XIII STATE AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 345 



ent time, in this little place of four or five million 

 inhabitants which supports so many things, any 

 organisation or any arrangement for advancing 

 the science of medicine, considered as a pure sci- 

 ence. I am c[uite aware that there are medical 

 societies of various kinds; I am not ignorant of 

 the lectureships at the College of Physicians and 

 the College of Surgeons; there is the Brown In- 

 stitute; and there is the Society for the Advance- 

 ment of Medicine by Research, but there is no 

 means, so far as I know, by which any person who 

 has the inborn gifts of the investigator and dis- 

 coverer of new truth, and who desires to apply 

 that to the improvement of medical science, can 

 carry out his intention. In Paris there is the Uni- 

 versity of Paris, which gives degrees; but there 

 are also the Sorbonne and the College de France, 

 places in which professoriates are established for 

 the express purpose of enabling men who have the 

 power of investigation, the power of advancing 

 knowledge and thereby reacting on practice, to do 

 that which it is their special mission to do. I do 

 not know of anything of the kind in London; and 

 if it should so happen that a Claude Bernard or 

 a Ludwig should turn up in London, I really have 

 not the slightest notion of what we could do with 

 him. We could not turn him to account, and I 

 think we should have to export him to Germany 

 or France. I doubt whether that is a good or a 

 wise condition of things. I do not think it is a 



