Abstract
FIFTEEN million dollars were disbursed in 1938 by the Rockefeller Foundation for the advancement of “the well-being of mankind throughout the world”. Being more than twice the year's income, this huge expenditure involved recourse to the principal fund as well as reducing accumulated balances. In addition to its complete annual report, the Foundation has published for wider circulation in pamphlet form an extraordinarily interesting review by its president, Raymond B. Fosdick. In the field of public health, in which alone the Foundation itself undertakes the conduct of operations, the fight against yellow fever progressed satisfactorily and more than a million vaccinations were performed with its now virus (17D). But a more formidable task is resistance to the invasion of South America by Anopheles gambiæ, the most deadly of Africa's malaria carriers, introduced apparently by air traffic into Natal in Brazil nine years age and steadily spreading westward. The Foundation is now co-operating with the Government of Brazil in organizing an anti-gambiæ service. In all, 2½ million dollars were given to public health work. The account of contributions to work in the medical sciences is prefaced by a note on the comparative volumes, trends and merits of private and public support of medical research in America and Europe and on the particular fields in which further research is likely to be most productive. One of the least developed is that of mental hygiene: “In no other field is the need more desperate or the potentialities for useful advances more promising. . . . Cases of mental and nervous diseases occupy more hospital beds in this country than all other diseases combined.”
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The Rockefeller Foundation. Nature 144, 320 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144320a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144320a0