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The University Courier.
enter Lawrence intending to attend the State Law School, depending for their support principally upon their own exertions, expecting no other expenses than the catalogue has enumerated.
The only justification for this expense is found in the additional lectures provided for this winter, which the board of Regents have deemed advisable to give the Desciples of Blackstone. The students have never been consulted in regard to any such departure and it may be regarded as a foregone conclusion that the additional expense would not have met their endorsement if they had been in any way consulted.
It must be conceded that the step was not esteemed necessary by the state legislature and no provision was made by that body to extend the law course by raising funds from the thin pocket-books of poverty stricken law students. The Courier does not endorse the measure, but desires to register a protest as emphatic as possible against this uncalled for antagonism and discrimination so unfavorable to the students of the School of Law.
OUR MEDICAL SCHOOL.
The Scheme Outlined by Prof. Williston.
A partial examination of the catalogues of the various medical schools of the United States shows a list of about two hundred names of students from Kansas who are pursuing medical studies. Doubtless were the full number obtained the list would be materially increased. The greater part of these students are distributed among the schools of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky, with a small proportion in the far eastern states, and others in Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota and the southern states. Kansas has but one medical school, organized a few years ago, wholly by private enterprise, and entirely without outside resources, yet it already has a respectable showing of students, notwithstanding the facilities are necessarily far inferior to those that could and should be offered at the State University.
There can be but little doubt that in a very
few years not less than five hundred students from Kansas will be annually attendant upon medical instruction. Among the better State Universities, ours is about the only one which makes no provision for medical instruction. It seems certain that, were there a properly equipped medical department established here, in three or four years it would have an annual attendance of from two to three hundred students, all of whom would otherwise be compelled to go elsewhere with an expenditure outside of the state of not less than one hundred thousand dollars annually.
The University of Kansas has reached a position where a medical department has become imperative, and the sooner the fact is recognized the better.
It has been said that Lawrence does not offer the necessary facilities for such a school, but such an argument is wholly a mistake. The University of Michigan, which has one of the largest and best medical schools in the country is located is a town but little or no larger than Lawrence, and yet facilities for medical instruction are of the very best. It needs only the founding of a State Hospital here, such as most eastern states have, and such as this state urgently needs, to make the facilities for medical instruction by our University unsurpassable. Such a hospital would be cared for by the state for the reception of indigent patients from the different counties and for soldiers, private patients, and the use of the railroads of the state. The University already offers the best of instruction in fully a half of the medical studies, and the cost of a complete organization would be trivial in comparison with the benefits that would come.
It is believed by some that the State should not be required to furnish facilities for professional education, but the argument has no longer any weight whatever. Already Kansas has schools for the education of farmers, mechanics, lawyers and pharmacists; and is the profession which cares for the health of the people of less importance? The medical laws of Kansas are among the most lax in the United States, and they will continue to be so until the state pro-