January i8, 1894] 



NA TURE 



269 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



{ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he tntdertake 

 to return, or to correspond -with the ivriters of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part ^^/Natuke. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous commiinications.'\ 



The Directorship of the British Institute of Preventive 

 Medicine. 



The position of Director of the above-named Institute is one 

 which corresponds to that of M. Pasteur in Paris, and to that of 

 Dr. R. Koch in Berlin, and is therefore one of great im- 

 portance. 



The Institute is now about to be built, and it is of the utmost 

 consequence that the first holder of the office in question should 

 be very carefully chosen, as he will necessarily have a gieat deal 

 to do with the arrangement of the plans of the laboratory, and 

 theorganisaUon of the work lo be done in it. The Institute is 

 intended to do in England the work done in France by ihe 

 Institut Pasteur, and in Germany by the Berlin Hygienisches 

 Institut ; and the Council have already in their hands sufiicient 

 money to begin to build and carry on a laboratory on a scale 

 comparable to that of the great continental ones referred lo. 



The Directorship is a scientific post, and there are certain 

 customs regarding the election to such offices which it is, in my 

 opinion, extremely unwise to neglect. 



It is customary, for exa nple, to advertise that such a post is 

 vacant, and to examine the qualifications of the candidates who 

 apply for the office. These and other customiry modes of pro- 

 cedure having without sufficient reason been disregarded at a 

 recent meeting of the Council of the Institute, I feel constrained 

 to make a public protest. 



S:nce the Institute was first initiated at my suggestion on 

 December 5, 1889, the meetings of the executive committee and 

 Council have been very ill-attended, a fact for which I believe 

 the officebearers have been mainly responsible ; the result, in 

 any case, being that the officers «f the Council have gradually 

 come to control the decisions of the meetings to a much greater 

 extent than I have experienced in any council, syndicate, or 

 board of which I have been a member. 



While I was one of the hon. secretaries of the council, I 

 noted what seemed to me grave irregularities in the mode of 

 conducting the business of the council, against some ot which I 

 protested in writing to JNlr. Ernest Hart (^who had occupied the 

 chair at the previous meeting), and verbally to Sir Joseph Lister, 

 who th:;n, as now, was chairman of the Council, ^ir. Ernest 

 Hart disclaimed all knowledge of or sympathy with the measures 

 to which I objected, but our chairman not seeing the full point 

 of my protests, I emphasised my strong disapproval ot the 

 measures in question by resigning my post of Hon. Secretary. 



On Monday, the nth ult., I received a notice, signc:d by the 

 Hon. Secretary ( Dr. A. Ruffer), calling a meeting of the Council of 

 the Institute for December 13, with the agenda (which 1 append) 

 containing, amongst formal business, the statement that the 

 "report of committee appointed at last meeting" would be 

 considered. 



At the Council meeting of December 13, I saw for the first 

 time a copy of the report in question. This, with the instruc- 

 tions lo the committee which supplied the report, I append. 

 The question was at once asked why a report concerning a 

 subject of this importance, had not been, as is customary, dis- 

 tributed to members of the Council before the meeting, see- 

 ing that there are among the Council gentlemen who are 

 directors of laboratories, whose aid in considering so important 

 a sabject must be of ihe utmost value, but which could not be 

 given without time to consider the hastily drawn up and 

 imperfect report submitted to the meeting? 



To this it was replied from the Chair that the matter was 

 considered so pressing by the office-bearers, that there had been 

 no time to send round copies. As the Institute has been four 

 years reaching iis present position, during the whole of which 

 lime the office-bearers knew that a Director would have to be 

 appointed, this reply did not appear to me to carry any weight 

 with it. To the question why, assuming for the moment that 

 the adoption of some such report were pressing, its nature had 

 not been clearly indicated in the agenda, in order that those 

 members of Council whose opinion would be of special value 

 in discussing it, might try to arrange, even at some sacrifice, to 

 be present. To this no satisfactory answer was given. As less 



NO. 1264, VOL. 49] 



than a third of the members of the Council were present at the 

 meeting. I, and others, strongly urged that the considera'ion of 

 the report be adjourned for, say, a week, in order ihat it might 

 be distributed in the usual way. This being opposed by the 

 two office-bearers present, viz. ihe Chairman and the Treasurer 

 (Sir H. Roscoe), was not agreed to, their opinion in such a 

 matter necessarily carrying great weight. 



It' the appended report be examined, it will be seen that the 

 instructions to the committee give no authority lo nominate a 

 Director. This view was upheld by one of the members of 

 Council present, who had been appointed member of the com- 

 mittee, but had been unable lo be present at its meetings 

 (although that is obviously not the view of the members of 

 committee who signed the report). The Council decided, how- 

 ever, to leave out the name ot the Interim Director fromClau-e 

 I of their report. The report so modified was then considered, 

 and although I and others expressed strong disapproval of its 

 being pressed forward wilhoui due consideration by the Council, 

 it vva=, v\iih a i&\\ verbal alteration-, adopted. 



It was then proposed to add to it a tenth clause nominating 

 the Hon. Secretary to the Directorship. It was objected, how- 

 ever, that such a nomination could not be appended in this 

 way to the repjrt, and this obj.'ction was upheld by the 

 Council. 



Tne motion was still, however, pressed forward by the 

 signers of the report, which was, as I take it, hopelessly ir- 

 regular, and which was strongly objected to. It was urged that 

 notice of such a motion should have appeared on the agenda ; 

 that the committee had not apparently made any inquiiies as to 

 possible candidates, or their qualifications for so important a 

 poft ; that they had no authority to nominate any candidate, 

 and were therefore acting ultra vires in doing so ; that in pro- 

 posing to elect one of themselves in this irregular manner the 

 nvo otlice-bearers present were exposing their aciion to serious 

 misconstruction. In spite of tliese and other protests, which 

 I need not detail, the motion was pressed, and was eventually 

 formally proposed, seconded, and carried. 



I will not seek lo state the arguments advanced by our Chair- 

 man and Treasurer for their action as office-bearers, seeing that 

 these can be best stated by themselves ; nor will I do more in 

 the meantime than mention that on leaving the Council meeting 

 I at once protested in writing to the Chaiiman, and have since 

 done my utmost to get the election re-cmded. 



It is unnecessary for me to make more than one or two com- 

 ments on the above-stated facts. The legality of the election 

 in question may reasonably be doubted, as members of Council 

 had not sufficient notice that it was to take place. There 

 can, however, be no doubt as to ihe harm to science in the 

 election to a scientific post being carried out in this manner. 

 I am also of opinion that, independently of the manner of 

 conducting it, ihe election itself was a grave mistake in so far 

 as the interests of the Institute are concerned. 



Charles S. Roy. 



Pathological Laboratory, Cambridge, January 8. 



[APPENDIX.] 

 Agenda of Meeting of December 13, 1893. 



1. Completion of purchase of site. 



2. Appointment ot building committee. 



3. Sealing of deed with college of State medicine. 



4. Report of committee appointed at the last meeting. 



5. Memorandum to be addressed to the trustees of the 

 Berridge bequest. 



Report of the Committee .-appointed at the last 



MEETING of the COUNXIL. 



The committee appointed to consider the appointment of the 

 director, his duties and salary, and his relations to the council 

 and staff of the institute, met on December 12, 1S93. — 

 Present : Sir Henry Roscoe, Professor Victor Horsley, and 

 Sir Joseph Lister. 



They beg to report as follows : 



1. That Dr. Ruffcr be appointed interim director of the 

 institute for a period of three years, at a salary of /200 a 

 year. 



2. That Dr. IMcFadyen receive the title of lecturer on 

 bacteriology and that, he be entrusted with i.he systematic 

 instruction in that subject. 



3. That the director and the lecturer on bacteriology should 



