Natural Science 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



March 1899 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Endowment of Research. 



It has been held by many that the scanty endowment of research 

 in Great Britain is the main reason why we fail to produce so large 

 and useful an output of original work as emanates from some other 

 countries. In a few years' time we shall have an opportunity of 

 estimating the justice of this contention in the case of at least one 

 branch of experimental science. Lord Iveagh's princely gift of a 

 quarter of a million sterling to the Jenner Institute of Preventive 

 Medicine should afford a crucial test of what endowment, on a truly 

 munificent scale, can effect. Most of the workers in Preventive 

 Medicine have been, and are, men engaged in professional occupations, 

 and unable to devote themselves exclusively to research. With the 

 funds now at the command of the Jenner Institute, there should be 

 little difficulty in furnishing a capable band of workers with incomes 

 sufficient to free them from the restrictions imposed by ordinary prac- 

 tice. Preventive medicine is a young and rapidly growing branch of 

 science, and there is no subject in which greater advances may be 

 anticipated in the near future. The results which should be brought 

 about by a wise use of Lord Iveagh's gift ought to place the Jenner 

 Institute at least on the scientific level of the Institut Pasteur, and the 

 value of the work done should form so convincing an argument in 

 favour of the endowment of research that other wealthy men would be 

 tempted to follow his generous and public-spirited example. Every- 

 thing depends on how the money is spent. The Council of the Jenner 

 Institute includes a number of very eminent scientific men whose 

 very names seem to afford a guarantee that its new-found wealth will be 

 wisely and rightly applied. Hitherto the Institute has not been too 

 amply provided with funds, and it has added to its income by a system 

 of lectures and classes in Public Health and Bacteriology similar to 

 those carried on at most of the larger medical schools in London, and 

 for which approximately similar fees were charged. It would appear 

 to us a very unfair thing that any of Lord Iveagh's money should be 

 employed in subsidising this branch of the work of the Jenner Institute 

 to the detriment of existing teaching bodies. We have before us the 



13 — -NAT. SC. VOL. XIV. Nt>. 85. 1]] 



