MEDICAL BE SEARCH. 515 



MEDICAL RESEARCH: ITS PLACE IN THE UNIVERSITY 



MEDICAL SCHOOL.* 



By THEOBALD SMITH, A.M., M.D. 



GEORGE FABIAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PATHOLOGY IN THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL. 



TF there be one word which is heard most frequently in the most 

 ■*- intelligent circles interested in professional education to-day, it 

 is the word research. In our own country in recent years medicine 

 has fallen under its sway, and on all sides efforts are being made to 

 meet its demands by the erection and equipment of costly laboratories 

 within whose walls research may be carried on in a continuous and 

 orderly manner. 



Granted that the governing bodies of our great universities have 

 familiarized themselves with the significance of this word and are 

 giving it out, some only with the lips, others with a thorough conviction 

 that to it must be accorded a permanent place in our higher institu- 

 tions, the problem of how to deal with such a costly, and in many ways 

 unattractive, offspring, how to correlate it with the teaching function, 

 how to cultivate it side by side with the routine methods of instruc- 

 tion, will occupy a prominent place for years to come. 



Research signifies effort directed toward the discovery of laws and 

 principles through the systematic collection of new, and the better 

 correlation of existing, data. It also means effort directed toward the 

 more efficient and economical application of discoveries to the welfare 

 of man, in other words, the utilization of latent and hitherto wasted 

 energy. The aims of research are not culture, not miscellaneous in- 

 formation, not a mood of leisure meditation upon the origin of things, 

 but mainly utility and service to mankind. 



The chief influence at work in lifting medicine from a mere teaching 

 to a research level is the same as that at work throughout the world of 

 science and in fact in all intellectual fields. If we examine it more 

 closely we find it akin to the breaking away from authority and dog- 

 matism in religious affairs and from autocracy in the government of 

 nations. Its foundations rest far down in the great liberalizing wave 

 of the nineteenth century. We no longer believe that each step in 

 advance is the ultimate one, but only one in a series toward ultimate 

 truth, and this fact makes us realize that we must keep on marching. 



* Address before the Harvard Medical Alumni Association of New York 

 City, November 26, 1904. 



