10 - Conclusion: Modern Times

Summary

After assisting the reconstruction of the Medical Department, the RF pulled out of all further projects related to teaching and research in medicine in Edinburgh.This was a policy decision made before Pearce's death and which he talked about with Fletcher who agreed with it. The decision seems to have resulted from a combination of factors, notably experience and general policy change. At the end of the 1920s at the Foundation headquarters the Division of Medical Education was dissolved and a new Medical Sciences division was created. Policy was changed from supporting schools to assisting individual research projects. Psychiatry, worldwide, came in for a great deal of support. North American research received extensive aid. None of the Edinburgh medical professors (Bramwell, Murray Lyon, and Ritchie) were undertaking the sort of studies that would appeal to the RF (in no case was extensive laboratory work involved and, anyhow, personal factors came into play).

Alan Gregg, Pearce's successor, persisted with attempts to assist the Medical Faculty, which in 1931 he still regarded as “the most important … in the British Empire in point of influence, rigorousness of standards, influence upon teaching, and research work, and intelligence and effectiveness of inner organization.” Its weaknesses, he considered, were “in Physiology” and “in the division of its clinical resources over too large a number of uncorrelated teachers at the Infirmary.” In the light of his continuing optimism, Gregg was disposed to help the clinical professors in “the creation and maintenance of a thorough record system at the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary.” This proposition was said by Pearce to have been initiated by Wilkie in 1929 but apparently Murray Lyon considered it his “creation” (a point Gregg was inclined to dismiss). At any rate Gregg backed it not only for its own merits but for what was described as a “byproduct” of the initiative—something the RF had wanted all along. It was hoped that by supporting the proposal there would be a “considerable likelihood that collaborating professors, especially in the Department of Medicine, will be brought together on a much more satisfactory basis.”