276 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



animal creation, known to science, no one can, I think, doubt 

 that the treatment suggested by Mr. Crookes is a radical and 

 complete specific against rinderpest. What I wish to call the 

 attention of the section to is the fact that I saved the lives of 

 those animals not by any medical treatment, properly so called, 

 of the animals themselves, but by an unremitting, ceaseless 

 chemical onslaught on the germs of the disease. I argued 

 in my own mind that a theory such as the germ-theory of disease 

 could not, in the nature of things, be partially true ; it must 

 either be altogether true or altogether false. If true, it was the 

 most hopeful theory that any one could comfort himself with in 

 face of an outbreak of zymotic disease, because it afforded 

 some firm and sure foundation for treatment. A purely medi- 

 cal treatment, properly so called, of infectious disease always 

 has appeared to me if I may be pardoned for the expres- 

 sion of so heretical an opinion in suck orthodox company 

 to be empirical to the last degree. It is probable that medicines 

 act physically as well as chemically ; but I am not aware that any 

 one has been able to give a very satisfactory explanation either 

 of the physical or the chemical action of organic medicines, whether 

 exhibited in the human subject or in a lower organism. The chem- 

 ical action of many inorganic medicines is no doubt perfectly 

 understood, but even the administration in the nursery of a home- 

 prescribed dose of rhubarb and magnesia has always seemed to 

 me the height of empiricism. For here the nurse boldly invites 

 the actions of inorganic and of organic substances, although no 

 doubt she exhibits her agents with, "on the whole, a happy result. 

 But, at last, we appear to be getting upon some firm scientific 

 footing, for clearly it is more scientific to attack the germs pro- 

 ducing diseases with a chemical agent whose action is ascertained 

 than to exhibit in the inside of the patient affected a variety of 

 organic and inorganic substances which can only at best act upon 

 the disease, that is, upon the germ, through the secondary agency 

 of the patient himself. Of course in rinderpest, or in any other 

 infectious disease, the disorder may have proceeded too far before 

 the patient is taken in hand to admit of the possibility of a cure, 

 and death may result from a secondary action set up during the 

 progress of the disease, even although the primary cause of the 

 disease, that is, the germs, may have been altogether extermi- 

 nated. But it has always seemed, to me that this case of the 

 chemical treatment of rinderpest upon so large a scale is one of 

 the most entirely practical proofs of the germ-theory of disease 

 that has yet been obtained, and it is for this reason that I have 

 ventured to communicate these details to this section. But in 

 doing so I am anxious to explain distinctly what it is that I mean 

 by the words ' germ-theory of disease,' for the words are so often 

 used that many persons attach various meanings to them. By the 

 ' germ-theory of disease ' I simply mean the process by which an 

 infectious disease having once originated is disseminated and com- 

 municated from one subject to another. I do not desire to apply 

 it in any way to the origin of such diseases. Probably we shall 

 never know the truth as to their origin, for it is difficult to see how 



