I have merely given a rough sketch of the scope of this instruction. The board of trustees and the students taking this instruction passed a unanimous vote of thanks to the instructors, and the former have arranged for continuing the course in the future, and have assigned time for it in the regular roster. The instruction continues to be free to the students of the college, and they are required to pass an examination on the subject before their degrees are granted, and this examination is compulsory now and hereafter. The results, I need hardly tell you, are most gratifying. THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH." [A statement to Science, by the secretary of the institute, Dr. L. Emmett Holt.] The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded in 1901, by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who gave for this purpose the sum of $200,000. The aims of the institute are the promotion of medical research, with especial reference to the pre-vention and treatment of disease. It was thought wise by the directors of the institute not, at first, to concentrate the work in any one locality, but to enlist the interest and cooperation of such investigators throughout the country as might be engaged in promising researches or who might enter upon new fields if suitable pecuniary assistance could be afforded them. It was the conviction of the directors that in this way it would be possible not only to stimulate and foster valuable contributions to science, but also to secure important practical suggestions as to the lines along which the institute might most wisely develop. Among the large number of applications for assistance in carrying on original studies which relate to the cause, prevention, and cure of disease, and to the problems upon which new knowledge on these subjects must be based, over twenty have been selected. The directors have secured counsel in these selections from the heads of departments or others in the universities of Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Columbia, New York, Chicago, Michigan, McGill, Wesleyan, California, and Western Reserve; and in many of these institutions work has been ecuted. Two of the Rockefeller fellows have been working in Europe. Some of the workers under these Rockefeller Institute grants, which vary in amount from two hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, have completed and published their investigations; some are still engaged upon them. pros It is the purpose of the directors, from time to time, to bring together in the form of volumes of collected reprints, the results of these researches which may be published in various technical journals. An arrangement has been effected by which the institute will assume the publication of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, which will remain under the editorial supervision of Dr. William H. Welch, professor of pathology in the Johns Hopkins University, and president of the board of directors of the institute. At the end of the first year of practical work of careful study of the situation, it became clear to the directors that existing institutions in this country, while in many instances carrying on most valuable researches in medicine, do not afford adequate facilities for many phases of investigation which are of the utmost importance and urgency. This is in part due to the lack of sufficient endowment, in part to the large demands made upon the time and energy of the workers by their duties as teachers. It was further evident that such assistance as the institute had thus far been enabled to extend to selected investigators in various parts of the country had fostered work of great actual value, as well as of high promise, and should be perpetuated along similar lines. The directors, however, were united in the conviction that the highest aims of the institute could not be secured in this way alone. Useful as such individual studies a Science, March 6, 1903, p. 395. are and important as it is to enlist and to maintain the interest of research workers in established institutions of learning, it is not possible in this way to secure the unity of aim and the coordination and mutual stimulus and support which are essential to the highest achievements in research. These are to be secured, it was believed, only by the centralization of certain lines at least of the work of the institute under a competent head or series of heads of departments, in a fixed place, with adequate equipment and permanent endowment. There is no lack of men of sufficient training and experience ready to devote their lives to the solution of medical problems which bear directly or indirectly upon the welfare of mankind. The widely open fields of research are many. Some of these relate to the application of existing knowledge to the prevention and cure of disease; others to the development of new knowledge along various lines of science which more than ever before give promise of great significance in the problems of physical life. In a broad sense, the directions and methods for the study of disease may be classified as morphological, physiological, and chemical; and the institute, it was thought, should include departments providing for these divisions of the subject. For the morphological study of disease there should be a complete equipment for pathological-anatomical research. For the physiological study of disease provision should be made for experimental pathology; for pharmacology and therapeutics, for the study of bacteria and other micro-organisms with especial reference to their relation to the infectious diseases, and for other investigations in personal and public hygiene, including preventive medicine. Here belong especially the problems of infection and immunity, and here also, in large part, such studies as require access to patients in hospitals. There should be a laboratory, well equipped, for investigations in physiological and pathological chemistry. It was the conviction of the directors that such an institute might wisely add to its aims in the direct increase of the knowledge of disease and its prevention and cure, a phase of activity which should look toward the education of the people in the ways of healthful living, by popular lectures, by hygienic museums, by the diffusion of suitable literature, etc. For, in fact, the existing agencies for medical research for the most part stop short of those direct and widely diffused applications of newly-won knowledge upon which the immediate practical fruitage of their work so largely depends. In order that the causes and treatment of human disease may be studied to the best advantage, it was the opinion of the directors that there should be attached to the institute a hospital for the investigation of special groups of cases of disease. This hospital should be modern and fully equipped, but it need not be large. It should attempt to provide only for selected cases of disease, and the patients would thus secure the advantages of special and skilled attendance and such curative agencies as the institute might develop or foster. It was thought that an institute for medical research of the largest promise would require a central institution, fully equipped and endowed, and with capacity for growth, in which the more comprehensive studies demanding the coordinated forces of various phases of science could be carried on from year to year; while at the same time, by means of such grants of assistance as had been offered during the initial year, it should continue to make available the resources of special workers all over the country as well as in Europe. In view of the above considerations relating to its future, in June, 1902, Mr. Rockefeller gave to the institute the sum of $1,000,000 for the purchase of suitable Tand, the erection of buildings, and the organization of a working force along the broader lines which had been projected. It is the purpose of the directors to proreed at once to the erection of a laboratory building which will provide for the present requirements and will be capable of enlargement as the character and extent of the work of the institute may develop. Negotiations for a suitable plot are now under way. A small hospital will also be built in the immediate future, which will be maintained in close association with the experimental work of the institute. Provision will be made in the laboratory building for research in physiological chemistry, pharmacology and therapeutics, in normal and pathological physiology, and in various phases of morphology, and for the study of bacteria and other microorganisms. It is hoped that the laboratory buildings may be completed and ready for the commencement of work in the autumn of 1904. Dr. Simon Flexner, professor of pathology in the University of Pennsylvania, will direct the scientific work when the building is completed. His colleagues deem it of the highest importance that the institute has been able to secure so eminent an investigator as Dr. Flexner to shape the work of its early years. Dr. Flexner will spend several months abroad while the new buildings are in course of erection. It is proposed to organize the various sections and departments into which the work of the institute will naturally fall, so that each of them, though in a measure autonomous, will still be so closely associated as to favor the conjoint investigation of comprehensive problems. Associated with the head of each of these departments it is proposed to have a staff of trained assistants. Provision will also be made for research work by a group of trained men, to be designated fellows, scholars, etc., of the institute, under pecuniary grants of varying amounts. Finally, opportunity will be afforded to suitable investigators, not members of the regular staff of the institute, to pursue special lines of research. The directors of the institute are: Dr. William H. Welch, Baltimore; Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden, New York; Dr. Theobald Smith, Boston; Dr. Simon Flexner, Philadelphia; Dr. Hermann M. Biggs, New York; Dr. C. A. Herter, New York; Dr. L. Emmett Holt, New York. The officers are: President.-Dr. William H. Welch. Vice-President.-Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden. Secretary.-Dr. L. Emmett Holt. Treasurer. Dr. C. A. Herter. |