Courting the Rockefeller Foundation and other attempts to integrate clinical teaching, medical practice, and research in Melbourne.

Abstract

Courtesy of the cashed-up Rockefeller Foundation (RF), opportunity knocked in the 1920s for university medical schools committed to closer integration with teaching hospitals. The University of Melbourne Medical School, recognising the opportunity to win RF funds to help with rebuilding, sought government support for an audacious plan consistent with the university-hospital-research triads designed to advance medical science, that had strong RF support. Using a range of local archival sources, this paper details the back story to the development of the plan in the mid-1920s and its presentation to the RF by a high-powered delegation from Victoria in 1927. Although a change of government unde..