On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Institute I was invited to be one of the speakers. I chose the occasion to illustrate, as I had not done elsewhere, some of the more fundamental principles underlying its origin and value. My talk was taken down stenographically and typewritten for me, but not otherwise preserved. Dr. Eliot, who read the manuscript, thought it should be published and 1 think with him that it presents the essential values of medical research in a fundamental way not elsewhere, so far as I know, so specifically expressed. For several reasons I wish to record here the observations I then made. They were substantially as follows:
“One day I chanced to be walking down Broadway with President Eliot. We were talking about the Rockefeller Institute and I ventured to confess to him that to me the Institute was the most interesting thing in the world. ‘Nothing,’ said I, ‘is to me so exciting, so fascinating as the work the Institute is doing.’
“Dr. Eliot stopped short in the street and turned to me and said, with emphasis and emotion, ‘I myself feel precisely so. The Rockefeller Institute is to me the most interesting thing in this world. ’
“That statement from him is significant. Of course, Dr. Eliot could know little, if anything, of the technique of the work. Certainly it was not the technique that interested him; it was those great, underlying, general considerations which give peculiar value to medical research, and which make an irresistible appeal to a layman, even though he can know nothing of the technicalities of the daily experimentation.
“Why is it that Mr. Rockefeller, the founder of this Institute, a layman, has done this great thing? The doing of it was not suggested to him by any technician or by any professional man. The thought itself originated in the heart of a layman, and it has been throughout supported and enlarged by laymen—laymen who think it the most interesting theme possible for study, and for thought, and for the play of the imagination. Why is it so?
“It is so for one thing, if one stops to think about it just a moment, because the values of research are universal values. Picture in your thought for a moment this round globe on which we live. Trace its hemispheres and its continents. They are all limited and bounded by their shores and they are inhabited by nations which have their own fixed boundaries and their separate speech and their unique histories. The nations have their racial antagonisms and their peculiar ideals and their distinctive literatures. There is very little indeed in the world that is universal, common to us all. Authors, the greatest of them, can speak in a single language only and are little heard in other tongues. Statesmen and generals are confined in their influence to single nations; the empires of kings are limited. But here is an institution, or in this medical research is a work, the value of which touches the life of every man that lives. Think of that! Is there not something within us, an instinct, which is the harbinger perhaps of better things, an instinct of humanity, which can not be fenced in by the boundaries of a merely national patriotism, a sympathy which transcends national boundaries, and which finds complete expression only when it identifies us with all humanity? Who has not felt the throbbing of desire to be useful to the whole wide world? Here at least is a work for all humanity, which fully satisfies and fills that glorious aspiration. I do not exaggerate. This work is as universal in its values as the atmosphere which surrounds the globe and presses down with fifteen pounds of weight on every square inch of it, a work whose values go to the palace of the rich and the hovel of the poor, a work alike for the babe in the cradle and for tottering age, a work which penetrates everywhere. The discoveries of the Institute have already reached the depths of central Africa with their healing ministrations. You announce a discovery today. Before night your discovery will be flashed around the world. In thirty days it will be in every medical college on earth. In sixty days it will be at the bedsides of the best hospitals, and from those hospitals it will work its way to every sick room in the world that is visited by a competent physician. Universal diffusion may sometimes take longer, but, with the progress of civilization and the deeper wearing of present grooves, diffusion will come more rapidly. The work of the Institute is as universal in its scope as the love of God. Other philanthropies are limited in their scope to individuals, to communities, to classes, to religions, to states, to countries, to nations. This philanthropy alone is as wide as the race. It knows no boundaries at all.
“I said it is as universal in its scope as the love of God, and I now add it is as beneficent in its purpose. Disease is universal. And this is a healing ministration, to prevent or destroy disease. It is rescue from disease, and so it is the most intimate, the most precious, the superlative interest of every man that lives. It touches his health, his life, and the lives of his most dearly beloved. It does not affect the mere externals of life, the appointments, the circumstance, the business, the accomplishments of life. It goes to the fountains of life itself. It deals with what is innermost in every man. For what is health? Health is happiness; mere health itself is happiness. God has so made us in His beneficence that man, when he is in health, with all his functions working perfectly and in harmony, cannot but be happy in the mere exercise of the functions of life. Look at a child, in the exuberance of its health. It has no great thoughts. It can read no great books. It has no mighty enterprises to fill its life and inflame its imagination. It cannot be thrilled with eloquence, with art, or with music. It is just healthy and, being in perfect health, it is radiantly happy in the unconscious exercise of its beneficent functions.
‘And, on the other hand, disease is a prolific root of every conceivable ill, physical, economic, mental, moral, social. Disease, the physical pain and anguish it produces in the sick, the agony of heart in parents, children, friends, the fear of it, and the dread of it—disease with its attendant evils is undoubtedly the main single source of human misery. And the great mass of the charities of the world concern themselves directly or indirectly with relieving or mitigating such evils and miseries of society as are due mainly to disease. But these charities, necessary and beautiful as they are, do not satisfy us, because they do not reach the source of the evil, or decrease its volume. The heart yearns for specifics that reach the root of the evil, that cleanse the very fountains of human misery. For, unfortunately, disease has not hitherto been intelligently, widely, and scientifically studied, nor with adequate instruments and resources. We yet know little of the causes and processes of disease and almost nothing of its cure. In the Rockefeller Institute we have a great organization, nobly housed, suitably equipped, splendidly endowed, inspired with the most intelligent zeal and the noblest enthusiasm to prevent and to destroy the chief source of human disqualification and misery.
“And, while we think of the universality of its scope and its elemental character, let us remember its permanency. The work is not for today alone, but forever; not for this generation, but for every generation of humanity that shall come after us. Thus every success is multiplied by infinity. Has it not often occurred to us that, after all, science is about the only thing that is destined to live forever in this world? Humanity in its progress, moving forward majestically from age to age, each age ‘the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time,’ does, nevertheless, drop out and leave behind at length all useless baggage. The generations as they succeed each other take from the past and hand on to the future, with an ever closer selection, the things that have proved to be permanently useful. The useless thing, though long preserved by tradition, is at last thrown into the discard and left to dim forgetfulness and final oblivion. Whether it be the history of kings or empires, whether it be literatures or inventions, philosophies or religions, all must go at last, once they have become useless. But there is one thing that humanity has always got to live with, and that is old Nature and her laws in this world. These laws do not change and humanity will never outlive them. Whatever we discover about Nature and her forces, and incorporate into our science, that will be carried forward, though all else be forgotten. Humanity, as I said, must always live with Nature, with her forces and their reactions on mankind. For what is human progress? Ultimately it is this, just this, and nothing else—an ever closer approach to the facts, the laws, the forces of Nature, considered of course in its largest meaning. Nothing else is progress and nothing else will prove to be permanent among men.
“Humanity cannot afford to leave scientific discoveries behind, whatever else it leaves behind. Humanity will carry them forward, because it must. What science recovers from Nature can never be lost. If men forget they will have to rediscover. The sure discoveries of an institution like this will live forever. The healing streams originated here will flow on, gathering volume as they go, to cleanse and bless the remotest ages of the world.
“I hesitate to speak of another thing that makes this Institute highly interesting to me. Do not smile if I say that I often think of the Institute as a sort of Theological Seminary. But if there be over us all the Sum of All, and that Sum Conscious—a Conscious, Intelligent Being—and that Being has any favorites on this little planet, I must believe that those favorites are made up of that ever enlarging group of men and women who are most intimately and in every truth studying Him and His ways with men. That is the work of the Institute. In these sacred rooms He is whispering His secrets. To these men He is opening up the mysterious depths of His Being. There have been times when, as I have looked through these microscopes, I have been stricken with speechless awe. I have felt that I was gazing with unhallowed eyes into the secret places of the Most High. I say if God looks down on this world and has any favorites, it must be the men who are studying Him, who are working every day, with limited intelligence and in the darkness—for clouds and darkness are round about Him—and feeling their way into His heart.
“As medical research goes on, therefore, it will find out and promulgate, as an unforeseen by-product of its work, new moral laws and new social laws—new definitions of what is right and wrong in our relations with each other. Medical research will educate the human conscience in new directions and point out new duties. It will make us sensitive to new moral distinctions. It will teach nobler conceptions of our social relations and of the God who is over us all. Work being done in the Institute may be far more important than we dream, for the ethics and the religion of the future. Theology is already being reconstructed in the light of science, and that reconstruction is one of the most important of the services which scientific research is performing for humanity.
“I cannot forbear a brief mention of another great moral value that medical research is conferring. The time was—we can all remember it—when medicine was under such difficulties and in such darkness that the enthusiastic young men who committed themselves to medicine pretty soon found themselves in one of two categories— either confirmed pessimists, disappointed and chagrined, or else mere reckless ‘pill-stingers’ for money. This Institute and others like it have conferred new dignity on the practice of medicine. They have awakened the medical profession to a proud and healthy consciousness of the dignity of its vocation. The educated physician now realizes that his life is devoted to a great science, that he himself may be and ought to be an observer, a close and reverent student at the bedside of the sick, that it is possible for him to heal, and that he has a great and worthy function in life. The elevation of the medical profession, the high character of the young men who are now being drawn into it because it is becoming a science—that of itself is a service of high value.”
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