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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1327 



maintained in the profession. No medical 

 man could have honor in the profession if he 

 descended to any kind of direct or indirect 

 advertisement. !N"o medical . man was per- 

 mitted to take out a patent. The large hos- 

 pitals no doubt gave a field to the clinical 

 worker which might offer considerable in- 

 direct reward, but that did not apply to the 

 research worker, who was rather hidden be- 

 hind his work. He knew men of very high 

 academic attainments working enthusiastic- 

 ally at research who were declining lucrative 

 appointments in order that they might finish 

 — ^which they never did, of course — their ex- 

 perimental investigations. It was from such 

 disinterested research — not utilitarian nor 

 aimed at sensational or immediate results — 

 that the greatest benefits accrued to mankind. 

 He himself was chairman for some years of 

 the Scientific Relief Committee of the Royal 

 Society. Mr. Balfour would perhaps be sur- 

 prised if he were to tell him privately the 

 names of the very distinguished scientists 

 who, or whose representatives, came forward 

 to ask for grants in order to tide over a time 

 of great difiicidty. It was desirable to attract 

 a great many more potential workers. The 

 field of comparative pathology, for example, 

 lay untilled; at present it offered no reward, 

 direct or indirect. It would be said that the 

 Treasury must be careful about expenditure, 

 but he feared that the expenditure under this 

 head would not be very great. He was afraid 

 that the highest kind of intellectual research 

 was rather scarce, and consequently the de- 

 mands for grants would not be so heavy as 

 might be anticipated. 



Sir Richard Gregory said that in medicine 

 the great experimental work was rarely done 

 by the successful practitioner or consultant. 

 It was carried out in the research laboratories 

 by men who occupied posts carrying only 

 moderate salaries. There was the further 

 consideration that the highest type of worker 

 — ^the genius — in medicine or any other de- 

 partment of science was precisely the man 

 who was not amenable to control — the free 

 worker who followed up a clue in some de- 

 partment of knowledge to the willing sacrifice 



of himself. There should be a fund of some 

 kind for making suitable awards, to be con- 

 sidered as payment for results achieved, and 

 not as grants for favors to come. The scien- 

 tific worker (he added), unlike the worker in 

 literature or art, could not dispose of his 

 achievement to the public for profit. 



Mr. Balfour said that he had always been 

 an advocate — even a vehement advocate — of 

 two things which, until quite recent years, 

 the British public had been very slow to 

 realize: the one, that the material progress of 

 mankind depended upon the applications of 

 science, and the other, that there must be 

 pure science before these could be applied. 

 While that was still worth saying even now 

 on the public platform, it was a commonplace 

 to everybody sitting aroimd that table. They 

 were all agreed that the state — which, after 

 all, represented the people of the country 

 and could not be in advance of them by more 

 than a certain amount at any given time — 

 had been backward in the past in its support 

 of science. The only difference among them, 

 if there was any difference, was as to the way 

 in which the stimulus could best be given to 

 those brains in the country best qualified to 

 further scientific research and the subsequent 

 industrial research based upon it. The view 

 of the deputation, as he understood, was that 

 when a man whose opportunities and genius 

 permitted him to work at research had turned 

 out some brilliant discovery the state should 

 give him a reward. 



Everybody must feel that the straits to 

 which many distinguished men of science 

 were reduced after devoting their whole lives 

 to research without any desire for pecvmiary 

 reward were rather pathetic, and in many 

 cases discreditable. For his own part he 

 thought it most desirable that some remedy 

 should be found. But he wondered how many 

 such people would get the reward under the 

 scheme which in rough outline had been laid 

 before him that day. He thought the truth 

 was that in the case of the very great dis- 

 coveries, while it was often possible to go 

 back to the individual who started the train 

 which led to the great result, he himself 



