Abstract
WHEN a certain small fraction of the National Health Insurance funds was set apart for purposes of research, the experiment was regarded even by many scientific men with suspicion or indifference. It was suggested that the State aid, thus provided for research, would result only in creating a new class of Civil Servants, and might, indeed, lead to the sterilisation of such of the younger men as had earned appointment under the scheme by the excellence of their early researches. It was also objected that any concentration of State aid in a central institute or among a single group of workers would be effected only at the price of starvation of the work already being carried out with insufficient means in the various universities and research institutes of the country. The work of the Medical Research Committee during the first five years of its existence has brilliantly refuted such a priori objections, and has, indeed, justified the view that the action taken in 1914 represents the greatest advance in the organisation of scientific effort in the service of medical science that has yet taken place in this country. The Committee seized the opportunity afforded by the war, and initiated and supported numerous investigations urgently required for the effective treatment of our soldiers in the field. So well did it succeed that, by the end of the war, it had secured for practically all the men fitted for original inquiry not only the opportunity, but also adequate payment, either by way of commissions in the Navy, or Army, or Air Force, or by research grants.
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The Work of the Medical Research Committee. Nature 105, 43 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105043a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105043a0