

APPENDIX II 



SIR E. RAY LANKESTER REBUKES RUDENESS: A 

 CORRESPONDENCE IN THE PAGES OF THE BRITISH 

 MEDICAL JOURNAL 



I. From the British Medical Journal, July 14, 1917 



To the Editor of the British Medical Journal 



Sir — It would take an undue amount of your space and of my 

 time were I to state fully the grounds which I have for regretting 

 the tone and the matter of Dr. Adami's two Croonian lectures pub- 

 lished by you in your issue of June 23. Nevertheless I ask your 

 permission to lay them briefly before your readers. Those grounds 

 may be classed as matters of taste and matters of fact. With regard 

 to the first, Dr. Adami offends (a) by citing without my permission 

 (and in a garbled form) a private communication made by me to 

 him ; (b) by professing that " the time is ripe " for him to instruct 

 the biological world in elementary facts as to the experimental 

 modification of the activities and forms of pathogenic bacteria which 

 (as I had pointed out to him) are really familiar to biologists, and 

 are not and never have been — as he persists in asserting, in spite of 

 plain information to the contrary — treated with " superb indiffer- 

 ence " and neglect in this country ; (c) further by comparing Professor 

 Bateson, for the purpose of vulgar ridicule, with a bumble-bee in a 

 greenhouse ; and also (d) by making use of the unworthy method 

 of suggestio falsi in recklessly stating that the evolution of a new 

 property by direct acquirement is " contrary to the hypotheses and 

 dogmas of Professor Bateson and Sir Ray Lankester." My objection 

 to this is that Dr. Adami must know, if he knows anything about the 

 matter, that Professor Bateson's views and mine on this subject have 

 little in common. It is unfair to both of us to suggest that they are 

 identical, whilst it is merely rhetorical abuse to speak of those views 

 as " dogmas." Further, it is the fact that Dr. Adami was cate- 

 gorically informed by me eighteen months ago that the frequent 

 evolution of a new property in a race of bacteria by " direct acquire- 



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