To the Editor:
—In The Journal, November 24, under the title, "Needed Improvements in Graduate Medical Education," appears a statement of the position of the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals in relation to graduate medical instruction. Such an announcement makes timely, and in fact invites, comment.It must be borne in mind that graduate medical education is not and cannot be compulsory; that the physician, once he has obtained his license, may legally practice any branch of medicine, subject only to dictates of his conscience and his fear of malpractice suits; and that if he is to improve himself through further study, such opportunities must be offered to him as he will, himself, freely elect, even though an all-wise providence might prescribe differently. Just the reverse has been true of the process of standardization of undergraduate medical teaching. The Council, together with other similar agencies, had only to persuade