Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Edinburgh Medical Journal, Vol. 12
The adoption of some such arrangement would not necessarily imply that research would be confined to one class of University professors and that the others would be teachers only, for there would be nothing to prevent the latter devoting what spare time they had at their disposal to the pursuance of original research, only it would insure that no man who had raised himself to eminence by the brilliance of his researches would be called upon to undertake duties which would be irksome to him, and for which, by training and by trend of thought, he was unsuited.
There is, of course, a difficulty as to how such fellows should be elected. The method by competitive examination is unhappily not always successful. The man appointed, though brilliant, may have none Of the instincts of the researcher. The mere accumula tion of a mass of detail, however useful, is not the sort of work which requires a high degree of intelligence. Where the true ability is displayed is in the subsequent treatment of these details and the conclusions drawn from the Observations made.
The researcher in embryo will be met with amongst those who make some sacrifice to pursue the study of the subject they love. He will be found probably working under difficulties at home, or else experimenting overtime in the laboratories of the Universities. Such is the man to be encouraged; he is Often something of a crank - the crankiness akin to genius. Such a man would probably fail utterly in a competitive examination, and for this reason it seems to us that some system of nomination is more likely to prove successful, and less likely to lead to the waste of funds which are primarily intended to promote original thought and enquiry.
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