8 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



After the latter date (1877) I ceased to work 

 at the subject (or rather to publish anything) for 

 a very long period, not because I was convinced 

 that my opponents were right and I was wrong, 

 but because all my energies were needed in other 

 directions, and such controversies as had been car- 

 ried on were proving harmful to my career as a 

 young physician. When, however, I had served 

 for thirty years at University College and its at- 

 tached hospital, I resigned my professorship and 

 my physiciancy (1898) in order that the freedom 

 from teaching and from hospital work might en- 

 able me to devote more time and energy to problems 

 which I had apparently altogether relinquished. 



I knew full well the thankless and arduous work 

 that lay before me in order to procure even the 

 semblance of a fair hearing. For during all these 

 intervening years the important science of Bacteri- 

 ology had steadily grown up, and its fundamental 

 principles were generally thought to be incom- 

 patible with my views and experimental results. 

 I was, in fact, supposed to have been beaten out 

 of the field, and my silence during these years 

 perhaps lent some support to the notion. 



During the first six years of the renewed in- 



