It seems to have been very generally assumed that a student intending to enter upon the study of medicine needs little if any preparation in mathematics beyond arithmetic and perhaps a little algebra and geometry. I am informed that students in Columbia College intending to enter the College of Physicians and Surgeons, have been definitely advised by a member of the medical faculty that they would have little if any need for mathematical training and that they would better spend their time in preparation along other lines of study. The physician who gave this advice has been very successful in the practice of medicine and is well known as an educator. I have heard similar views expressed by another well-known and successful New York physician. I presume that the views of these eminent medical men are fairly representative of the opinion of the majority of the medical profession today and inasmuch as the student who contemplates a career in medicine naturally — and very properly —seeks the advice of older men in the profession, it is not surprising that these students come to their professional studies with a mathematical training which is meager in the extreme. This attitude of indifference, sometimes approaching hostility toward the teaching of mathematics to prospective medical students, seems to have sprung in part from the circumstance that many of the shining lights in the medical profession have attained their position in the firmament without having felt the need of more powerful mathematical aids than the average high-school courses afford. We are still hardly beyond the period when similar arguments were supposed to prove that a college education is a superfluous ornament for men who expect to spend their lives in what for want of a more specific term is usually called “business.” I believe I shall be able to show that although a large measure of usefulness may be attained in the field of medicine by the non-mathematically trained physician, nevertheless the inclusion of such training in his preparation for life will enable him to extend his efforts into a wider field of useful endeavor.
Exercise in the practice of medicine: Edited by G. F. Fletscher Futura publishing co., Mount Kisco, New York (1982) 416 pages, 77 illustrations, 47 tables, $39.50 ISBN 0-87993-177-9