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The FLEXNER REPORT MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. A report to the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching by Bulletin Number 4. D. 8.Updike, The Merrymount press, Boston. Copywrite 1910

The study that resulted in this report was commissioned in 1908 and was two years in the making. It was reprinted in 1972. There are two reprints in the UCSF Medical Library with the call letters R 743, F 62, 1910. After an excellent introduction by Henry S Prichett the Report is presented in two parts that occupy 337 pages. Part 1 (180 pages) gives the backgrouod and the history of how the Medical education reached its sorry state up to the time of the report. It discusses the proper and actual bases of Medical education. It then presnts ideal curricula for Medical education, the financial aspects of medical education, reconstruction, medical sects, State Boards, Post Graduate School, and the medical education of women and the negro.

Part 2 examines the state of medical education in every State of the Union and in Canada giving details of the good and the bad parts of all of it. (157 pages) In preparing for Part 2, Or. Flexner or a collegue visited every "Medical School" in the USA and in Canada. Each is described by name and type, entrance requirements, attendance, teaching staff, resources available for maintenance, lab and clinical facilites. Each was evaluated. It is imporatant to note that Or. Flexner did not get mired down in the morass of discussing the means by which the reform was to occur. That was the job of the Executive, Legislative, and Judical branches of Government working with Organized Medicine who used the Report as a guide for understanding and for action.

This fantastic document presented a template for Action that changed the teaching of Medicine by diploma mills to that provided by the best Medical Schools in the world and further changed the practice of Medicine from to that carried out by the best trained physicians in the world. No small contribution! This is the kind of study that I think is needed to lay the groundwork for the changes that are needed in the practice of the Criminal Justice System in the United States.

I am aware of the fact that studies have been made of the System. They failed in their mission since all the Congresses in the Country are considering dozens of Crime Bills at this time. What is needed is a comprehensive and coordinated study of the entire criminal justice system such as was provided by the Flexner Report for the teaching and practice of Medicine.