2i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



supported by the national government, have made original investiga- 

 tion of the infectious diseases an important and often major part of 

 their work. In addition the Hygienic Laboratory has made most im- 

 portant investigations in pharmacology. Other non-university research 

 institutions, as the New York State Laboratory for the investigation of 

 cancer, the Eockefeller Commission for the Study of Hook-worm Dis- 

 ease, Trudeau's laboratory at Saranac for the study of tuberculosis and 

 that for the study of problems of nutrition supported by the Carnegie 

 Institution at Boston, are of great importance. Such institutions, and 

 I have not exhausted the list, devoted to the investigaion of the prob- 

 lems of medicine and without affiliation with teaching institutions must 

 be counted as among the most important factors in our social system. 



Research in the medical school or the hospital, on the other hand, 

 has developed slowly and has been in most institutions a matter of 

 secondary importance. The reason for this is not difficult of demon- 

 stration when one remembers that even schools of university rank 

 emerged only a short time ago from the proprietary state and that most 

 physicians just past middle age can remember the two- and three-year 

 course. Large classes, the belief in the didactic lectures, and the 

 expense of laboratory equipment retarded the development of proper 

 laboratory facilities and therefore the development of men trained to 

 exact methods in the medical sciences. Likewise in the clinic the ideal 

 teacher, with a few notable exceptions, was the busy consultant who 

 devoted only a few hours of oratorical effort to clinical instruction and 

 who disdained investigation as beneath the notice of a practical physi- 

 cian — an ideal which still holds in many of the more conservative 

 schools and is responsible for the slow progress in the development of 

 a science of clinical medicine. This type, however, is rapidly passing 

 away and another generation may look back upon it as we do upon the 

 age of the proprietary school, the two years' course and the amphi- 

 theater lecture. 



It is not my intention to trace the beginnings of research in medical 

 laboratories in this country, or, fascinating as it would be, if time 

 allowed, to analyze early conditions and influences. A few men, how- 

 ever, stand out prominently, as, for example, Leidy, of Pennsylvania, 

 teacher of anatomy and investigator in comparative anatomy, one of 

 the greatest of American investigators in general biology, and Bowditch, 

 who offered at Harvard in the seventies the first opportunity for organ- 

 ized research in physiology in this country. Laboratories of anatomy, 

 that is, dissecting rooms, had always existed, but the modern type of 

 anatomical investigation in anatomy is due to the influence of Minot, of 

 Harvard, and Mall, of Hopkins. Likewise, laboratories of inorganic 

 chemistry and so-called medical chemistry existed, but research in 

 physiological and biological chemistry goes back only to Chittenden, of 



