148 THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



the science they have cultivated has become suddenly 

 and urgently of the highest practical value. 



I have not time to do more than mention here the 

 effort that is being made by combined international 

 research and co-operation to push further in our 

 knowledge of phthisis and of cancer, with a view to their 

 destruction. It is only since our last meeting at York 

 that the parasite of Phthisis or Tubercle has been 

 made known ; we may hope that it will not be long before 

 we have similar knowledge as to Cancer. Only eighteen 

 months have elapsed since Fritz Schaudinn discovered 

 the long-sought parasitic germ of Syphilis, the Spirocheta 

 pallida (see fig. 6). As I write these words the sad 

 news of Schaudinn's death at the age of thirty-five 

 comes to me from his family at Hamburg an irre- 

 parable loss. 



Let me finally state, in relation to this study of 

 disease, what is the simple fact namely, that if the 

 people of Britain wish to make an end of infective 

 and other diseases they must take every possible means 

 to discover capable investigators, and employ them for 

 this purpose. To do this, far more money is required 

 than is at present spent in that direction. It is 

 necessary, if we are to do our utmost, to spend a 

 thousand pounds of public money on this task where 

 we now spend one pound. It would be reasonable 

 and wise to expend ten million pounds a year of our 

 revenues on the investigation and attempt to destroy 

 disease. Actually what is so spent is a mere nothing, 

 a few thousands a year. Meanwhile our people are 

 dying by thousands of preventable disease. 



