STATE DAIRY ASSOCIATION. 619 



;uu (loiio. This last interestiim- pliase of the problem is what uiir accuinu- 

 latetl kiiiiwiedgc of the life and habits of these phiiits has done for us, 

 and it is but just to seientitic men that I say they have Ijeconie masters, 

 not only of tlie fowls of the air and beasts of the field. l)ut also of the 

 smallest of iod's creatures. Where formerly bacteria wrought such 

 havoc in septic poison, lliey now l>y pioper i)i-ecautions are kept out. 

 Wounds heal without suppuration, and belter tlian this, operations that 

 ten years ayo wei'e not thoui;ht of are now. tlianks to oiu' control of 

 these planls. matters of everyday occun-eiice. The histcu'y of antiseptic 

 surgery, since Its inception by Lister in l.S(I4, reads like a fairy tale. This 

 jiveat sur.i!;eon protited by his own discoveries to the e.xtent that his mor- 

 tality in sur.ifcry cases for a period of five years after his discovery was 

 :'M per cent.. \\ liile before this time it was 4.") per cent. Tliiidi of this. 

 In Eniiland the mortality from compound I'ractures before antiseptic sur- 

 jiery was 4n lu-r cent., while now a single death under these circumstances 

 is almost unknown. In France the hospital mortality for stu'gical cases 

 was .j2..") per cent., wliile Avitli antiseptic metliods it is now but 11 per 

 een-t. In some of our cities the change has been as great, i. e., from 40 

 per cent to 4 per cen.t. in Philadelphia. A New York snrueon has operated 

 on .'lit; surgical cases without a single loss from bacterial poisoning. In 

 England's army, where the best can be secured, the chan.ge has been from 

 a mortality of (>!) to Ki per thousand. 



In specific diseases like diphtheria, wliere antitoxine is used, tlie mor- 

 tality has changed from :J!>.T per cent to 11. S per cent, in a representative 

 city. Some report results even more flattering. This diplitheria anti- 

 t(»xine is nnide l>y passing the diphtheriatic bacillus through the horse, 

 which is immune to iliis disease. 



iMning a recent cholera ei)idemic in Calcutta one half of the popula- 

 tion of a certain district were inoculated with cholera antitoxine and the 

 other half were not disturbed. The death rate decreased by T(» per cent, 

 as the result of the inoculation. The prize of ."i^lbO recently given by the 

 Mexican government to the young Italian i)hysician Avas for the discov- 

 ery of serum that has rescued from yelloAV fever 85 per cent, of all the 

 nnfortunale victims of this disease treated in Vera Cruz and .Mexico, 

 llai! this discovery been made ;i halt century earlier these sad scenes of 

 the victims of black death in our own country in 1840, and now com- 

 memorated by a monument, would not have existed to remind us of the 

 awful horrors of the results of the work of the little plant now before us. 



The outcome of the labors of Louis Pasteur, the father of bacteriology, 

 with these plants saved to France, his native country, an amount equal 

 to the whole loss to her fr<uii the Franco-Prussian war. This prophet 

 had honor in his own country. iUid a magnihcenl institute wliich bears 

 Ills name and h.-C" iiecunie liis lonili sl.-inds .is :i tribute of a grateful 

 I)eople to the .-imeliorator of tlieir misery; ,iii(i liu'oughout tin' length and 



