MEDICAL RESEARCH

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 4, 6 January 1930, Page 11

MEDICAL RESEARCH

SERVICE TO HUMANITY ILL PAID PROFESSORS (From "The Post's" Repres3ntatlve.) LONDON, 21st November. Delivering the annual Norman Locyker lecture, in London, Sir W. Morley Fletcher (secretary of. the Medical Besearch Council) put in a plea that better pay should bo given to medical research workers. "Salaries in academic life are in general," Sir Walter said, "indefensibly low. Even now professors who may be' most eminent men of worldwide reputations are fortunate if they receive £.1200 a year. Only a few with special administrative responsibilities receive £1500. These are salaries which men reaching eminent success in any other walk of life would regard as an offence, and even in tho academic world the headmaster of a great public school would think of them derisively. A man of distinguished ability, whether in teaching or research, may count himself lucky if after an expensive training and years of toil he earns £500 a year before he reaches thirty. "In my daily work I am continually finding men or women giving service of first-rate value to science and to the nation, yet receiving for their willing toil only a small fraction of what they might have earned in close-ly-allied professional work or in other walks of life." He laid down three propositions: — (1) For a long time the • Initiative regarding new methods and remedies has been steadily passing from the physician himself to the scientific worker in the experimental laboratory} (2) As lately as until just before the war it was the almost, universal rule in this country, that nobody should, be paid for doing research work as. such; . . . . (3) There is very urgent need for more encouragement to really brilliant men to give their lives to medical, research.- ;...:. . ...•■■ . • Sir Walter referred to the advances made in medicine through contribution of the sciences, and added:—"As to the art of surgery itself, it is difficult to imagine that it has any further advance to make of a major kind. We must believe that wo have already seen the zenith of surgery in the world history, except insofar as it must remain to deal with wounds and accidental injuries. At the same time we are not in sight yet of anything like a victory over disease all along the line."