News of the Month.

THE OPENING OF TORONTO'S NEW MEDICAL BUILDING.

THE opening of the new building of the Toronto Medical College in Queen's Park, on the first of this month, is a red-letter day in the history of medical education in Canada. The event marks the practical consummation of the federation of the two great medical colleges in the city, Trinity and Toronto. Their united staffs of professors will make one of the largest and strongest medical faculties on the continent, and the registration of students. will, it is expected, total over 600-by far the largest attendance at any medical college in Canada, if not in America. The event further marks the gathering of some of the best known medical men in the world to be present at the opening of what is generally regarded as the completest and most up-to-date medical college building on the continent. It is the auspicious inauguration in Toronto of the best and most efficient accommodation for the teaching of scientific medicine that can be provided.

On Friday afternoon, the 2nd inst., at three o'clock, there will be a meeting in the large new lecture theatre, when the new laboratories will be formally declared open, and the inaugural address will be delivered by Professor Sherrington of the University of Liverpool, England. Other distinguished guests will be present and will take part, of whom may be mentioned Professors Welch and Osler, of Johns Hopkins; Professor Keen, of Philadelphia; Professors Minot and Bowditch, of Harvard; Professor Chittenden, of Yale: Professor Roddick, of McGill; Professor Lee, of Columbia; Professor Barker, of Chicago; and Professor McMurrich, of the University of Michigan.

The accommodation of the new lecture theatre will of necessity be limited, and the invitations will therefore be restricted to individuals to whom the Committee think wise to issue such.

The opening lecture of the seventeenth session since the reestablishment of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto, will be given in the University Gymnasium, on Thursday evening, October 1st, at 8.30 o'clock. This lecture will be mainly a students' function, and whilst a considerable number of guests will be invited, all students will be admitted on presentation of their registration tickets.

On the forenoon of Friday, the 2nd inst., other of the distinguished strangers will address the students in the lecture theatre.

University convocation will take place on Friday afternoon in the University Gymnasium, and certain honorary degrees conferred.

A banquet will take place in the evening, when the invited guests from abroad will be entertained by the Faculty.

The attendance at the Toronto Medical College has been growing at a phenomenal rate during the last few years. In 1897 the total registration was 295; last year it totalled 424, and the year before 474. To properly handle the increasing classes, the new building was an absolute necessity. There is ample accommodation now for over 700 students.

This building is situated between the University Library and the anatomical wing of the Biological building. It has cost something like $175,000 to complete. It is three storeys in height in front, with an additional storey and sub-basement in the wings, which extend eastward. Two large lecture rooms are provided which will flank the main building; the larger will have accommodation for about 350 students; the smaller for about 200 students.

In the south wing, in what may be called the basement, are situated caretaker's quarters, lavatories, recreation rooms and reading rooms for the students; in the same storey in the north wing is placed a large museum of hygiene.

The three main floors of the building are arranged upon the unit system of laboratory construction proposed by Professor Minot, of Harvard University. The main features of the unit system are all comprehended in the character of the laboratory "unit" room. This must, first of all, be no larger than is required to accommodate readily the maximum number of students whose practical instruction a single demonstrator can efficiently guide and control. It must also be of such dimensions that it can, at need, be made to serve as a museum, a library or reading room, or a small lecture room. The units, further, must be placed with respect to one another, preferably in pairs or series, that, by the removal of the partitions separating them, rooms of larger dimensions may, when desired, be obtained at a minimum cost and in a short time. The dimensions of such a unit, as determined by Professor Minot, are 23 by 30 feet, and this room will accommodate twenty-four working students, which number, experience shows, is the largest that should be under the supervision of a single class demonstrator.

The south wing is occupied by the Arts Department of Physiology, whilst the main portion of the building and the north wing

will accommodate the final departments of medicine. On the ground floor in the main portion are situated in front of the dean's room, a large faculty room, a lavatory and a library, behind which is placed a large pathological museum.

In the north wing in this floor are placed a chart and preparation room back of the lecture theatre, preparation and store rooms for the pathological museums, and laboratories for gross pathology. The second and third floors in the same wing and in front contain the laboratories of pathological histology and bacteriology with rooms for the Professor of Pathology and demonstrators, and unit rooms for small special classes. In the north wing on the third floor three units are occupied by the Provincial Board of Health for its bacteriological and chemical laboratories.

Architecturally, so far as the extension is concerned, the utrost has been done considering the difficulties that the enormous window space interposed. The appearance of the buildings, however, though of course not in the same class as the University building from the architectural point of view, is on the whole, very acceptable.

A feature of special interest is presented by the small research rooms. The half units are intended to be used for various purposes, but chiefly for small groups of students pursuing advanced work or for special lines of research, but each of the fifteen small rooms, shown in the plans as adjacent to the lecture theatres, is reserved for individual workers carrying on selected investigations. These, with the other arrangements described, have been designed with a view of making the buildings a home for research. The building is in every way thoroughly up-to-date, and in the extent of window light for the laboratories, it is unique on this continent.

TORONTO UNIVERSITY MEDICAL FACULTY ON
DR. RODDICK'S BILL.

AT the annual meeting of the Medical Faculty of the University of Toronto the following statement was agreed to as embodying the views of the faculty upon Dr. Roddick's bill providing for Provincial reciprocity in connection with medical registration, and upon the proposed alteration in that bill suggested by the Montreal Medical Society:

The Medical Faculty of the University of Toronto desire to call attention to some recent developments in the matter of Dominion medical registration which may, if allowed to proceed further without opposition, result in prejudicing the course of medical education in this Province.

As is well known, Dr. Roddick, after several years of effort, succeeded in persuading the Dominion Parliament to pass an Act providing for the establishment of a Dominion Medical Council empowered to hold examinations in medicine, and to give licenses to practise which shall be valid in any portion of the Dominion. This Council can, however, be constituted only when all the Provinces of Canada have accepted the provisions of the Act.

The Act was passed in 1902, and since then all the Provinces, with the exception of that of Quebec only, have expressed their acceptance of it, and have taken the steps necessary to give their acceptance effect. In the case of Quebec a bill providing for the adoption of the Act was defeated in the Legislature on the 15th April, and the explanation advanced for this action is that the medical profession in one of the universities of that Province are unable to accept the Act as it stands, and that this has influenced the attitude of the Legislative Council and Assembly.

It will be recalled that before the Act received the sanction of Parliament there were several clauses in it in regard to which considerable discussion obtained on the part of the representatives of the various institutions interested in medical education. One of these was that dealing with the privileges to be accorded to the holders of university degrees. According to sections 3972 and 3977 of the revised statutes, rules and regulations of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Province of Quebec, graduates in medicine of Laval University, McGill University, and the University of Bishop's College, who have passed four years in the study of medicine, are entitled, without further examination as to their knowledge and skill, to the license to practise medicine in the Province of Quebec, and graduates in medicine of the University of Manitoba are given like standing in that Province, but all who wish to obtain a license to practise in Ontario, must undergo the examinations conducted under the authority of the Medical Council of this Province, whether they are graduates of a university or not. In order to prevent unjust discrimination between the universities of Quebec, on the one hand, and those of Ontario on the other, the representatives of the latter obtained the insertion in the Act of clause 3, sub-section 1, section 10, which reads as follows:

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The possession of a Canadian university degree alone, or of a certificate of provincial registration, founded on such possession, obtained subsequent to the date when this Act shall have become operative, as provided in sub-section 3 of section 6 hereof, shall not entitle the possessor thereof to be registered under this Act."

The representatives of the Ontario universities were told when they suggested this clause that it would make it impossible for the Province of Quebec to accept the Act, and interest is given this