Such is frequently the mission of the true discoverer, to leap over mounds of facts and figures, bring us back close to nature and show us that her movements are often far simpler than we dared imagine.
Thus far I have dealt with research as a thing by itself to be furthered by endowment and prosecuted by specially fitted men for the sake of its value to mankind. This is only preliminary, however, to the main thesis of our remarks, the training of research workers and the relation of research to the medical school. As a humble representative of the school which has provided so liberally in its new buildings for both research and instruction I must endeavor, amid the tangle of changing conditions, to place before you the relation between teaching and research as it presents itself to me.
I am quite inclined to make a sharp distinction between the physician and the investigator, and I think the time has come to create as it were a separate genus. What may be said of the type research worker should also apply to the teacher.[1]
Some enthusiasts would go so far as to urge that all students be made research workers. This is clearly uneconomical, for not many are fitted and the world has no use for many. There are needed chiefly well educated, humane, upright and patient workers who are ready to do the routine tasks of their profession. The physician must keep step with the great procession as it slowly moves forward. He can not deviate much to the right or to the left nor move much faster than the rest. His activities are more or less defined by a consensus of opinion. No matter how much he may swing his pinions in the laboratory, they will have but little room to move in the practical work of life. It is one thing to discover, and another to apply, one thing thoroughly to believe in our results, another to make others believe and act accordingly.
The research worker on the other hand deals more with the undefined boundaries of knowledge and with the frayed edges of sound information. He does not march with the procession, but he must do lonely outpost and scouting duties. He must seek clandestine meetings with those of other sciences, for he learns mainly by breaking through conventional barriers. He makes his discoveries unknown to others, and the farther they are in advance of the times the less attention they will receive.
- ↑ The time is not so distant when it will become necessary to separate the functions of teaching and research. The teacher will then investigate to improve his teaching, the investigator will teach to clarify the aims of research. One merges insensibly into the other. The attempt to set apart the teacher and investigator is simply another tributary of the current which is tending to make all teachers independent of the practise of medicine, by urging adequate compensation for their entire time.
