Once, medical researchers had to do multiple jobs to make ends meet. The Medical Research Council, which turns 100 this month, allowed them to concentrate on science, says Tilli Tansey.
At the beginning of the 20th century it was hard for a young medical man—let alone woman—to establish a research career. The few university studentships and fellowships on offer were largely devoted to the classics or theology. A scholarship fund named after the 1851 Great Exhibition, created in 1891, provided some support across all the sciences, as did the Royal Society. In medicine, the British Medical Association, some London livery companies, and special endowments such as the physiology studentship established by the novelist George Eliot, provided limited financial support for a small number of young graduates.
An aspiring scientist lucky enough to have held such an award then had to make a living in clinical practice, teaching, or both, squeezing in research where possible. Many had to wear several hats. Charles Sherrington, for example, who in 1932 won a Nobel prize for his discoveries about the nervous system, started his career in the 1890s as lecturer in physiology at St Thomas’ Hospital, while simultaneously working as professor superintendent of the Brown Animal Sanatory Institution in Wandsworth. His situation was not unusual.
The 1890s saw two major private investments in medical research. In 1891, the British Institute of Preventive Medicine—later the Jenner, then the Lister Institute—was founded by public subscription and modelled on the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In 1894, the pharmaceutical manufacturer Henry Wellcome established the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories. Both provided facilities and opportunities to pursue a research career without primary teaching or clinical responsibilities. In the following decade, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund established research labs supported by public donations, and in 1909 Otto Beit gave his eponymous trust an initial £215,000 with which to fund 10 three-year fellowships in medical research each year.
But the Medical Research Council, which celebrates its centenary on 20 June, represented the state’s first foray into funding research in medicine. The MRC was a consequence of Lloyd George’s radical National Insurance Act 1911, which provided limited medical care, sick pay and unemployment benefit for insured workers.
At its first meetings in July 1913, the MRC’s nine members decided how to allocate its first annual budget of £57,000, worth approximately £5.6 million today. They agreed that the priorities should be employing dedicated staff to work solely on research problems, establishing a central research bureau with labs, and funding external, supernumerary workers. An early priority was that “workers of proved and exceptional ability should be enabled to devote their whole time to research work, and should be given a definite and adequate salary and be entitled to a pension. Efforts should also be made to retain for research work young and talented investigators.”
Out of those meetings also came research priorities including tuberculosis, pneumonia, rickets and rheumatic fever. In the following months, staff were appointed to what would become the National Institute for Medical Research.
The first world war disrupted these plans. It was not until 1919 that the institute finally became a functional unit. Its creation led the MRC in 1920 to establish formal pay scales, with some pension provisions, for all scientific, technical and maintenance staff—which seems remarkably prescient, given that the MRC then employed only nine scientists and about 15 other staff. Fourteen-year-old lab boys started on 13 shillings and sixpence a week, while technicians aged 25 or over could earn £4 and 10 shillings a week. A scientific worker could start on £500 a year, and senior staff earned between £800 and £1,000.
Not everyone welcomed the advent of professional, state-supported medical research—anti-vivisectionists railed against what they saw as a waste of taxpayers’ money on “frank buffoonery”. A local campaign against the NIMR, then in Hampstead, labelled it a “torture house” for animals used in experiments. Ironically, these complaints coincided with research on canine distemper, co-funded by The Field magazine, which resulted in a vaccine that has probably saved tens of thousands of dogs.
Thanks to such work, by the beginning of the second world war the MRC had proved the practical utility of state-supported medical research, and honours such as the 1936 Nobel prize to NIMR director Henry Dale, for his discovery of chemical neurotransmission, confirmed its scientific worth.
Fast-forward, and the MRC now has about 5,700 staff, 1,900 research students and 400 fellows. In 2011-12, its research spend was more than £750 million, although rumours that its budget may be moved from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to the Department of Health have caused much disquiet. The Research Excellence Framework is making academics and institutions think about the impact of their work; as the MRC turns 100, it’s worth remembering the huge impact it has had on research, in the UK and beyond.
Tilli Tansey is professor of the history of modern medical sciences at Queen Mary, University of London.
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