(FORTUNE Magazine) – Hippocrates's profession is gathering new fans. The number of med school applicants, which declined through most of the Eighties, has increased by 15% over 1990 to 33,600, more than twice the spaces that the country's 126 teaching institutions have available. Norman Anderson, dean of admissions at Johns Hopkins, says the hopefuls include ''nontraditional'' would-be doctors. Among them: former investment bankers and lawyers, whose professions have been battered by layoffs and who are now looking for safer careers. Safety played a role in the last surge in interest in the medical profession. Some 40,000 applicants tried to enroll in 1973 and 1974, soon after the end of the draft, which had entitled medical students to military service deferment. Many teaching establishments don't like the motives behind this new surge. Says Katherine Pollak, a vice dean at University of Pennsylvania's post- baccalaureate health programs: ''A real estate developer recently told me his business is going bottoms up and now he wants to become a doctor. I'm not interested in giving fine tools to people whose motive I distrust.'' She refused to admit him as a premed student. She's looking for those interested in more than money. - K.B.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NAI LEE LUM ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES CAPTION: MORE WOULD-BE DOCTORS