558 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
fever, among horses, cows, and sheep were recorded. Nor 
did its ravages confine themselves to the animal world, for 
during the time and in the district referred to, five hundred 
and twenty-eight hu'rnan beings perished in the agonies of 
the same disease. 
A description of the fever will help you to come to a 
right decision on the point which I wish to submit to your 
consideration. " An animal," says Dr. Burdon Sanderson, 
" which perhaps for the previous day has declined food, 
and shown signs of general disturbance, begins to shudder 
and to have twitches of the muscles of the back, and soon 
after becomes weak and listless. In the meantime the 
respiration becomes frequent and often difficult, and the 
temperature rises three or four degrees above the normal; 
but soon convulsions, affecting chiefly the muscles of the 
back and loins, usher in the final collapse of which the 
progress is marked by the loss of all power of moving the 
trunk or extremities, diminution of temperature, mucous 
and sanguinolent alvine evacuations, and similar discharges 
from the mouth and nose." In a single district of Kussia, 
as above remarked, fifty-six thousand horses, cows, and 
sheep, and five hundred and twenty-eight men and women, 
perished in this way during a period of two or three years. 
What the annual fatality is throughout Europe I have no 
means of knowing. Doubtless it must be very great. 
The question, then, which I wish to submit to your judg- 
ment is this: Is the knowledge which reveals to us the 
nature, and which assures the extirpation, of a disorder so 
virulent and so vile, worth the price paid for it? It is 
exceedingly important that assemblies like the present 
should see clearly the issues at stake in such questions as 
this, and that the properly informed sense of the commu- 
nity should temper, if not restrain, the rashness of those 
who, meaning to be tender, become agents of cruelty by 
the imposition of short-sighted restrictions upon physio- 
logical investigations. It is a modern instance of zeal for 
God, but not according to knowledge, the excesses of 
which must be corrected by an instructed public opinion. 
And now let us cast a backward glance on the field we 
have traversed, and try to extract from our labors such 
further profit as they can yield. For more than two 
thousand years the attraction of light bodies by amber was 
