i895. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 299 



dissected or catalogued ? There is no absolute answer. The museum 

 man or the anatomist must act according to his lights — and beware of 

 the other. Huxley was frankly anatomical. " He cared for a speci- 

 men according to the facilities it afforded for investigation. He cut it 

 up, got all the knowledge he could out of it, and threw it away." 



Pasteur. 



In another place in this issue we publish notices of Pasteur's 

 chemical work and of the clinical results obtained from his investiga- 

 tions into microbes. It is exceedingly difficult, in the case of a 

 subject in which so many investigators have made almost simul- 

 taneous discoveries, to assign to each his due share of praise. We 

 are disposed to think, however, that Dr. Andrewes, in his endeavour 

 to be strictly impartial, has assigned to Pasteur's influence rather less 

 than he might have done with propriety. We do not think it possible 

 to over-estimate the value of Pasteur's application of chemical 

 methods. Before his time such observations as had been made upon 

 the organisms of putrefaction and fermentation were almost entirely 

 morphological. The series of experiments which culminated in the 

 preparation of " Pasteur's Fluid," the solution Avhich contained the 

 minimum of materials necessary to the growth of yeast, was practi- 

 cally the beginning of quantitative work upon micro-organisms. 

 Later on, when Pasteur, and with him most other bacteriologists, 

 were engaged in attempts to attenuate virus by cultivation, the 

 chemical side of the matter seemed of less importance. Now that 

 Pasteur's pupils in the Institute, as well as most other bacteriologists, 

 regard toxins and antitoxins as of more importance from the point of 

 view of medicine than the living organisms themselves, it is the 

 chemical side of bacterial life that is coming into prominence again. 



Pasteur's School. 



Pasteur was one of the great men who not only conducted 

 investigations themselves, but possessed in the highest degree the 

 power of stimulating others to work. In the issue of the Parisian 

 Figaro that appeared immediately after the death of Pasteur, Dr. 

 Maurice de Fleury gave a most interesting account of the " Disciples 

 de Pasteur "in the Rue Dutot. "Although Pasteur has gone," he 

 said, " the Institute will remain as active as ever. This is worth 

 saying to-day, while the news of our great loss is spreading over all 

 Europe. The work of the master is so enduring that the death of 

 the great man is really the death of a saint who regains Heaven after 

 having founded an order. For it is really a kind of religious order 

 in this house full of devotees proved and eminent, monks or mis- 

 sionaries who work in the laboratory unceasingly, or carry their good 

 news into the furthest land of plague or cholera. 



*' They are full of the communal spirit, each caring more for the 



Y 2 



