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under the control of the university. Many of these have heen made with definite specifications as to the problems to be studied, which is encouraging evidence of a special study on the part of the donors and of a keen appreciation on their part of the limitations of medical knowledge and of the need of enlarging its boundaries. Of departments thus founded, some of the best examples are those at Harvard,^[1] Cornell^[2] and Columbia^[3] for the study of cancer, the Henry Phipps Institute and Hospital, now a part of the University of Pennsylvania, for the study and treatment of tuberculosis; the department of experimental medicine at Western Reserve; the department of research medicine at Pennsylvania for the study of chronic diseases, the recently founded Sprague Memorial Institute affiliated with the University of Chicago for the study of the general problems of medicine and that recently announced by Northwestern University for the study of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Here also should be included the Wistar Institute of Anatomy at Pennsylvania, the work of which at present is devoted largely to research in problems of the nervous system. Of special interest in connection with many of these foundations is the provision for investigation in the hospital in connection with laboratory work. Thus the foundation for the investigation of cancer at Harvard has its own hospital, the Phipps Institute at Philadelphia provides for the laboratory and clinical study of tuberculosis, the new Sprague Institute of Chicago has a hospital affiliation, the pians for the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases include a hospital for the study of such diseases, and some of the smaller foundations have been established with the understanding that the university shall ensure access to the wards of the hospital under its control. Surely the universities through the endowment of medical research will have opened to them invaluable opportunities for service not only in the investigation of special diseases, but in the broader field of the relation of social conditions to disease. In connection with the latter Dr. Richard C. Cabot has called the attention of the profession and hospital authorities most forcibly to their duty and to the opportunity for special research which this field offers. Already the Rockefeller Commission for the Study of Hook-worm Disease has undertaken the study of social conditions determining the occurrence of hook-worm disease and the University of Pennsylvania, by establishing, in connection with the Phipps Institute, a department for the sociologic study of tuberculosis, offers the first instance of a university uniting laboratory, clinical and sociologic methods in an effort to elucidate the problems of a single disease. The experiment is an important one in that union of effort in the study of a single disease, if based on the principle of social serv-

1. Caroline Brewer Croft Fund Cancer Commission.
2. Collis P. Huntington Fund for Cancer Research.
3. George Crocker Special Research Fund.