PREVENTIVE INOCULATION. 247 



body if we are to be inoculated against all diseases? and with this other 

 one, How do you expect us to make a living if you try to keep all of us 

 alive? The humorous form of these questions usually permits of their 

 dropping out of the conversation without a reply. The earnest answers 

 are, however, obvious. The efforts of the bacteriologists in combating 

 diseases are at present directed to a twofold aim: their prevention, by a 

 prophylactic treatment, and their cure. The advantage of a curative 

 treatment is that it is to be applied to a relatively small number of per- 

 sons, to those who actually fall victims to an attack; while that of the 

 preventive treatment is in the greater certainty with which safety and 

 protection are secured by it. The relative position of the two treat- 

 ments will, in practice, differ in different diseases — namely, according to 

 the prevalence and fatality of a given disease, and according to the 

 merits of the two treatments as they stand at the time. In diseases in 

 which the risks of being attacked are smaller, or the consequences 

 of an attack less serious, or for which a very effective and sure curative 

 treatment has been discovered, the majority of people will prefer 

 lo M r ait for an actual attack rather than to undergo the discomfort 

 of a preventive treatment; in diseases, on the contrary, in which the 

 chances of being attacked are great, or in which the fatality is higher, 

 the sequels of an attack more serious, and for which a successful and 

 not very troublesome preventive treatment has been found, large num- 

 bers will undergo preventive inoculation. But, even in the latter case, 

 a mutual co-operation between the two methods will exist always, as 

 there will always be a number of people, either among those who have 

 neglected to protect themselves by inoculation, or among those in whom 

 the inoculation has proved unsuccessful, who will fall victims to an 

 attack and require the benefits of a curative treatment, be those at the 

 time little or great. 



The answer to the second question is of course to be expected rather 

 from the politico-economist, the wise administrator, the civilian, than 

 from the bacteriologist. In any case it is clear already that if we are 

 ever to be told that we must thin our ranks, we shall prefer not to 

 leave the task in the hands of the indiscriminating microbe, but to 

 have some voice in the matter ourselves. Inoculation marks only the 

 conquest of another force which henceforth we shall be glad to control. 



Bombay, India, March, 1900. 



