August 30, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



279 



QUOTATIONS 



THE MEDICAL MAN AND RESEARCH 



In a recent address on "Research Founda- 

 tions in their Eelation to Medicine"' the 

 well-known neurologist of the Wistar Institute, 

 Professor H. H. Donaldson, has expressed cer- 

 tain views which deserve to be heralded in 

 medical circles beyond the immediate audience 

 of graduates in medicine to which they were 

 originally addressed. He has emphasized the 

 fact that the programs of the large research 

 foundations imply the hope that by such en- 

 dowments new facts and new points of view 

 fundamentally important to medicine may be 

 discovered. Many of these establishments 

 serve in a way to mediate between the prob- 

 lems of practise and the findings of science. 

 The popular mind is constantly alert for some 

 new application of science to the work of the 

 world or the needs of the arts. Accordingly 

 there is an ever-present tendency to place 

 undue importance on the purely practical as- 

 pects of all research. 



The worker who is engaged in the actual 

 pursuit of scientific investigation realizes weU 

 enough that there is. no essential distinction 

 between so-called practical and theoretical 

 knowledge. He would, indeed, be rash who 

 would foretell where one type of contribution 

 merges into the other. But with the laity the 

 search for the unknown finds little encourage- 

 ment except when it is attended by some pal- 

 pable result of immediate application. Hence 

 the pressure which many of our institutions 

 feel to present something that will satisfy this 

 unfortunate and mistaken public demand. 



Precisely here the medical man of to-day 

 has an opportunity and a duty. Trained in 

 the school of modern science, he should have 

 acquired an appreciation of the unhampered 

 search for new knowledge which is so rarely 

 intelligible to the community at large. He 

 is more or less familiar with the aims of the 

 research worker and has some understanding 



' Donaldson, H. H., ' ' Research Foundations in 

 their Relation to Medicine," address at the gradu- 

 ation exercises of the Yale Medical School, Sci- 

 ence, July 19, 1912. 



of what these endeavors have contributed to 

 the world. He should defend the effort and 

 help to spread the propaganda. We believe 

 that the attitude of the practitioner toward 

 certain features of medical research is, in 

 general, wholesome and helpful in so far as 

 these features involve relations to the problems 

 of clinical medicine. There is, however, an- 

 other class of problems which demand solu- 

 tion no less than some of the more obvious 

 questions. These more subtle problems in- 

 volve the " why " and " how." They are 

 harder to answer ; they appeal to fewer investi- 

 gators, and not many men are adequately 

 equipped to attack them. As Donaldson has 

 said, because the men who can do this latter 

 kind of work are relatively rare, even among 

 investigators, because such work can have 

 rational appreciation from a limited group 

 only, and because knowledge of this sort is 

 sure to become the basis for many applications 

 in the future, it behooves us all to see to it 

 that we foster such investigators — the most 

 valuable of our natural resources. When a 

 mistaken popular notion arises as an obstacle 

 to progress we must help to remove it. 



It has often been said that research is an 

 attitude of mind. This is something different 

 from the mysterious features which are some- 

 times attributed to it. The spirit of research 

 is attainable, even if at times it seems remote. 

 Quoting Donaldson : " A man may have little 

 leisure and trifling resources, and may never 

 have published; but if he examines the world 

 in a questioning spirit, if he carries with him 

 not only conclusions, but the observations on 

 which they rest, if he refuses to pound square 

 facts into the round holes that he happens to 

 have in hand, he has attained illumination." — 

 Journal of the American Medical Association. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Principles of Human Nutrition. By 

 Whitman H. Jordan, director of the New 

 York Agricultural Experiment Station. 

 The Macmillan Company. 1912. Pp. 450. 

 .$1.75 net. 

 The object in view, as stated in the preface. 



