The Postgraduate Medical School: the present situation.

The School continued throughout the war. It ran seventy-two special war courses in which the lecturers were, for the most part, serving officers, and these courses were attended by 3,700 officers from British, American, Canadian and other forces, and this had considerable effect in spreading the School's reputation abroad, because the officers attending saw the quality of the research work in progress. After the war, the School gave up its position as an independent school of the university in order to make possible the start of the Postgraduate Medical Federation, which brought into union all the postgraduate teaching activities in London. The Federation took over the provision of refresher courses for general practitioners, and the School was able to concentrate on its work as a training ground for consultants and teachers. The School has usually been short of money. For years every penny went to the development of research, a policy which paid dividends, though the University Grants Committee did eventually complain about the lack of amenities for the postgraduate doctors. It has always been short of space: the Medical Research Council thought well enough of the School to build and develop on the site. Help came from Aneurin Bevan, who gave a licence for eight huts at a time when building licences were unobtainable. Extra accommodation was added by the hospital, and laboratories were built on existing buildings. The School finally started its own appeal for building in 1956. Mr. W. W. Watt, Lord Stamp and others carried this through with success. The Wolfson Foundation gave the money for the building to house the amenities, where large medical societies can meet and the School collected over £1,000,000 for the new thirteen-storey building for the rest of the School going up. The progress of the School has just about fitted rightly with Hughlings Jackson's famous remark that 'It takes twenty years to get an idea out of the head of the medical profession, and another twenty years to get a new one in.' It took about twenty years, 1921 1941, to get the old idea of postgraduate education out of people's minds, and between 1941 and 1961 the School has gradually achieved a certain status in this country, as well as abroad.