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SUMMARYEstablished in 1923, the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory at Boston City Hospital was the first clinical research laboratory in a municipal hospital in the United States of America. Minot and Castle, who were the second and third directors of the Laboratory, were pioneer haematologists and clinical investigators of the highest calibre who created an atmosphere at the Laboratory that would foster patient-centred research and attract the best physician-scientists to work and train there. The haematology research division of the Laboratory made important original contributions to the understanding of the pathophysiology of anaemia, the mechanisms of red cell and platelet destruction and the phagocytic role of the spleen, the nature of haemoglobin (normal and sickle cell), the nature of haemophilia and its therapy and the early classification of lymphoma. It contributed to the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory's worldwide reputation as a model research laboratory and established its reputation as the birthplace of modern haematology.It is not merely a question of permitting universities to carry on research within the hospital walls, but of actually providing laboratories, equipment, technicians, and salaries for professional workers -it is, in fact, a question of realizing that the fostering of medical research is one of the most important means of enabling a hospital to perform its full function of giving the best medical care to the sick. Francis Weld Peabody (1923)