Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Chicago Medical Center Reopening [PAGE 9]

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important ono. It is in lino with the progress that has been marl ft all through the West;. You will find, if you look over the situation, that already Indiana has a strong and growing medical department of the State University. It is the only medical school in the State of Indiana. You will liiul that the University of Michigan has a strong department of medicine; that the University of Iowa has now the only medical school in the State of Iowa, and although handicapped by not having any large center of population, they will make that State institution a great medical school. You will find that there is a very well developed first two year course in medicine in the State of Wisconsin; a splendid course in Minnesota—a full four year course under the control of the State, and there it is the only institution in the State. They have back of that State institution the people of the State, and they have already put that institution in the first rank. They require two years of physics, chemistry and biology for admission. They are giving a very complete medical course, and they require by law a hospital interneship of men who are going to practice medicine in that State. As President James told you, this movement is not for the medical profession. It is not for the individual doctor. It is for the people. This demand for a higher education, a better training, is to protect the people against the menace of ignorance and quackery. Here in Illinois we have been very backward. We are in most directions more backward than the people of any other State, as far as medical education is concerned. There are to-day nine medical colleges in the City of Chicago. Many of these are of very low grade and should not be supported by the profession or by the community of this city or of the State of Illinois. The step that has ^been taken to-day here I think is a long step forward, in that it makes it possible for the best medical institutions here under university auspices to co-operate for medical education in this State. Mr. President, Members of the Board of Trustees, Gentlemen of the Faculty, Alumni, and Students of this College: I want to congratulate you all upon the work of this day, and I want to repeat and emphasize that it means very much to you, but it means more to the people of Illinois—that the best asset the people of 'Illinois could have would be a strong medical institution under State control, supported by State money. You can confidently go to your legislators and tell them that no investment that the State of Illinois could make would be so worth while as the investment in a strong medical department, which would carry out these three great functions of developing welltrained practitioners of medicine, of developing teachers, and research men, and, lastly, of adding to the sum-total of medical knowledge in the way of research, so that they would add from the laboratories and the clinics of this school great truths that 'would be of service not only to our people, but to all mankind.

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