Dr. Charles B. Purvis, who was graduated from the Medical College of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1865, is perhaps the oldest colored physician in the United States; and by general consent ranks as dean of the fraternity. He shared with Dr. A. T. Augusta the honor of being one of the few colored men to become surgeons in the United States Army. Shortly after graduation he was made assistant surgeon in the Freedmen's Hospital at Washington, D.C., with which institution he was connected during the entire period of his active professional life. The development and present position of the medical school at Howard University is due to Dr. Purvis more than to any other single individual. For several years he has been retired upon the Carnegie Foundation. Dr. George W. Hubbard, a distinguished white physician, dean of the Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, has also been a great pioneer and promoter of the medical education of the Negro race. At first, the Negro patient refused to put confidence in the physician of his own race, notwithstanding the closer intimacy of social contact. It was not until after he had demonstrated his competency to treat disease as well as his white competitor that he was able to win recognition among his own people. The colored physician is everywhere in open competition with the white practitioner, who never refuses to treat Negro patients, if allowed to assume the disdainful attitude of racial superiority. If the Negro doctor did not secure practically as good results in the treatment of disease as the white physician, he would soon find himself without patients. 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.