RESEARCH IN MEDICINE 219 



university trustees the value of investigation, particularly of the pre- 

 ventable diseases, as a necessary and dignified type of university effort. 



It is of interest to note the various ways in which research chairs 

 or departments have^been established. Some have been the result of 

 the multiplication of chairs devoted to one general subject, as at Har- 

 vard, which has in the medical school chairs of comparative pathology, 

 comparative physiology and comparative anatomy, each of which is 

 quite distinct from the chairs responsible for the fundamental under- 

 graduate instruction in pathology, physiology and anatomy. The es- 

 tablishment of these chairs, in part through special endowment, has 

 greatly increased the facilities and time available for research in these 

 fundamental branches and for special or more detailed instruction in 

 the various activities which they represent. Likewise the splitting off 

 from bacteriology of independent departments of preventive medicine 

 (Harvard and Washington universities) has increased the opportunities 

 for the study not only of the infectious diseases, but also of those due to 

 industrial conditions, to poverty and insufficient methods of preparing 

 and handling food-stuffs. 



Of similar origin are the departments established recently at Penn- 

 sylvania and Tulane for the study of tropical diseases. So also at 

 Harvard an opportunity for similar effort has been made possible 

 through the endowment of a traveling professorship in the department 

 of bacteriology. In the same way increased facilities for investigation 

 in chemistry has been brought about by the founding of departments 

 devoted to physiological chemistry, independent of the older chairs of 

 chemistry and toxicology; by the recognition of a sphere of usefulness 

 in experimental pharmacology independent of materia medica and ap- 

 plied therapeutics; by departments of experimental pathology and 

 pathological physiology, neuro-pathology and surgical pathology co- 

 operating with or independent of the traditional departments of path- 

 ology ; by the evolution in surgical teaching and research of laboratories 

 of experimental and veterinary surgery, and, in our hospitals, of labora- 

 tories of clinical pathology. These departments, in most instances, 

 having some instructorial duties, have an enormous influence in further- 

 ing research and in indicating the need for its extension. For the most 

 part, whether founded on special endowment or otherwise, they are the 

 result of an influence from within, the desire of the university authori- 

 •ties to increase opportunities for investigation and to improve facilities 

 for teaching. Both these objects have been attained, and the success 

 of many of these laboratories is a most potent argument in favor of 

 increased endowment. 



That such efforts are beginning to yield fruit, that the public is 

 awakening to the importance of endowing research in medicine and is 

 bringing to bear an influence from without, is shown by the increasing 

 number of gifts, often spontaneous, for the support of investigation 



