SCIENCE AND THE COMMUNITY 50S 



Research Council is playing the leading part as far as Great Britain is 

 concerned. Its success in researches centring round such problems as 

 nutrition and virus disease are of world-wide repute. 



Recently during my tenure of office as Lord President I was glad to 

 be able to assist the Medical Research Council in obtaining a substantial 

 addition to its grant in order to promote the building up of a department 

 in Chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is the preparation and use of drugs 

 built up in the laboratory (as opposed to natural products found in plants 

 and animals) which by experiment are found to have specific curative 

 effects on certain diseases. We know that up to the present, most of this 

 type of experiment has been in the hands of the Germans. On a number 

 of occasions British workers have made a key discovery in the science, 

 but, lacking any effective backing for pursuing the subject, have had to 

 stand by and see it developed by their German colleagues. With the 

 new Institution now to be set up it can with reason be hoped that British 

 chemists and medical scientists will be able by their combined efforts to 

 forward this promising field of discovery and so help in the alleviation of 

 much human and animal suffering and loss. 



Health will now be seen more and more clearly to depend upon the 

 body being properly nourished to resist disease. But health means more 

 than a successful control of disease. Health is a quality of life. Health 

 means the harmonious working of the physical organs of the body with 

 each other and with the body itself as a whole. In perfect health, the 

 energies of the body will respond to every duty which a man in society 

 has to meet, for it will mean and depend upon the harmony of man with 

 himself, his circumstances and his ideals. Social duty is much more 

 easily followed by a community of men and women robust in health, 

 than by one which is weak in mind and body. It is this unity in the life 

 of the human body, the physical body, mind, and soul, which is health. 



Be it observed that this change for which those recent activities of science 

 compel me to hope, and challenge me to work, can only come when the 

 sciences dealing with life have been enlisted to play their parts in bringing 

 it about — from biology (one of the most neglected of the sciences in its 

 political, its communal and its health applications), all along the front to 

 psychology and ethics. Scientific work in recent years is moving us, 

 I am glad to say, nearer and nearer to that united front. 



Now let me glance in another direction at some more definite activities 

 of the scientific investigator with a direct bearing upon the industry upon 

 which the economic life of a community depends. Production and 

 trade supply the life blood of society. There can be no State, well 

 organised to maintain a high standard of life for its people, if its blood- 

 currents become stagnant and thin. 



The War brought about a great change in the realisation in this country 

 of the importance of science, a realisation which found expression, in 1915, 

 when the Government of the day set up a Committee of the Privy Council 

 to concern itself with Scientific and Industrial Research. This step 

 marked the first comprehensive and organised measure taken in this 

 country to help industry generally through the application of Science. 

 The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was established 

 soon afterwards to operate the decisions of the Committee of the Privy 



