8 Anniversary Address by Prof. C. S. Sherrington. 



organised and started not long before the outbreak of the war. It had from 

 its beginning shown its utility and brought evidence of the great field of 

 usefulness before it. Its services during the war and since the ending of the 

 war have been conspicuous, indeed inestimable. Public appreciation of it has 

 enhanced. The Government has recently raised the status of the Committee, 

 so that it is now the Medical Research Council under the Privy Council. 

 Annual Reports indicate the quality and the volume of the work it is 

 accomplishing. It is creating a new era of research in scientific medicine 

 in this country. But its financial State aid is to be cut down for the coming 

 year, and the extent of that reduction is a real anxiety to all who have at 

 heart the progress of Medicine in this country and of the Sciences on which 

 Medical Science itself rests. 



I may say that, broadly taken, the apparatus for prosecution of research 

 in this country is made up as follows : (1) Scientific and Professional 

 Societies and some institutions entirely privately supported ; (2) Univer- 

 sities and Colleges, with their scientific departments ; (3) Institutions, using 

 that term in the widest sense, directly subventioned by the State, such 

 for instance as the Medical Research Council, the Development Commission, 

 and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Of these three 

 categories, the first named, the Scientific Societies group, work without 

 financial aid from the State, apart from the small though extremely useful 

 two Government Grants distributed, mainly to individual workers, through 

 this, the Royal Society. At the present time many of the Societies sorely 

 need financial help to carry on their labours, and some are absolutely at a 

 loss to know how to publish the scientific results that are brought to them. 

 (2) The second category, the Universities and Colleges, depend in part upon 

 Government aid. In the aggregate of twenty-one institutions of University 

 rank, following Vice-Chancellor Adami's figures, students' fees and endow- 

 ment provide about 63-5 per cent, of the total income; for the rest they 

 are dependent on Government Grant. (3) The third category as said, draw 

 State-support direct. 



This triple system may seem a somewhat haphazard and inco-ordinate 

 assembly. Yet in reality it is an organisation with much solidarity, and its 

 co-ordination is becoming more assured. Its parts dovetail together. The 

 first group, the scientific and professional Societies, is provided with a medium 

 of intercommunication and co-action, the Conjoint Board of Scientific 

 Societies. As to the separate categories composing the triple system itself, 

 they also are in wide touch one with another. Between the Scientific 

 and Professional Societies on the one hand and the Universities on the other, 

 contact and inter-relation are secured by some degree of free and rightful 



