Services at Appleton Chapel.

In Appleton Chapel, the Sunday morning service, which began in January, 1910, has been continued throughout the past year with gratifying results. The average attendance of students increased from 146 in 1908-09, and 151 in 1909-10, to 244 in 1910-11. Perhaps even more significant is the growth of their minimum attendance from 40 in 1908-09, and 50 in 1909-10, to 104 in 1910-11, while the churches in the neighborhood report that the presence of students at their services has not materially diminished. The attendance at the Chapel of persons other than students has changed very little, but it is composed in far larger part of members of the Faculty and their families. In short, the Chapel is becoming what it ought to be, a real university chapel, and this fact impresses anyone who attends the services.

Graduate and Professional Schools.

For the graduate and professional schools the year has been one of progress. The reports of the various deans explain the condition of these schools, and it is necessary here to allude only to the changes made during the year, or to matters where comment may be of general interest. Attention is called to the report of the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and especially to his statement of the benefits that might flow from research fellowships which would enable and induce a few young men of rare original power to devote some of their most creative years to work that may bear fruit in enlarging the bounds of knowledge; instead of consuming most of their energy in teaching when others with different gifts could do that as well or better than they. Such fellowships might be in part honorary, and should all be highly honorable, for the time has come in America when creative scholarship should attract ambitious youth as strongly as other kinds of activity. That the desire to advance human knowledge should be so largely confined among college graduates to men who must use it as a means of support is not wholly creditable to our universities. Of John Harvard Fellowships without stipend awarded to scholars of high grade there were last year three among the travelling fellows, but not a single one among the resident students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Almost every career in life must be pursued mainly be persons who obtain their livelihood thereby, but above all else knowledge of the mysteries of nature and of man ought to attract a few men solely by its charm and its boundless possibilities.

The Graduate School of Applied Sciences.

The Graduate School of Applied Science has had notable additions during the year. The Department of Architecture has been strengthened by the coming of M. Eugene Joseph Armand Duquesne as Professor of Design; and a new Department of Sanitary Engineering has been created by the appointment of Professor George Chandler Whipple, who will take up his work in the course of this year. The new department touches on one side the instruction in Engineering in this School, and on the other the Department of Preventive Medicine in the Medical School. The number of students may not be large at the outset, but the instruction will supply a rapidly growing need in the community.

The Law School.

In the Law School the fourth year course, leading to the degree of Scientiae Iuridicae Doctor, was opened during the year, with a small number of students. There was neither expectation nor desire that they should be numerous, for the additional year is not designed for men who intend to devote themselves to practicing the art of the profession. The regular three years' course serves that purpose, and experience has proved its excellence in attaining its object, but the province of a law school extends also to the production of jurists who will advance legal thought, and the fourth year is established with that view. Men of this kind will always be few, and quality, not numbers, in the criterion of the value of the course.

The Medical School.

In the Medical School the changes during the year have been noteworthy. Here also an additional year of work leading to a new degree went into effect. Eight students were registered in the graduate course in Preventive Medicine, of whom two completed the work and received the new degree of Doctor of Public Health.

The greatest need of the School has been a closer connection with the hospitals of the city, and marked progress in this direction has been made. The construction of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, adjoining the Medical School, was begun during the past summer and the building is expected to be finished and ready for patients in the autumn of 1912. By an understanding with the Hospital its chief physician and surgeon are nominated to the Trustees by the Corporation of Harvard University, and the subordinate medical officers are to be nominated by these chiefs. Similar arrangements have been made with the Children's Hospital, the Infant Asylum, and the Infants' Hospital, and the same practice has been followed in the Free Hospital for Women and the Infants' Department of the Boston Dispensary, while the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital for Cancer is intimately associated with the School. It cannot be repeated too often that the object of these arrangements is not to subordinate the hospital to the Medical School, but to promote the interest both of the School and of the patients through a joint appointment by the two institutions. This will make it possible to secure the best medical talent by combining a chair in the School and a clinic in the Hospital.

The Medical Curriculum.

During the year the Faculty discussed a radical change in the process of examination leading to the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Hitherto the degree has been conferred upon the completion of a fixed number of courses, those in the first three years being required and those of the fourth year elective; and, since the intensive method is pursued, the student, in the earlier part of his course at least, devoted his whole energies for a certain length of time to a single subject, passed an examination upon it, and bade it farewell. Complaint was made that the system was inelastic, lacking in stimulation; and that the student might graduate without retaining sufficient knowledge, without coordinating it, and without inducement to review it. In the spring of 1910, a committee was appointed to consider means of lessening the rigidity of the medical curriculum. Members of the committee examined carefully the system prevailing in American medical schools of granting the degree upon an accumulation of credits in separate courses, required or elective, and the European system of holding general examinations, first upon the general scientific or laboratory subjects, and later upon the clinical branches. The committee was convinced that the latter plan afforded a better test of medical preparation, gave to the student more latitude in his work, and directed his attention more to acquiring a thorough command of medical science. It reported, therefore, in favor of two general examinations, partly practical, partly oral, and partly written, designed to measure the student's comprehension, judgment and skill, rather than to test his detailed information; the first examination to cover the laboratory subjects taught in the first year and a half, the second to cover the clinical subjects studied later, the examination in special courses to be retained only for the purpose of certifying that the student has completed the courses required and can be allowed to present himself for the general examination.

The essential principles in the report of the committee were adopted provisionally by the Faculty on March 4, and another committee, composed mainly of different members, was appointed to consider a practical method of giving effect to the plan. The second committee modified the plan in some respects and carried it into far greater detail. It was then discussed both by the Faculty Council and the Faculty, and finally adopted in October, 1911.

Policy of General Examinations.