340 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Sept. 



minute organisms which are produced by 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 is 

 the Pebrine. I refer for this evidence to the very striking facts 

 adduced by Prof Lister iu his various well-known publications on 

 the antiseptic method of treatment. It seems to me impossible to 

 rise from the perusal of those publications without a strong convic- 

 tion 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 Xature. 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 Eedi and of 

 Spallanzani 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 mankind. 



Nevertheless, you will have observed that before we had travelled 

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

 the left, fields laden with a harvest of golden grain, immediately 

 convertable into those things which the most sordidly praclical of 

 men will admit to have value, — namely money and life. 



The direct loss to France caused by the Pebrine in seventeen 

 years cannot be estimated at less than fifty millions sterling ; and 

 if we add to this what Fvedi's idea, in Pasteur's hands, has done 

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

 capitaliz3 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. 



