RT Journal
A1 BENEDICT AL
T1 THe economics of the graduation of medical candidates
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1909
FD January 30
VO LII
IS 5
SP 378
OP 379
DO 10.1001/jama.1909.25420310038001g
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1909.25420310038001g
AB The present article, suggested by the excellent statistics of medical education published annually by The Journal, is a cold-blooded statistical study of certain problems of supply and demand, bearing quite directly on the ultimate bread-and-butter problem of the profession. Let us start with some statistics from the U. S. Census: Roughly speaking, the ratio of physicians to population is about the same as of white to red corpuscles in the blood, but with a moderate leucocytosis.In the thirty years from 1870 to 1900, the population nearly doubled. In the same period the number of physicians more than doubled; in fact, it increased to about 212 per cent. of its former number. To put it in another way, the average physician had a clientele which was less than in 1870 by 50 persons, or about 10 families. Not only was the clientele smaller, but it included a larger proportion of