Medicine in the Common Market. Clinical medicine and research in Britain.

The British Council is an organization whose function is to promote British culture overseas and to foster exchanges between Great Britain and other countries. Its cultural policy, formerly aimed at the different countries of the old empire, is tending to become more adapted to the needs of the continent of Europe. The British Council asked that a French university doctor should visit several British medical departments so that the facilities they offer and their fields of interest should become better known in France. Professor C. Burg, Director General of the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (I.N.S.E.R.M.) kindly asked me to undertake this visit. My journey was to return the visit to France made by Professor C. T. Dollery and Mr. J. I. Burn (Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London), whose rather flattering report on French medical research was published in the British Medical Yournal;' during this visit it was decided to undertake 14 joint Anglo-French research projects on nephrology, immunology, haematology, oncology, and neurochemistry. These exchanges are financed mainly by I.N.S.E.R.M. and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) in France, and by many organizations, both public and private, in Great Britain. The first group includes the Royal Society, the Medical Research Council (M.R.C.), the Science Research Council (S.R.C.), and the British Council. The second group is made up of the Wellcome Trust and the Ciba Foundation. The efforts made by these various British and French organizations have not been entirely successful since all the exchange scholarships, which as a rule provide quite enough money, have not been taken up. Exchanges of research workers and doctors between two institutions nearly always result from specific scientific discussions during meetings between members of these institutions. A report on a visit, even a written report, cannot replace personal contacts. It can, however, trigger off such contacts. I hope that after reading this article in which I describe the quality of British teaching, research, and clinical practice, those who do not know British medicine will want to know it better and to visit British universities and hospitals.