RESEARCH IN MEDICINE 217 



duties as teachers, nevertheless find time for research. And it is of 

 further interest that in these departments assistants do not long con- 

 tinue in a subordinate place, or at least if they do it is of their own 

 desire, for they are early called to independent positions in other insti- 

 tutions. On the other hand, one finds that the men who confine their 

 teaching to perfuniftory routine laboratory courses, with a profusion of 

 lectures, are the men who never or only occasionally contribute to the 

 literature of their science. 



In these departments, too, the teaching is a routine which, so the 

 assistants say, gives no time for investigation; and so they remain 

 assistants indefinitely. So, likewise, it is with the student taught under 

 these two conditions. The student who knows that he is working in a 

 department actively emphasizing new methods and striving to develop 

 new truths, knows that his instruction is presented on the same basis, 

 and thus receives that stimulus and inspiration which ensures his ap- 

 proaching clinical medicine with a proper appreciation of the scientific 

 method. The student under the method of the non-investigator, on the 

 contrary, has no incentive other than that of acquiring a knowledge 

 sufficient to allow him to pass an examination. 



An allied argument lies in the fact that the medical school that 

 fosters research attracts the best-trained men as students. "We have, as 

 is well known to many of you, a medical school in this country which 

 has, for several years, arbitrarily selected from a large number of pros- 

 pective matriculants the certain definite number which it desires; the 

 rest, sometimes equal to 50 per cent, of those accepted, go elsewhere. 

 Now this school has the highest of entrance requirements and perhaps 

 the smallest alumni body of any prominent school in the country. It 

 is not therefore a question of easy entrance or of the loyal influence of 

 alumni. Nor is it a question of better laboratory and hospital facili- 

 ties, for other schools have equally good equipment in both respects. 

 Likewise it is not a question of geographic location or center of popula- 

 tion. The enviable position of this school is due solely to the policy of 

 combining research with teaching and of appointing to its staff teach- 

 ers who, with few exceptions, are also investigators. 



My contention that research in the medical school has important 

 practical advantages to the university is, therefore, not visionary or 

 theoretical. A policy which attracts the better-trained class of stu- 

 dents, which improves the character of the instruction, which stimulates 

 the student to a better type of individual effort, and which enhances the 

 standing of the university in the community and the nation is a policy 

 which can not be ignored by university president, trustees or faculty. 



Another phase of this subject is the duty of the university in public 

 health and other medical matters of interest to the community and 

 essential to its welfare. State and city have always felt at liberty to 



