e medical education of the Negro race.

At first, the Negro patient refused to put confidence in the physician of
his own race, notwithstanding the closer intimacy of social contact. It
was not until after he had demonstrated his competency to treat disease
as well as his white competitor that he was able to win recognition among
his own people. The colored physician is everywhere in open competition
with the white practitioner, who never refuses to treat Negro patients,
if allowed to assume the disdainful attitude of racial superiority. If
the Negro doctor did not secure practically as good results in the
treatment of disease as the white physician, he would soon find himself
without patients.

According to the last census there were in the United States 3,077 Negro
physicians and 478 Negro dentists. When we consider the professional needs
of ten millions of Negroes, it will be seen that the quota is not over one
fourth full. There is urgent need especially for an additional number of
pharmacists and dentists. It must be said for the Negro physician that
their membership more fully measures up to the full status of a
professional class than that of any other profession among colored men.
Every member of the profession must have a stated medical education based
upon considerable academic preparation, sufficient to enable them to pass
the rigid tests of State Boards in various parts of the country. The best
regulated medical schools are now requiring at least two years of college
training as a basis for entering upon the study of medicine. Under the
stimulus of these higher standards the Negro medical profession will become
more thoroughly equipped and proficient in the years to come.

These physicians maintain a national medical association which meets
annually in different parts of the country and prepare and discuss papers
bearing upon the various phases of their profession. There are under the
control of Negro physicians a number of hospitals where are performed
operations verging upon the limits of surgical skill. The profession has
developed not a few physicians and surgeons whose ability has won
recognition throughout their profession. A number of them have performed
operations which have attracted wide attention and have contributed to
leading journals discussions dealing with the various forms and phases of
disease, as well as their medical and surgical treatment.

By reason of the stratum which the Negro occu