2i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



From this brief recapitulation of the important influences affecting 

 research in medicine, only one conclusion is deducible; that although 

 the individual will continue to be the most significant factor in the 

 situation, it is unquestionable that his perception will be constantly 

 stimulated, his imagination quickened and his hands aided, by the 

 opportunities, ideals and facilities of the laboratory. In the laboratory 

 only can " the prepared mind " of Pasteur's adage (" In the fields of 

 observation chance favors only the prepared mind") be properly fos- 

 tered. It is in the laboratory, and under this term I include the prop- 

 erly conducted hospital as the laboratory of clinical medicine, that 

 medicine keeps in close touch with new discoveries in physics, chemistry 

 and biology, the second of the three important factors we have discussed. 

 The situation in regard to the auxiliary sciences has not changed 

 since the time of Liebig, Miiller and Virchow. The investigator in the 

 laboratory and the investigator in the hospital still look to these sci- 

 ences for assistance and eagerly apply the discoveries in each of these 

 his own problems. The result is a decided advantage to medicine, not 

 only in that this revivifying and suggestive influence leads to accel- 

 erated progress in the science and art of medicine, but also in that it 

 directly influences the health and therefore the welfare, commercial and 

 social, of the community. 



This brings us to the fourth factor which has influenced medical 

 research in the past and should — indeed must — continue to be an ever- 

 increasing influence in the future — the desire to ameliorate social condi- 

 tion, by diminishing the causes of physical and mental ills. This, in a 

 word, is the desire for social service; the impulse which actuated all of 

 Pasteur's work, and which he himself expressed as the desire to con- 

 tribute " in some manner to the progress and welfare of humanity." 

 It is not sufficient that the individual as an investigator should be 

 actuated only by his ambition and his investigations, or alone by his 

 desire for exact abstract knowledge. If medical research is to be a 

 vitalizing, reforming, uplifting factor, not only for the practise of medi- 

 cine, but for the good of the community at large, then the whole man 

 must be interested, heart and soul, not only in the technical and ab- 

 stract results of his problems, but in their practical applications to 

 medical and social conditions. What does this mean for medical 

 research? That the laboratory shall be not only the brains, but the 

 hands, of the community ! It must recognize not only the problems of 

 the community, but, solving the technical aspects of these problems, 

 must demonstrate how they are to be met and cared for. In short, the 

 investigator in medicine must be stirred by not only an abstract interest 

 in human ills, but a direct interest in the problems, prophylactic or 

 therapeutic, hygienic or social, of the community, with all its differen- 



