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 occupies, the race is an easy prey to disease that affects the health of the whole nation.  The germs of disease have no race prejudice.  They do not even draw the line at social equality, but gnaw with equal avidity at the vitals of white and black alike, and pass with the greatest freedom of intercourse from the one to the other.  One touch of disease makes the whole world kin, and also kind.  The Negro physician comes into immediate contact with the masses of his race; he is the missionary of good health.  His ministration is not only to his own race, but to the community and to the nation as a whole.  The white plague seems to love the black victim.  This disease must be stamped out by the nation through concerted action.  The Negro physician is one of the most efficient agencies to render this national service.  During the entire history of the race on this continent, there has been no more striking indication of its capacity for self-reclamation and of its ability to maintain a professional class on the basis of scientific efficiency than the rise and success of the Negro physician.

KELLY MILLER

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