HAROLD C. ERNST 169 



means, and how it is best secured. Indeed, so brilliant 

 are the results in surgery, and with such comparative ease 

 have they been obtained, that the more complex problems 

 still to be solved in the domain of clinical medicine have 

 been somewhat neglected because the results seen in them 

 have not been as brilliant. For although it is true that 

 the only specific of wide applicability in human diseases 

 is the antitoxin of diphtheria, the solving of this problem 

 alone is an achievement of the most wonderful nature. 



For the rest, the management of other infectious diseases 

 may be intelligently conducted as never before ; and if 

 our knowledge be properly applied, the spread of these 

 scourges maybe largely arrested, if not prevented entirely. 



These results have not been reached without many 

 failures, mistaken inferences, and stumblings on the path 

 toward the truth and yet we are told we must be con- 

 tent with what we now know. 



It cannot be doubted that finally we shall reach the goal 

 toward which they all tend, of securing a means for the 

 arrest of the processes when once begun ; but in the 

 meantime our present knowledge is too valuable not to be 

 applied to its fullest extent, and as in pulmonary tuber- 

 culosis and typhoid fever, so it is our duty in pneumonia, 

 cholera, tetanus, and other diseases in which we know the 

 specific cause and its site, to carefully apply our bacterio- 

 logical knowledge in their diagnosis and management, as 

 the studies in the laboratory make this knowledge clear. 

 In the former domain of medicine -- that of diagnosis - 

 it is hardly necessary to more than call to your attention 

 the means for diagnosis dependent upon knowledge of the 

 bacteria that have been perfected within the last few years. 

 Every one of them is of the utmost value, either for life- 

 saving or protective purposes. Tuberculosis, diphtheria, 

 typhoid fever, glanders, anthrax, actinomycosis, gonorrhea, 

 dysentery, and so on, can not only be discovered with much 



