Failed venture: Gordon Murray and the W. P. Caven Memorial Research Foundation, 1949-74

This paper examines the founding and operation of the W. P. Caven Memorial Research Foundation, a private Toronto laboratory, which existed from 1949 to 1974. The Caven Foundation's Research Director was celebrated Toronto surgeon Gordon Murray (1894-1976), who, in 1949, accepted this position amidst personal and public expectations of great medical discoveries and innovations to come. For 25 years Murray carried on his research at the Caven Foundation, generating more controversy and disappointment than medical cures, before the laboratory was closed for financial reasons. What might have been a successful alternative to the University-based medical research structure in Canada resulted in a failed venture. The Foundation did not become a viable research centre largely because of its Research Director and his inability to adapt to the many changes occurring in the conduct and funding of clinical research. The history of the Caven Foundation is explored here within the context of increasingly specialized research techniques and methodology, the rising predominance of the interdisciplinary research team, and the new system of grantsmanship.