The work of the National Institute for Medical Research

In the National Insurance Act of 1911 there was contained a provision which has proved to be of great importance for scientific work in this country. This provision laid down that the sum of one penny per insured person should be provided from public funds for the purposes of research. The total income resulting amounted to £55,000 in the first year of the operation of the Act, and it was for the administration of this sum and for the decision as to the purposes to which it should be put that the Medical Research Committee was appointed in 1913. The first report of the Committee, which appeared late in 1915 over the signature of the first secretary, Walter Fletcher, and was submitted to the Chairman of the National Health Insurance Joint Committee, contained a declaration of policy which is of such fundamental importance to the conduct of medical research that it seems to me to be worth quoting in full at this time. In defining their objects the Committee made the following statement: 'The object of the research is the extension of medical knowledge with the view of increasing our powers of preserving health and preventing or combating disease. But otherwise than that this is to be the guiding aim, the actual field of research is not limited and is to be wide enough to include, so far as may from time to time be found desirable, all researches bearing on health or disease, whether or not such researches have any direct or immediate bearing on any particular disease or class of diseases, provided that they are judged to be useful in promoting the attainment of the above object.’