BIOLOGY. 263 



pre-existing germs, or by homogenesis ; and there is no reason, 

 that I know of for believing that what happens in insects may 

 not take place in the highest animals. Indeed, there is already 

 strong evidence that some diseases of an extremely malignant and 

 fatal character, to which man is subject, are as much the work of 

 minute organisms as in the Pebrine. I refer for this evidence to 

 the very striking facts adduced by Professor Lister in his various 

 well-known publications on the antiseptic method of treatment. 

 It seems to me impossible to rise from the perusal of those publi- 

 cations without a strong conviction that the lamentable mortality 

 which so frequently dogs the footsteps of the most skilful operator, 

 and those deadly consequences of wounds and injuries which 

 seem to haunt the very walls of great hospitals, and are, even 

 now, destroying more men than die of bullet or bayonet, are due 

 to the importation of minute organisms into wounds, and their 

 increase and multiplication ; and that the surgeon who saves most 

 lives will be he who best works out the practical consequences 

 of the hypothesis of Redi. 



" I commenced this address by asking you to follow me in an 

 attempt to trace the path which has been followed by a scientific 

 idea, in its long and slow progress from the position of a probable 

 hypothesis to that of an established law of nature. Our survey has 

 not taken us into very attractive regions ; it has lain chiefly in a 

 land flowing with the abominable, and peopled with mere grubs 

 and mouldiness. And it may be imagined with what smiles and 

 shrugs, practical and serious contemporaries of Redi and of Spal- 

 lanzani may have commented on the waste of their high abilities 

 in toiling at the solution of problems which, though curious 

 enough in themselves, could be of no conceivable utility to man- 

 kind. Nevertheless, you will have observed, that before we had 

 travelled very far upon our road, there appeared, on the right and 

 on the left, fields laden with a harvest of golden grain, imme-' 

 diately convertible into those things which the most sordidly prac- 

 tical of men will admit to have the value, namely, money and life. 

 The direct loss to France caused by the Pebrine in 17 years 

 cannot be estimated at less than 50,000,000 sterling; and if we 

 add to this what Redi's idea, in Pasteur's hands, has done for the 

 wine-grower and for the vinegar-maker, and try to capitalize its 

 value, we shall find that it will go a long way towards repairing 

 the money losses caused by the frightful and calamitous war of 

 this autumn. And as to the equivalent of Redi's thought in life, 

 how can we overestimate the value of that knowledge of the 

 nature of epidemic and epizootic diseases, and consequently of the 

 means of checking or eradicating them, the dawn of which has 

 assuredly commenced ? Looking back no further than 10 years, 

 it is possible to select 3 (18G3, 1864, and 1869) in which the 

 total number of deaths, from scarlet fever alone, amounted 

 to 90,000. That is the return of killed, the maimed and 

 disabled being left out of sight. Why, it is to be hoped that the 

 list of killed in the present bloodiest of all wars will not amount 

 to more than this! But the facts, which I have placed before 

 you, must leave the least sanguine without a doubt that the 

 nature and the causes of this scourge will, one day, be as well 



