Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

expenditure of sorething like $500 to $600 million to aid mzdical
educztion. At the end of the rnovant, American medical education and
medical science stood favorably in comp~rison with the best in W estern
Europe. 20
Meanwhile the General Education Board and the Fomdation
spent other money on medical education and public health and hygiene.
The concentration irked some of the younger men at the Foundation who
were particularly enxious to aid development in the social sciences.
Mr. &pond B. Fosdiek expressed this feeling rhus:
..,by 1920 the Foundation had.to all intents and purposes
been captured by the doctors, znd while some grants were
mde in the Eollorjing years for biology and cultural antbro-
palogy, the doors, although still ajar, were for the tlme
being closed against practica y everything except publie
hezlth and mdical education. 11
M Flexneras work in this field Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr,, vrote him
as follovs as Flexner prepsred to retire from the Board:
You have fully and m y times over justified our higfiest
hopes of what you could do for the cause of education in
association with the Board, Z think it would be hard to
overestilrste the contribution which you have mad& to the
development of education generally In the United Statand
especially to the establishment of a high, strang
foundation of medical education. Zn the fifteen years of
your relationship to the General Education Board, because
of the splendid background of howledge which you brought
with you and your highly trained midd, you have been able
to accomplish what another could not have done in twie
the time, ff at all, No finer piece of constructive work
has been done in any of our philantropic boards than the
work which you have
If Flexner's interests had been minly confined to pedagogical
matters earlier, his work with medical education and the stress it laid
on strong graduate schools gradually caused a shift in hts emphasis.