PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — HARRIS. liii 



for a case of measles or diphtheria. This wouhl, of course, 

 lead to the whole problem of medical treatment being solved 

 by being state-controlled. 



The great Hospitals, with their vast, benefi^^ent out-patient 

 departments, would become state institutions such as prisons, 

 penitentiaries and asylums are already. There is no valid, 

 other than a historical, reason why the scientific cure of 

 disease should not be a state service as much as the scien- 

 tific prevention of disease. The Indian Medical Service 

 affords us an example of a state managed, medical service; 

 it shows us how such an organization might be so vastly 

 extended as to become imperial. Promotions, disability 

 pensions, retirement pensions, etc. could be arranged for 

 as in the civil service. The state would, therefore, also 

 logically take up the problem of research in medicine, and 

 directing it, co-ordinate the isolated efforts made in it, in 

 the manner most beneficial for the public weal. In the 

 United States private enterprise has endowed medical research 

 in a truly magnificent manrier. Private endowments could 

 still be given for medical research within the British Empire, 

 but it would be well if the direction of medical research were 

 made a responsibility of the State. Much of it is even now, 

 as, for instance, the splendid work on plague done in India 

 and the work on cancer in London. The medical researcher 

 is a medical man no less than the general practitioner, he 

 is only more specialized. He should be equally a servant of 

 the state. 



Let us now take the concrete case of the prospective 

 student of Medicine, a youth of 16 or 17, to whom I have to 

 teach Physiology. I want him to know something of the 

 cl assies as well as something of science, and I should like 

 him very much to know something of chemistry, physics 

 and biology before I begin to explain to him the functions 

 of the organs and systems of the human body. I particu- 

 larly wish that he should know, for instance, the meaning 



