8 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 



artificial equivalents, have some importance already in the treatment of 

 disease ; but a realisation of its significance for health has a much greater 

 importance in preventive hygiene. There can surely be no plainer duty, 

 for a State charged with the health of an industrial civilisation, than to 

 promote with all its resources the search for such knowledge as this, as 

 well as to provide for its application when obtained. 



Among diseases which painfully affect the popular imagination, cancer 

 has an evil pre-eminence, largely on account of its mysterious, and there- 

 fore seemingly inevitable nature. For many years past a volume of 

 investigation, supported by private benefactions and organised charity, 

 has patiently accumulated knowledge of the beginnings of cancer and the 

 conditions of its growth. Now, at length, there are signs of more rapid 

 progress towards a penetration of its secret. Patience and caution are as 

 necessary as ever ; a new and exacting technique is still in development ; 

 but there is a new spirit of hope and enthusiasm. And it is reassuring 

 to know that in this, as in other directions, the State is giving its direct 

 support to investigation, and co-operating with the foundations due to 

 private generosity. 



Looking backward a dozen years or so, one may say that Science was 

 definitely, by that time, a working part of the machinery of the State, 

 though, as we see now, uot a part working at full power. The Great War 

 caused a broadening, so to speak, of the scientific horizon for men of 

 science themselves in some measure, but for the layman in a measure far 

 greater. We all were brought to recognise the applications of Science as 

 adding, it may be, in certain respects to the distresses of warfare ; but also 

 as immensely alleviating the sufierings caused by it, and as indicating 

 many methods of strengthening the arts of defence — some of which methods 

 are no less valuable in strengthening the arts of peace. The creation of 

 the Government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was 

 an act which falls, historically, within the period of the war ; but as an 

 outstanding incident in -the scientific advancement of national affairs, 

 it certainly is not to be regarded as merely a war measure ; it was once 

 described as a near relative of ' Dora,' but that was a mistake. Neverthe- 

 less, by an odd freak of history, it needed the whole period of a century 

 between one great war-time and the next — between the Napoleonic and 

 the World Wars — to mature the conception of a State department of 

 scientific research. Some idea of this kind was clearly present in the mind 

 of Brewster, and certain of his contemporaries, concurrently with his idea 

 of the foundation of our own Association in 1831 ; and later (in 1850) 



