Modern pre-med students do not need Latin

Drawing on my half-century of education and experience as a medical student, professor of human anatomy and academic dean at Baylor University College of Medicine, plus 20 years as an executive of the medical school accreditation authority for 125 U.S. and 16 Canadian schools, I vigorously refute Dr. Thorburn's archaic insistance on study of Latin by modern pre-meds, on the grounds that Latin is no longer needed to for entrance into medical studies [ sic ].

No U.S. medical school requires applicants to study Latin for entrance into medical studies. Why not, if Latin is so important?

The medical curriculum is changing constantly. A century ago, Anatomy (with its 200,000+ facts -- some derived from Greek and Arabic) occupied a third to half of all the hours in the M.D. curriculum. Then came microbiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, cellular biology and molecular genetics, with the result that anatomy now is reduced to 10 percent or less of the M.D. program. Clinical medicine has come from the efforts of English, French and German physician/scientists, all writing in their native languages.

Kenley Lim, in my opinion, is likely to be accepted to medical school if he earns about a 3.5 GPA in general studies and gets a competitive score on the MCAT -- without taking any Latin; and so it shall be for all of Baylor's pre-meds for whom I advise study of a useful modern foreign language-- obviously Spanish is the most useful in the southern third of the United States.

Dr. J.R. Schofield, Distinguished Visiting Professor, history of medicine

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1: The best language to know for MEDICAL SCHOOL is a Latin based language. Latin itself is rather limited in use in the real world so the next best language is Spanish or Italian. Why? Because the majority of medical terms you will be forced to memorized in medical school are mostly Latin based. These Latin based terms are almost entirely and directly transferable to Spanish. You will be much further ahead of other students because you will only have to think of the Spanish to remember its Latin counterpart. Terms like proximal, distal, medial, lateral,anterior, posterior,epidural, substantia nigra, mesodural, metacarpals, femur,metatarsals,fibula, tibia, radius, ulna,...... etc. Along with the names of the bones, arteries, nerves. It will also help you in biology and botany which will also be required subjects in college.

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