RESEARCH FOR DOCTORS.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17219, 30 September 1927, Page 4

RESEARCH FOR DOCTORS.

Rather more than a year ago the British Ministry of Health submitted to the British Medical Association a scheme for co-operative research by doctors working under the “panel” system. The late Sir James Mackenzie, who was the first man in Britain to recognise the necessity of continuous research work in general practice, emphasised again and again the fact that knowledge is still lacking about the most simple of human ailments. He was wont, for example, to insist that the nature of pain and the mechanism of its production arc unknown, and to ask how, in these circumstances, physicians could hope to deal successfully with this commonplace symptom. His challenge still stands; but the new proposals suggest that it is about to be taken up in the spirit in which it was delivered.

The British Medical Association takes the view that the organisation of the investigations to be carried out should he entrusted to itself, and proposes to make use of its machinery of divisions and branches to facilitate the work, fifiie London Times says there can be no reasonable objection to that plan provided that care is exercised to prevent research work being reduced to the ievet of a mere questionnaire. True research, as Sir Donald Ross has so often pointed out, springs from the spirit of curiosity and the spirit of wonder and is, consequently, difficult to organise. Research workers are horn, not appointed. Thus it may he hoped that I here is room in the new scheme for the encouragement and assistance of individuals or groups of individuals who have, in the vast field of general practice, begun to cultivate plots of their own. Such workers have, in all periods, been the real architects of progress. They submit, as a rule impatiently, to the restrictions of “inquiries” which arc addressed to them by others, but they possess always great funds of patience and of self-denial for use in their chosen labours. To discover s;uch workers ami to help them is a task well worth carrying out. There is room, indeed, in any liberal scheme of medical research for the individual as well as for the group or team. Information which can be obtained in the form of answers to set questions ranks by common consent lower in point of value than that kind of knowledge which inspiration and devotion are able to win.