In 1910, the Carnegie Foundation published an extensive report on medical education titled Medical Education in the United States and Canada, by Abraham Flexner. Commonly known as the Flexner Report, it provided an in-depth review of 155 schools based on Flexner’s opinion of what should constitute an outstanding medical education. Specifically, Flexner believed that college graduation should be a prerequisite for medical school matriculants; medical schools should be departments in established universities as well as governed by and funded by the parent university; medical education should be four years, with the first two in the basic sciences and the last two in clinical; and faculty should be full time. Based on these tenets, the Medical College of the State of South Carolina was woefully inadequate due to its poor physical facilities and lack of equipment as well as its lack of full-time faculty and lack of money.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Edward Klauber, [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-104223]