The choice of a career. 9, Medical research as a career / by Sir Edward Mellanby.

  • Mellanby, Edward, Sir, 1884-1955.
Date:
[1937?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The choice of a career. 9, Medical research as a career / by Sir Edward Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    medical research, it is almost impossible to speak in any categorical fashion, and the field of inquiry is now so great that broad or narrow, intense or superficial forms of training are all compatible with first-class discovery by the man with the right mental equipment. For the laboratory investigator, unless indeed he be interested in observation alone and not primarily in experiment, modern developments make it almost essential that the entrant should have a knowledge of chemistry, physics, physiology and pathology. Twenty or more years ago, a bacteriologist need have no knowledge of chemistry and physics, and even the physiologist could attain the highest success with little more than a smattering of the basic sciences. The pathologist was generally a man who turned to science after taking his medical degree, simply because he did not wish to practice medicine. These days are rapidly passing, and it is of enormous advantage to the modern physiologist and pathologist to have a sufficient grip of chemistry and physics at least to know when to seek the help of specialists in these subjects. Prophecy is as dangerous in science as in most other walks of life, but the general trend of advance in medical science indicates that all branches of experimental pathology are to have their golden age in the near future. A properly equipped pathologist must have the fullest training in those branches of physiology which bear on his own studies. Incidentally the physiologist would often be much more effective if he had a sound knowledge of pathology. It is indeed becoming more and more clear that all these experimental medical sciences are really one subject. The ultimate, but by no means the only, aim of medical science must be the elimination or control of disease in man and the de¬ velopment of his mind and body to their fullest innate maxima. This is the special field for those whose first interests are clinical science, although, of course, it is generally true that the clinical investigations which lead to a medical discovery applicable to man are often preceded and indicated by laboratory studies. Clinical science will probably always represent, in the main, the culminat¬ ing developments of those sciences which lend themselves more readily to experiment. There is no doubt, however, as indeed Sir Thomas Lewis and his colleagues at University College Hospital have shown in their researches on the cardio-vascular system, that the investigator of clinical science can regard his field as an independent entity if he so wish, and study the reactions of a sick