288 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



often producing a mortality far greater than that of the 

 battle itself; add to this the other conception that in 

 times of epidemic disease the self-same floating matter 

 has frequently, if not always, mingled with it the special 

 germs which produce the epidemic, being thus enabled 

 to sow pestilence and death over nations and continents 

 consider all this, and you will come with me to the 

 conclusion that all the havoc of war, ten times multi- 

 plied, would be evanescent if compared with the rav- 

 ages due to atmospheric dust. 



This preventible destruction is going on to-day, and 

 it has been permitted to go on for ages, without a whis- 

 per of information regarding its cause being vouchsafed 

 to the suffering sentient world. We have been scourged 

 by invisible thongs, attacked from impenetrable ambus- 

 cades, and it is only to-day that the light of science is 

 being let in upon the murderous dominion of our foes. 

 Facts like these excite in me the thought that the rule 

 and governance of this universe are different from what 

 we in our youth supposed them to be that the inscru- 

 table Power, at once terrible and beneficent, in whom we 

 live and move and have our being and our end, is to be 

 propitiated by means different to those usually resorted 

 to. The first requisite towards such propitiation is 

 knowledge; the second is action, shaped and illumi- 

 nated by that knowledge. Of knowledge we already 

 see the dawn, which will open out by-and-by to perfect 

 day; while the action which is to follow has its un- 

 failing source and stimulus in the moral and emotional 

 nature of man in his desire for personal well-being, 

 in his sense of duty, in his compassionate sympathy 

 with the sufferings of his fellow-men. ' How often,' 

 says Dr. William Budd in his celebrated work on Ty- 

 phoid Fever, ' How often have I seen in past days, in 

 the single narrow chamber of the day-labourer's cottage 



