Pruparatorv to Rr.si'ARCH Cariior 49 



anthrax- and chicken cholera took place, and by 1882 Smith had 

 learned of his immunological experiments against anthrax. This 

 was important because during the next decade a firm biological 

 basis for the modern public health movement would be supplied, 

 and the way be opened for the development of bacteriology and 

 immunology. New discoveries would bring about astonishingly 

 rapid advancements in medical science, and indeed in the animal 

 and plant sciences; and the public health movement would begin 

 to pass from an emphasis on "sanitation of the environment, 

 through the conquest of the insect-borne pestilences and the scien- 

 tific use of vaccine and serum therapy, to the great social and 

 educational movement of the present day, — boasting of successes 

 \shic!i involve the prolongation by [many] years of the average 

 period of human life." " 



Infiltration of the new learning from Europe to America was 

 gradual, and in many quarters tardy. Communication facilities 

 then were not what they are now. Because of the exact technical 

 proficiency required for proper understanding and introduction of 

 the new research methods, American scientists had to await the 

 return of trained students from abroad and the extension of edu- 

 cational and laboratory facilities. Students acquainted with the 

 new research skills were in demand, and book learning prepared 

 some brilliant, capable workers. 



Science in America was still conquering frontiers. Charles 

 Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and the evolutionary doctrine 

 were gaining adherents, but complete acceptance of the new views 

 was belated and confined to the most advanced scholars. Science 

 in nearly all branches was analytic rather than synthetic. On this 

 continent the important economic and scientific explorations of 

 western United States to determine our mineral resources and 

 other objects of national and state wealth had not been entirely 

 completed. Geologists, while probing more deeply into the 

 "' scheme of the rocks," their stratigraphy and paleontology, had 

 been also understandably slow to appreciate the full value and 

 significance of so important a work as Sir Charles Lyell's Princi- 

 ples of Geology.^^ Important theories of the earth's transforma- 



^' A pioneer of public health William Thompson Sedgwick, op. cit., 7. 



•"Brief History of the Association 1848-1948, 7, 9, Amer. Assoc, for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, Washington, 1948. Lyell's Principles was published 1830- 

 1833. 



