APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 89 



Nevertheless, you will have observed that before 

 we had travelled very far upon our road, there 

 appeared, on the right hand and on the left, fields 

 laden with a harvest of golden grain, immediately 

 convertible into those things which the most solidly 

 practical men will admit to have value viz. , money 

 and life. 



The direct loss to France caused by the Pebrine 

 in seventeen years cannot be estimated at less than 

 fifty millions sterling ; and if we add to this what 

 Redi's idea, in Pasteur's hands, has done for the 

 wine-grower and for the vinegar-maker, and try to 

 capitalise its value, we shall find that it will go a 

 long way towards repairing the money losses caused 

 by the frightful and calamitous war of this autumn 

 (1870). And as to the equivalent of Redi's thought in 

 life, how can we overestimate the value of that know- 

 ledge of the nature of epidemic and epizootic diseases, 

 and consequently of the means of checking, or 

 eradicating them, the dawn of which has assuredly 

 commenced ? 



Looking back no further than ten years, it is 

 possible to select three (1863, 1864, and 1869) in 

 which the total number of deaths from scarlet- 

 fever alone amounted to ninety thousand. That 

 is the return of killed, the maimed and disabled 

 being left out of sight. Why, it is to be hoped 

 that the list of killed in the present bloodiest of 

 all wars will not amount to more than this ! But 

 the facts which I have placed before you must 

 leave the least sanguine without a doubt that the 

 nature and the causes of this scourge will, one day, 

 be as well understood as those of the Pebrine are 

 now ; and that the long-suffered massacre of our 

 innocents will come to an end. 



And thus mankind will have one more admoni- 

 tion that "the people perish for lack of know- 

 ledge " ; and that the alleviation of the miseries, 

 and the promotion of the welfare, of men must 

 be sought, by those who will not lose their pains, 



