April 17, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



609 



familiar even to the layman, and in the 

 great crusade against tuberculosis now in 

 progress all over the world we have a 

 demonstration of the growing consciousness 

 of the public that it is necessary for it to 

 combine with physicians in applying scien- 

 tific methods to the extermination of that 

 dreadful malady which is the cause of 

 death of one out of every eight of our 

 people. Since scientific methods when 

 applied to the solution of medical prob- 

 lems have so soon been able to yield the 

 striking results at which I have hinted, 

 what may not be done if more men and 

 more money can be made available for the 

 study of the diseases which as yet can not 

 be controlled. Think of the benefits to the 

 human race which would follow the dis- 

 covery of a means for preventing or curing 

 pneumonia, an infection which in spite of 

 all the work yet done upon it kills as many 

 people to-day as it did one hundred years 

 ago ; or what a boon it would be to human 

 society if the secret of cancer and sarcoma 

 and other malignant tumors could be un- 

 raveled and these dire diseases become as 

 controllable as have diphtheria and wound 

 infection. Another most important field 

 for investigation is that which deals with 

 the disorders which affect human beings 

 after middle life is past and account for 

 much of the misery which leadens the sky 

 of so many men and women in their ad- 

 vancing years; I mean those degenera- 

 tions of the blood vessels, kidneys, liver 

 and brain, the origins of which are as 

 yet obscure and the prevention of which 

 we have yet to learn. 



Germany took the lead in the recogni- 

 tion of this special research-function of the 

 medical laboratory and of its significance 

 for social progress. In 1880 the German 

 government endowed a special laboratory — 

 that of the Imperial Health Office— for the 

 investigation of the infectious diseases, and 



put Koch at its head. France followed 

 quickly with that great institution of inter- 

 national reputation founded for Pasteur 

 after his epoch-making discovery of a 

 method for preventing the development of 

 hydrophobia after mad-dog bites. Since 

 then special institutes for purely investiga- 

 tive purposes have been springing up like 

 mushrooms, part of them supported by 

 national governments, others endowed by 

 private individuals of wealth and insight. 

 I need only mention the Imperial Institute 

 for Experimental Medicine in St. Peters- 

 burg (1890), the Institute for Infectious 

 Diseases in Berlin (1891), the laboratory 

 now known as the Lister Institute in Lon- 

 don (1891), the Institute for Experimental 

 Therapeutics in Frankfurt (1896), the 

 State Laboratory for the Investigation of 

 Cancer in Buffalo (1899), the Eockefeller 

 Institute for Medical Research in New 

 York (1901), the Institute for Infectious 

 Diseases in Chicago (1902) and the Phipps 

 Institute for the Study of Tuberculosis in 

 Philadelphia (1903)— all establishments 

 dedicated to original medical inquiry— to 

 show you how rapid has been the expansion 

 in this direction. Nor does such an enu- 

 meration exhaust by any means the list of 

 medical laboratories engaged in special re- 

 search. The better university laboratories 

 combine research work with the work of 

 instruction, and much excellent scientific 

 labor is also performed in the laboratories 

 of boards of health in our larger towns and 

 cities.' 



The people of Canada and the United 

 States are to be congratulated upon the 

 increase in public interest in medical re- 

 search on this side the Atlantic during the 

 last few years; nevertheless, there is still 



'Cf. Welch, W. H., "The Benefits of the En- 

 dowment of Medical Research," an address deliv- 

 ered at the opening of the laboratories of the 

 Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New 

 York, 1906. 



