3i6 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



should have arisen from the labours of a man who was himself no 

 physician or surgeon, who laid no claim to any clinical knowledge 

 or experience, and was practically a pure scientist. It has been the 

 fashion among some, even in the medical profession, to decry pure 

 science in medicine, and to maintain that empiricism has always 

 proved the surest basis for medical and surgical practice. No more 

 unanswerable argument can be adduced against such than the results 

 of Pasteur's work — which have, partly in his own hands, but much 

 more largely in the hands of those who have followed him and 

 practically appHed and developed the principles which he laid down, 

 gone far to revolutionise surgery and obstetrics, to afford a sure and 

 definite basis for preventive medicine, and to point out new lines of 

 treatment which have already done much to reduce the mortaHty 

 from certain infective diseases and will probably be still further ex- 

 tended in the future. It is the fashion, again, among those who 

 profess an abhorrence of experiment upon hving animals, to cry out at 

 the absence of practical result from such proceedings. No more 

 beneficent and far-reaching practical results can be conceived than 

 those which have flowed from Pasteur's researches ; and they are 

 due to the application of a rigid experimental method upon living 

 animals. 



A distinction must be drawn between the clinical results achieved 

 by Pasteur himself and those which, in the hands of others, have 

 resulted from the application of his discoveries. The latter far out- 

 weigh the former, and this is not to be wondered at. Pasteur was 

 primarily a chemist and physicist, and ultimately a biologist, and 

 he was. compelled to leave for the most part to others the clinical 

 application of the facts and principles which he had himself 

 established. Nevertheless, he was impelled in some cases to under- 

 take this clinical application with his own hands, — notably in the 

 case of protective inoculations against anthrax and rabies : it is indeed 

 with the extension of the latter mode of treatment to man that his 

 name is most widely known to the public. 



It has been claimed for Pasteur that he was the founder of 

 bacteriology. In a sense this may be true, but it is in a general sense 

 only. His discoveries on the subject of fermentation and, above all, 

 the brilliant experiments by which he settled the question of 

 spontaneous generation, first rendered possible the accurate study of 

 micro-organisms. The methods of sterilising cultural media by heat, 

 perfected by Pasteur and Koch, constituted a very great advance in 

 this study. These were matters which Pasteur's training as a chemist 

 and physicist, and his marvellous faculty for original experiment, 

 rendered him particularly fit to investigate. It is not too much to 

 say that the laying of the foundations upon which the superstructure 

 of modern bacteriology has been raised was in a very great measure 

 Pasteur's work. But to the superstructure itself he added little. No 

 unprejudiced mind comparing Pasteur and Koch — as bacteriologists 



