachers. The two branches, practice of medicine and teaching, are widely different. The teacher must be cultured and trained in his vocation, as all knowledge is allied or kindred, and to teach well any branch of knowledge one must be liberally educated.

The professors are nine in number, teaching the nine fundamental branches of medicine and pharmacy. All must be filled and taught or else there can be no medical and pharmaceutical school. These chairs are anatomy, chemistry, physiology, materia medica, pathology, surgery, obstetrics, practice of medicine, and pharmacy. Each professor, excepting one, is employed without term, and all are subject to promotion, demotion, removal, or resignation, as the regents may deem for the best interest of the school. None of the assistant teachers or supplemental lectureships are filled by salaried teachers, excepting a demonstrator each in anatomy, physi

ology, and pathology, in which chairs the labor of making experiments, of vivisection, of performing autopsies, of making miscroscopic specimens, and of preparing, preserving, and dissecting dead bodies requires at least this amount of assistance to professors. Other medical schools have usually a large paid corps of special lecturers, but in the school at Galveston the nine special lectureships are filled without pay by gentlemen generous and interested enough to undertake this extra work without remuneration.

Salaries paid by numerous other so-called schools are not to be contrasted or compared to a high-grade college of the university of a State. These so-called medical schools, under a high-sounding name, are nothing more than an association of physicians for their own personal or pecuniary advancement.

They hold lectures in their offices, or a barn, and take any fee the student is able to pay, and promise any and all diplomas, regardless of qualifications.

The salaries of professors are from $2,000 to $3,000 a year, lower than in other schools of the same character or standard, as the following tabulated list will show:

After urging upon the legislature the importance of providing for certain improvements for the college, Dr. Thompson adds:

In addition to these requirements and suggestions, the attention of the legislature is earnestly called to the desirability of an anatomical law, legalizing dissecting and autopsy making in chartered medical institutions, and making it lawful for county and municipal authorities to transfer to such institutions for scientific purposes unclaimed bodies requiring pauper burial. It is urged, too, that vivisection for purposes of investigation and demonstration in such institutions be legalized.

Inasmuch as the State of Texas has provided for the medical education of such of its citizens as may hereafter desire to practice medicine and surgery within its limits, and, too, at a cost to the individual much below what would be incurred elsewhere, it is suggested that a law be enacted requiring that each person so desiring to practice medicine and surgery in the State of Texas show evidence before an appropriate board or boards of examiners of having pursued a course of study at least as complete as provided in the medical department of the University of Texas; that a similar law be enacted covering the practice of pharmacy, and that in the provisions of such law the regular graduates of the medical department of the University of Texas in medicine and in pharmacy be exempt from examination at the hands of such board of examiners before registration for practice.

The constitution of the State is specific in its requirements of establishing a university of the first class only. In furtherance of this policy the legislature authorized the regents to inaugurate the medical department, and made appropriations approximating the estimated expenses. The wisdom of the policy of the State in liberally

endowing its educational system, from the free school to its capstone-the university is recognized as most conducive to the development and growth of the intellect and genius of the country, and while there is some complaint in providing for professional education it would be manifestly unjust to limit or exclude from the benefits arising from the wisdom of this policy any branch of learning-arts, literature, philosophy, law, or medicine-needed to make a complete university.

In the great domain of science you can not educate a civil or electrical engineer like Edison and refuse to educate a chemist like Pasteur or Koch.

You can not make a geologist and refuse to make a pharmacist, nor make a teacher, machinist, or lawyer and refuse to make a doctor. It is at variance and in conflict with the letter and spirit of our constitution, which provides for all seeking any branch of knowledge a university of the first class.

The appointment of Dr. Thompson as one of the regents of the university and his efficiency as a physician in especially watching and serving the interests of the medical department illustrate the importance of having special features of administration of the university represented by members on the board particularly qualified for such service. Dr. Thompson was a graduate of the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, was a native of Texas, and served as a surgeon in the Confederate army. He was sixty years of age and had been ten years a regent of the university.

ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS.

Since this statement was furnished the college has been made the beneficiary of the Brackenridge dormitory, and the improvements for the college and hospital provided for by the recent donation of the Sealy heirs, Mr. John Sealy and his sister, Mrs. Waverly Smith. The main college building was erected under improved plans designed by the architect, Mr. Clayton, after visiting the medical colleges in New York, Philadelphia, and other places, mainly upon the plans of the college of Philadelphia. In his report to the university regents Mr. Clayton states that he found very few medical colleges had the advantage of having their hospitals on the same grounds with the college buildings, an advantage upon which the professors of such colleges laid great stress.

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