NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL

The new Medical School buildings which were formally dedicated by President Ellot last fall, have made the Harvard Medical School the most perfectly equipped institution of its kind in the world. The Faculty and the courses of instruction remain practically unchanged. The increased facilities, however, for laboratory work and effective teaching which are the result of ideas of various members of the Medical Faculty, based not only on their own personal experience but on careful study of the most approved systems of such instruction the world over, have provided unsurpassed opportunities for the education of a large number of general practitioners and of a smaller number of trained specialists and investigators.

These ideas are so well formulated, so authoritively expressed today wherever medical teaching is of paramount interest, that the lines of such instruction may now fairly be said to be laid down for another century. The application of such ideas to the Medical School has resulted in a group of buildings unique for their purpose in that no one of them is a reflection of earlier and antiquated equipment, nor by any possibility is likely to become so in the near future. The interior arrangement of the buildings denotes the fundamental change that in the last thirty years has of completely revolutionized the teaching of medicine--namely, the development of laboratory instruction from an almost unknown and completely subordinate item to the place of first importance.

Description of Buildings.

The group comprises, exclusive of the power house, an administration building and four other structures, devoted respectively to the department of Anatomy and Histology, Physiological Chemistry and Physiology, Bacteriology and Pathology, and Pharmacology and Hygiene. Thus, each department brings together the subjects most closely allied in the curriculum and becomes, to all intents and purposes, the educational home of the individual student while at the School.

The administration building is devoted to the business offices of the School, to the Warren Anatomical Museum, and to rooms for the social uses of students and Faculty. To take advantage of these new opportunities for a more congenial student life, and organization has recently been formed, known as the Students' Library Association, whose two-fold object is to equip and maintain a library of current books and periodicals and to act as the centre of the student activity. The membership is open to all students and financial support is dependent on voluntary subscriptions only. The Warren Museum, with a floor space of about 22,000 square feet, occupies the three top floors. A large amphitheater is connected with the Museum by apparatus for the transportation of objects used in illustrating the lectures.

The four department buildings are in reality, so many great collections of small laboratories for student work and for special investigations by instructors and advanced students. Each series of laboratories is connected by an amphitheatre which is used for lectures and demonstrations. The buildings are similar in design, each consisting of two laboratory wings with sufficient land behind them to provide for further extension. The wings are connected in front by an amphitheatre, two stories in height, which provides a general meeting place for classes of about two hundred and fifty students. In the connecting link between the laboratory wings of each building is located the library devoted to that department.

Importance of Laboratory Wings.

The essential feature of these buildings, the laboratory wings, which extend toward the rear of each structure in a series of piers and windows, is an adaptation, on a large scale, of the so called "unit system" of laboratory construction, originally devised by Professor W. T. Porter, and more completely developed by Professor C. S. Minot '78. The system fixes the most practical size of a student laboratory at twenty-three by thirty feet and the number of students most successfully taught by a single instructor at twenty-four. Obviously these laboratories divide the number of students in the department into small groups working under individual instructors and solve, once for all, so far as medical instruction is concerned, the problem of handling large bodies of students without losing the valuable element of close personal relations with the instructors. In addition to the student laboratories, each wing contains special laboratories, each wing contains special laboratories provided for the teaching force of the department--for it is an essential point in the general scheme of education here represented that each instructor shall devote part of the day to his own private scientific investigation and shall thus come to his classes with the enthusiasm of a worker as well as the authority of a teacher--and for the research work of advanced students devoting themselves to special forms of investigation.

The power plant has been so situated and constructed as to interfere in no way with the activities of the institution or with any future additions. Ample room has been reserved for duplicating the electric generators, the refrigerating processes, the boilers and the piping. An elaborate system of warming, filtering and removing the atmosphere in the buildings is used. In the various laboratories special hoods, connected with ducts which are surmounted with individual fan systems, carry off the fumes.

The total cost of erection of the new school has been approximately $3,000,000, contributed by Mr. J. P. Morgan--who provided for the erection, in honor of his father, J. S. Morgan, of the administration building and the two others adjoining--Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, Mrs. C. P. Huntington, Mr. James Stillman, Mr. David Sears '74 and others. An additional $2,000,000 serves as an endowment for the institution.

Easy Access to Hospitals.

When the new buildings were planned, two conditions were recognized as imperative to the best results: easy access to hospitals for the intimate study of disease and available appointments in such hospitals. Accordingly, the Corporation has made offers to various large hospitals of parts of the 26 acre plot belonging to the University with the result that at present, three institutions, the Brigham Hospital, the Children's Hospital, and the Infants Hospital are prepared to avail themselves of these opportunities. Plans for the buildings are being drawn and work will be begun as soon as possible.

The largest of these institutions is the Brigham Hospital, made possible by the will of Peter B. Brigham. It is planned by the trustees of this legacy, which amounts to about $5,000,000, to erect a complete set of hospital buildings on the property fronting on Huntington avenue and Francis street. The Children's Hospital, another large institution, will build to the west of the Medical School. The infants' Hospital, in memory of Thomas Morgan Rotch '01, will be erected near the Children's Hospital. Westward of the present group is already located the "House of the Good Samaritan," used by members of the school for hospital work.

In the past, the University has been handicapped in choosing teachers of medicine owing to lack of any direct control over the vacancies occurring in hospitals used for clinical teaching purposes. Under the new conditions, hospital appointments of the highest importance will be an additional incentive to bring to Harvard the most brilliant minds among teachers of medicine