The fifth report of the Nuffield Foundation, which with its
capital .fund of £10,000,000 is the largest endowed charitable trust in Great Britain, is especially interesting as the Foundation is working on a series of five-year plans, and the report shows a change of emphasis in the second quinquennium. One change is that grants are now to be made to universities in the British Commonwealth instead of in the United Kingdom alone. Originating in 1943, the Foundation was inevitably concerned with post-war reconstruction, and aimed first at the re-establishment of academic studies at home ; but now it is felt that the Empire may have projects as important as anything in .Britain. Rheumatism research, already sponsored at the Manchester University centre opened in 1946, has received an enormous impetus from the American discoveries of the effect of cortisone and ACTH announced last year, and the Foundation is now making grants to a number of research centres. A third point of note is that the Foundation is concentrating on aid to research in biology and sociology in this country, as, with the immense concentration on atomic research, these two have become Cinderella sciences. But perhaps of most general interest is the work for the old. The National Corporation for the Care of Old People was sponsored in 1947, and up to now this has financed homes for the able-bodied ; experience has shown, however, that it is the frail and half-sick who are in greatest straits, and the Foundation hopes to induce some localities to set up homes pro- viding special care for the ailing. Such astonishing and beneficent fruit has Mr. W. R. Morris's cycle-shop borne.
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