Show MEDICAL FAILURES an authority says three fourths of graduates are to practice that out of the bradu ates turned out by the medical col leaps each ear are wholly unfitted to practice medicine and are menaces to the communities in which they set tie was stated by tr chester mayer of the state board of medical exam iners of kentucky at a meeting of the american medical association corn cittee on medical education held in chicago not long ago dr mayer said that only 25 to 28 per cent of the graduates are qualified fifty eight per cent of the graduates examined in 28 states were refused licenses aith few exceptions these failures took a second examination in a few weeks and only 60 per cent of them passed this does not mean that deficient cien cles 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 gott secretary of the indiana board said the majority of our schools now teach their students how to pass ex aminat lons not how to be good phy at the session of the american medical association held in atlantic city in june dr M clayton thrush a professor in the medico Chirurg ical college in philadelphia said many doctors turned out of the medical schools are go ignorant in matters pertaining to pharmacy that they know nothing about the properties of the drugs they prescribe for their patients dr henry beats jr pres ident of the pennsylvania state board of medical after ing the papers of a class of bandl dates tor licensure said about one quarter of the papers show a degree of illiteracy that renders the bandl dates for licensure incapable of un der standing medicine A great many more physicians and chemists might be quoted in support of the astounding charge that 3 in competente compe tents are being dumped onto an unsuspecting public each year what the damage done amounts to can never be estimated for these in competente compe tents enjoy the privilege of di prescribing or dispensing drugs regarding the properties of which they know nothing and then of signing death certificates that are not passed upon by anyone unless the coroner Is called in probably there Is not a grave yard from one end of the country to the other that does not contain the buried evidences of the mistakes or criminal carelessness 0 incompetent physicians during the last year there have been perhaps halt a dozen known cases where surgeons after perform ing operations have sewed up the in without first removing the gauze sponges used to absorb the blood and in some cases forceps and even surgeon s scissors have been left in the wound how many of these cases there have been where the patient died there Is no means knowing and comparatively few f the cases where the discovery Is made in time adi save life become gen rally public reports from sanata alums lums for the treatment of the drug habit show that members of the al profession are more often treated in these institutions than members of any other and that a majority of the patients excluding the physicians themselves can trace their downfall directly to a careless physician how many criminal operations are performed by physicians Is also a matter of conjecture operations of this class are unfortunately very frequent in large cities some bradu abed and licensed physicians many of them of supposed respectability make an exclusive practice of crim inal medical and surgical treatment dr henry G W rheinhart coroner s physician of chicago estimates the number of criminal operations annu allay in chicago alone at 38 how many resulted fatally are unknown as when death results the real cause Is disguised in the death certificate which the physician signs and which no one but himself and a clerk sees probably not one case of tice in 1 ever becomes the subject of a law suit but in the last year ap proximately cases wherein the plaintiff has alleged malpractice have been reported in the newspapers and owing to the social prominence and the favored positions of many phyll ceans not more than halt the new suits stated probably result in any newspaper publicity but it would probably not be an exaggeration to state that the total cases of tice not involving criminal operations or criminal medical practice would amount to or more than one case to each physician in the country this estimate Is of course more or less conjecture untimely deaths and permanent disabilities are frequent and occur within the knowledge of al most every one when life could have been saved or health restored had the physician been and competent |