June 27, 1889] 



NA rURE 



197 



missioned to report on the progress of chemical industry as 

 manifested at the various International Exhibitions. But 

 it was on the petroleum industry of Baku, on the Caspian, 

 that this influence has been most widely felt. Fifteen 

 years ago the production of petroleum in Russia was a 

 monopoly, and was accompanied by all the evils which 

 usually spring from monopolies : the trade was exceed- 

 ingly limited, and apparently incapable of development. 

 Thanks largely to his action, both on the platform and in 

 the press, the opening up of the boundless supplies of the 

 peninsula of Apsheron was thrown open to the world, 

 with the result that petroleum threatens to effect an 

 industrial revolution in Eastern Europe and in Asia. 

 Indeed, it is not too much to say that the oil industry of 

 Baku is rapidly becoming, directly and indirectly, one of 

 the most powerful factors in the Central Asian problem. 

 Mendeleeff's interest in the development of the Baku 

 industry has led to his being sent to the Caucasus and to 

 Pennsylvania, to report upon the best modes of working 

 the wells, and of separating and utihzing the products. 

 Last year, during the coal crisis in Southern Russia, he 

 was commissioned to study the economic condition of the 

 industry in the rich coal-basin of Donetz. 



No man in Russia has exercised a greater or more 

 lasting influence on the development of physical science 

 than Mendeleeff. His mode of work and of thought is 

 so absolutely his own, the manner of his teaching and 

 lecturing is so entirely original, and the success of the 

 great generalization with which his name and fame are 

 bound up is so strikingly complete, that to the outer world 

 of Europe and America he has become to Russia what 

 Berzelius was to Sweden, or Liebigto Germany, or Dumas 

 to France. Nowhere has Mendeleeff's pre-eminence been 

 more quickly or more fully recognized than in this 

 country. English men of science and of learning have 

 delighted to do him honour. In 1882 the Royal Society 

 gave him the Davy Medal; and now, the Chemical Society, 

 which is proud to number him among its Honorary 

 Fellows, has conferred upon him the highest distinction in 

 its power, by the award of the Faraday Medal. To the 

 great regret of the large gathering of British chemists 

 which had assembled to welcome him and to listen to the 

 memorable address on the subject which he of all others 

 is best fitted to expound, Mendeleeff was unable to receive 

 the gift in person ; but the circumstances of his absence 

 awakened a deep feeling of commiseration and sympathy, 

 and served to intensify the sentiment of respect and 

 admiration with which he is regarded by all English men 

 of science.! T. E. Thorpe. 



THE PREVENTION OF HYDROPHOBIA. 



A S was foretold three years ago, by those experienced 

 -^*- in its behaviour, rabies is again making itself 

 felt in this country by becoming epidemic. No disease 

 probably has been more misunderstood in the past, none 

 is more clearly known to-day. We are not therefore, as in 



' I have to express my grateful acknowledgments to Prof. Menshutkin 

 ^f D Gorboff, of St. Petersburg, and to Dr. B. Brauner, of the University 

 9; Pi'ague, for much of the information on which t^is article is based.— 

 T. E. T. 



1885, caught napping. Since M. Pasteur showed us the 

 whole story of rabies, we have acknowledged the bril- 

 liancy of his researches and the most gratifying discovery 

 he made of the way in which the disease may be pre- 

 vented from developing in any individual unfortunately 

 bitten by a rabid dog. The manner too in which he gradu- 

 ally unfolded one secret of Nature after another, by 

 his extraordinary insight into the phenomena of in- 

 fectious disease, has been demonstrated with beautiful 

 clearness in the recent Croonian Lecture delivered by 

 Dr. Roux before the Royal Society. 



The gradual evolution of the science of preventive 

 inoculations by M. Pasteur has taught us how to obviate 

 the appearance of rabies or hydrophobia when the virus 

 has been introduced into the system ; how, in fact, the 

 virus may be hindered from exerting its frightful effects 

 on the nervous centres of those unfortunately exposed to 

 the danger. Consequently he enjoys the supreme plea- 

 sure of having saved hundreds, not only from a most 

 painful and miserable death, but from what is actually 

 far more painfully important — the most dreadful of appre- 

 hensions. 



But this last point, the apprehension or dread of the dis- 

 ease, which is so appalling a feature of this malady, owing 

 to the extraordinary length of its incubation period, has 

 forced upon everyone save the anti-vivisectionists, the fact 

 that it is far more necessary, in this of all troubles, to pre- 

 vent the chances of the mischief occurring, than to try 

 and shut the door after the evil has found admission. 

 We have persistently urged that in islands like Great 

 Britain the mere existence of rabies is a matter of the 

 greatest reproach ; that preventive legislation is to a 

 very unusual degree able to cope with it and destroy it 

 utterly. A brief repetition of the grounds of this belief 

 will not be out of place. Of all acute specific diseases, 

 rabies is evidently the one in which the virus survives 

 removal from living tissues with the greatest difficulty. 

 As retention of virulence and viability by the viruses of 

 different acute specific diseases is a subject of the highest 

 interest, as well to the practical hygienist as to the patho- 

 logist, we fortunately know enough from the work of 

 recent years to speak with confidence on the point. 

 Bacteriological experience has shown that the difficulty 

 of artificially cultivating a zymotic virus in dead material, 

 e.g. gelatine, increases, roughly speaking, in proportion 

 to the length of the incubation period. In proof of 

 our contention we may quote the extreme cases of tuber- 

 culosis and anthrax. In the former disease the virus is a 

 slow-growing bacillus, growing in artificial cultures with 

 the utmost difficulty, and destroying life only at the end 

 of many weeks. In anthrax, on the contrary, we have 

 a bacillus which develops with the utmost activity on 

 artificial nutrient soils, and which kills in a few hours. 



Duration of incubation period, however, is not 

 necessarily an index to the viability of a bacillus. But 

 while it was clear from what has just been said that 

 we were a priori fully justified in prophesying that the 

 rabic virus would probably not develop in the absence of 

 a living pabulum, i.e. living tissue, we have actual evi- 

 dence to show that fortunately this most terrible virus 

 in all probability is not possessed of powers of active re- 

 sistance to those injurious influences which act upon it 



