What is to be expected of the chief in the way of research? One hears a great deal about research ability as a qualification for the professor of medicine and about the necessity of his carrying on research personally while he occupies the position. Capacity for high grade research is so rare a quality in itself that it will always be almost impossible to find it combined with the other qualifications demanded of a professor of medicine. Ability to do good, conscientious, independent work, interest in stimulating and assisting others to carry on research, and an appreciation of the rôle that research plays in the medical clinic are more important than great personal research genius. The professor must keep in close touch with the work of his staff, guiding where he can, suggesting and encouraging, and he should always try to keep up some independent work if only for his own intellectual satisfaction, so that he may set an example to the staff and may have some little field in which he excels his assistants. Even if he had great ability as an investigator he could not expect to accomplish much, as the multifarious demands on his time make it almost impossible to obtain the sense of leisure which thoughtful work requires. Indeed, I feel that if a man really has this rare gift he ought not to be the head of a department of medicine lest his talent be wasted. One may reasonably question whether the large proportion of the budget of the department of medicine that is devoted to research and the great stress that has been laid on research ability in the selection of teachers is entirely justified, when one considers that much of the research output is of a routine nature and that really significant research is unusual. My personal feeling is that it is justified, although I think the pendulum has swung too far in the matter of choice of professors. Here there is a very unfortunate tendency to pay too little attention to broad clinical experience, something that is acquired only by many years of hard work and too much attention to research ability, or, what is worse, to the possible development of research ability in some promising young man. The publication of a number of good papers does not really indicate any marked capacity for investigation, and such papers certainly offer limited evidence of ability to run a department of medicine. Even in the preclinical laboratories and research institutes the proportion of research that is very noteworthy is not always particularly high, and, when one considers all the other functions required of the men in the department of medicine, I think that we may be rather proud of what they are accomplishing.