Dr. Still's idea of what was adequate to educate professionals was met with the Flexnor report and with it 90% of DO schools at the time were shut down and the ones that remained Flexnor considered unable to even teach what Still envisioned.....
Yeah, that's some selective historiocracy there. Its inaccurate. 90% of DO schools didn't close after the Flexner report. There simply weren't that many to begin with (remember the first school opened in 1892, so its not like there were 50 open by 1910), and we all know that 5 or so remained standing. Its hard to get real numbers, but "several" seems to be the implication. Also the Flexner report ended up closing down ~60% of all US
MD schools at the time, and something around 90%+ of all "alternative" schools, including ND and Homeopathy schools.
On a separate note, his report also closed down all but 2 HBCU MD schools, explaining that blacks were should only treat other blacks. Its pretty clear that Flexner had some very large biases, even with his selection of what he viewed as the "ideal" school (you know the one he went to in undergrad was affiliated with as a teacher). In any case, it was a different time, and for the most part his changes created far more regulation in medical training in a time when there was very little to begin with, which ultimately was a net benefit to the medical profession.
EDIT: So I got curious and I looked into this a little more and found that in his review of a ton of medical schools, Flexner visited the following schools of osteopathy:
1. LA College - merged in 1914, possibly because of aspects of the Flexner report, with the Pacific College
2. Pacific College - merged in 1914, possibly because of aspects of the Flexner report, with the LA College
3. Littlejohn College (Chicago) - later became CCOM
4. Still in Des Moines - later became DMU
5. Massachusetts College - In 1916 it lost AOA accreditation (possibly due to Flexner) and closed in the 1940s when it lost state recognition
6. Central College (Kansas City) - Its not clear if it was later reinvented as KCUMB in 1916
7. ASO (Kirksville) - later became KCOM
8. PCOM
The first 2 schools, following their merger, became the College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, and for a decade (1918-1928) was the ONLY medical school in California after the closure of USC (likely because of the Flexner report), which later reopened in 1928. For those who don't know, this became the UCI medical school in the 60s with the whole CA DO and MD "merger". COMP opened 16 years later.
EDIT #2: OK, so I should have been doing something else, but I skimmed through a lot of the Flexner report. The guy cuts up on virtually every institution he reviewed save a handful that matched his "ideal". Its hilarious, because a lot of the common complaints of his about most medical schools at the time (e.g. after money only, barely any "ward" experience and situations where interns do all the work and students just "look on", having to travel long distances for ward experience, poor facilities, inadequate faculty, no permanent clinical faculty, etc.) are the same things we complain about now, although realistically by 1910's standards, I think we're doing quite a bit better.
That said, he also cuts up on many schools stating that they would perish and become extinct in the future with better regulation, only for those schools to comprise a LOT of the top 20 MD schools in the country today. I know, I know its been a century, its just funny to read it knowing what the future held.
He also had a very clearly low opinion of osteopathy and pretty much said nothing good about any of the DO schools he evaluated at the time, calling them all businesses and using "treatment" in quotes whenever he referred to what the students there were taught or did.
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