When the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was formally opened in 1906, L. Emmett Holt could say without fear of contradiction:" Five years ago there were in France, Germany, England, Russia and Japan, well-equipped and endowed institutions for research in medicine. In this country not one existed.... The poverty of the medical institutions was truly pitiful. Their laboratories were for the instruction of students and possessed but little equipment beyond what was necessary for this end." 1 Since then, as the lag which Holt described increasingly diminished and eventually disappeared, the American scene has changed radically with respect to health research. While the evolution of research in the health sciences in the United States has in some degree repeated the European experience, there have also been a number of significant differences. Until the end of the last century, the United States was essentially a developing country, with a largely colonial culture. A scientific tradition was evolving, but research had small prestige, and certainly few institutions in which to develop. From the last decades of the 19th century to the present, however, the course of events is perhaps most aptly characterized by Sigerisťs succinct description of American medicine as having" rushed in a short time through all the successive stages of European development." 2 Today, there exists a group of solidly established national institutes for health research with impressive intramural programs, as well as a broad extramural program for the furtherance and support of research and of training related to research. Scientists in universities are conducting health research on a scale undreamed of in the early decades of this cen-tury, owing in no small measure to the commitment of large public funds for the support of such investigations. This spectacular growth in the scope of research and the advances in quality that have occurred lead one