TH

HE greatest need of Medical Research today is men. Through all time the men in Medicine who have stood above the ordinary have been those men who, with minds of high order starting from the proved facts of Science, extended the domain of knowledge into the unknown, through patient, discriminating and skillful pursuit of research.

Through the ages there has been accumulated a vast amount of knowledge. Facts have emerged from fiction, by trial and experimentation. The age of empiricism is past. The physician and even the patient of today desires to know the cause of disease and the rationality of treatment. Never before has there been such an impetus to Science as at the present time, and never before has there been so much hoped for, and expected, of Medical Science. With the advance of civilization and the development of man's intellect a greater premium has been placed upon human life. We are becoming more and more utilitarian in our philosophy, and as our specialization develops we are more and more dependent on and responsible for our fellow man. So the world demands protection against destroying influences. Armies and navies protect

1 Alpha Omega Alpha Address, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, January 13, 1925.

ANNALS OF CLINICAL MEDICINE, VOL. III, NO. 9

against human invasion. Trade and transportation prevent hunger and starvation. It is demanded of the medical profession that it should maintain health by constant supervision of National Health problems and guard against the invasion of ever active bacterial forces. It is the responsibility of the medical profession, in order to wage this war to the best advantage, that its intelligence department increase its secret service branch, provide it with the facilities for ascertaining the tactics and the best means of combating the hidden enemy. The intelligence department may be compared to the Medical School and the secret service department to Medical Research. The research worker like the secret service man must be thoroughly informed of all present knowledge on the subject he is to investigate. He must have keen powers of observation. He must have daring, originality, persistence and common sense. He must have initiative, for though he may at times have to obey authority, if he is to be a success he must, if necessary, depart from tradition and follow his own scheme of campaign. With self-detachment, selfabandonment, and self-abnegation he must pursue his own idea and ideal. Above all he must work with intensity, integrity, breadth, patience, thoughtfulness and faithfulness.

Too frequently we judge the pros

perity of a country by its army, its navy or its trade and commerce. There is no better barometer of national progress than Science and Research. Dumas, the eminent French chemist and teacher of Pasteur said, "The future belongs to Science: woe to the nations who close their eyes to this fact." Pasteur resounded the same chord when he said,

Science has no nationality because knowledge is the patrimony of humanity,

the torch that gives light to the world. Science should be the highest personification of nationality because of all the nations, that one will always be foremost which shall be first to progress by the labors of thought and of intellect. Let us therefore strive in the peaceful field of Science for the preeminence of our several countries. Let us strive, for strife is effort, strife is life when progress is the goal.

Today the scientist has as his heritage the accumulated knowledge of all nations through all time, and we must remember with Sir Michael Foster that,

What we are is in part only, of our making, the greater part of ourselves has come down to us from the past. What we know and what we think is not a fountain gushing forth from the barren rock of the unknown at the stroke of the rod of our intellect; it is a stream that flows by us and through us, fed by the far-off rivulets of long ago. What we think and say today will mingle with and shape the thoughts of men in the years to come, so, in the opinion and view that we are proud to hold today, we may, by looking back, trace the influence of those who have gone before.

The remote beginnings of medical research are to be found a thousand years before Hippocrates. Five hundred years after this great father of medicine, Galen compiled the

accumulated knowledge and added to it his own observations. His writings dominated the history of medicine for nearly a thousand years.

Modern research may be said to commence in 1543, when Vesalius published his "Fabrica." Following this, came the works of Gesner, Paré, Harvey, Malpighi, Borelli and Sydenham. By the investigations of these six epoch-making figures in medicine, research received a new impetus. Schwann, Bernard, Müller, Virchow, Haller and Morgagni became the pioneers of physiology and pathology. Morton, Warren and Simpson discovered anaesthesia. In 1796, Jenner inaugurated the vaccine for preventing smallpox, thereby eradicating this ravaging disease from all areas where vaccination and revaccination are effectively carried out.

Pasteur disproved the theory of "spontaneous generation" and founded the science of bacteriology. He applied the facts of his investigations and made anthrax and hydrophobia preventable and curable maladies. Lister's work established the principles of asepsis, and paved the way to modern surgery.

Research is built on research. Roux was led to his investigation of diphtheria antitoxin by the work of Pasteur. Von Bering, following researches of Roux and Yersin, produced the first diphtheria antitoxin. Roux applied the antitoxin treatment and not only decreased mortality from this disease by 75 per cent, but also by a study of its infectivity, abolished the ravaging epidemics previously so

common.

The advancement of knowledge in

all branches of Science has placed at the disposal of Medical Science new methods of attacking old problems. The physicist, the chemist, the biochemist and the physiologist are continually announcing new facts and suggesting their application in the treatment of disease. Radium and X-ray are examples of the product of the physicist and are now being applied and their usefulness extended by the medical profession.

The student graduating today with his knowledge of biochemistry, physiology, chemistry and physics has before him a field of opportunity such as never before existed. He has methods of analysis, and means of estimating the chemical activities of body function which were unknown a decade ago. But do not make the mistake of thinking that knowledge alone is power. It is not. Thinking is power. Some men think too little and work too much.

The research man requires leisure to think. The best time to think is at night for then one is free from those disturbing elements which interrupt a clear consecutive trend of thought. These are the best hours of all, when the imagination is allowed to run riot on the problem that blocks the progress of research, when the hewn stones of scientific fact are turned over and over, and fitted in so that the mosaic figure of truth, designed by Mother Nature long ago, be formed from the chaos. During these During these hours theories are formulated and new

experiments planned.

Research in its broadest terms is the search for truth. The truth in science can be found only by trial or experimentation, but before the

trial is made there must be a reason for its execution. This is to be found in an idea. The idea is the most valuable thing in research. We do not know from whence they come. They do not come when commanded. They must be sought after, but they do not always reward the searcher with their presence. They never come to the careless nor to those who do not ask why. They never come to the man who accepts everything he hears without mental reservation. They never come to the man who is satisfied with Science as it is today. They only come to the man who asks why and tries to answer his own question. They come to the man who thinks about the facts that he reads or observes. Like other organs, our thinking apparatus develops with use. Imagination is but a free thinking. The imaginative are blessed with a facility in association of facts. High latent force develops, when such a man is faced with a perplexing problem and wide spark gaps are bridged. Distant facts are related. Deductions and theories are formed. Experiments are planned to test the theory and when a number of results have accumulated they are added together. The theory becomes disproved or proved. When a theory is proved it is no longer a theory it is a fact.

There are two types of research men who come to a research laboratory for work. The man or woman who simply wants to do research. They desire to be given a problem on which to work. They read the literature that is given them to read. When an experiment is planned they do it. They work from nine till five