January 27, 19 16] 



NATURE 



607 



nations, made innumerable homes desolate, and ruined 

 for a time cities and States. The generations now 

 on the stage can scarcely appreciate the formidable 

 apprehensions from which their predecessors sufiered, 

 but they themselves have been. relieved by the achieve- 

 ments of medical research and preventive medicine. 

 This blessed preventive medicine may almost be said 

 to have been created by the combination of bacterio- 

 logical and pathological studies, which are all, of 

 course, biological studies. Physiology has been 

 wonderfully developed as a study of biological pro- 

 i t'sses by the addition of bacteriological experimenta- 

 lon to its former chemical and physical methods of 

 :l search. 



Public health boards have been established and 

 cquipi^ed to perform under new laws numerous func- 

 tions which had no existence until applied biology, 

 with aid from chemistry and physics, indicated the 

 desirable modes of public action. The boards, or public 

 health commissioners, prescribe, teach, and enforce 

 rules and orders concerning personal, industrial, farm 

 and dairy, and school hygiene, social hygiene, includ- 

 ing venereal prophylaxis, for individuals and families, 

 the preservation of foods and their protection from 

 infection, the effects of various industries on the health 

 of employees, the connection of syphilis with insanity 

 and general paresis, and of gonorrhoea with blindness, 

 procure vital statistics, establish registration of births 

 and deaths, and of cases of disease, study epidemics 

 and infant mortality, and contend against dangerous 

 contagious diseases by quarantine, isolation, disinfec- 

 tion, and the destruction of the insect and vermin 

 carriers of disease. All these activities have been 

 completely dependent on applied biology for their 

 methods and processes, and have changed and de- 

 veloped rapidly with the progress of that science. 

 Taken together, they constitute an immense contribu- 

 tion to human welfare, present and future. 



It is animal experimentation with the help of 

 anaesthesia and asepticism which has given mankind 

 by far the larger part of all the exact knowledge of 

 medicine now possessed, and promises still greater 

 serviceableness in the future. In the service of man 

 new studies have been made, not only of microscopic 

 plants and animals, but of many larger creatures which 

 live with man-^such as poultry, rabbits, guinea-pigs, 

 cats, dogs, cattle, horses, mules, and monkeys ; and 

 of many insects — such as flies, ticks, mosquitoes, and 

 "" which infest the fauna and flora which surround 

 , or the bodies or clothes of men themselves. An 

 imense mass of biological information on all these 

 ')jects has been accumulating during the past two 

 lerations, and is growing rapidly from year to year, 

 the good results of such studies become better 

 )wn. 



These results bear directly on the well-being and 

 jpiness of the human race, but also indirectly on the 

 momic and commercial fortunes of the race, 

 rough the well-directed efforts of the Rockefeller 

 litary Commission hundreds of thousands of per- 

 is in the southern States have, within the last five 

 »rs, been made much more effective labourers, be- 

 ise relieved of the hook-worm disease ; and this 

 work is now being extended by the International 

 ilth Commission — one of the departments of the 

 :kefeller Foundation— to the West Indies, Central 

 lerica, Ceylon, and the Straits Settlements. The 

 work of this commission has three divisions : — (i) The 

 commission makes surveys of regions where hook-worm 

 disease is prevalent; (2) then it cures multitudes of 

 sufTerers by active and persistent treatment; and (3) 

 it teaches people by the thousand how to prevent the 

 recurrence of the disease in farming communities by 

 using privies and wearing shoes. In the last two 

 processes it tries — often successfully — to enlist existing I 

 NO. 2413, VOL. 96] 



public authorities and the ta.\ing power in the work, 

 in order to give it permanence. All this beneficent 

 action is fruit of biological research. It would have 

 been impossible to dig the Panama Canal without the 

 effective control over yellow fever and malaria which 

 biological science has given to the race within a single 

 generation. Two humane contributions to military 

 ethciency during the great war are results of biological 

 research appfied to sanitation, one the prevention of 

 epidemics of fever and cholera in the camps and 

 trenches in western Europe, and the other the quick 

 arrest of a terrible epidemic of typhus fever in Serbia. 



Let us next take account of the prospects of applied 

 biology in the coming years. May we anticipate for it 

 an increasing or a decreasing influence? 



The progress of medical and surgical research during 

 the past twenty years is of great promise for the 

 future. It goes on actively in every good medical 

 school, in many hospitals and. dispensaries, and in the 

 new institutes exclusively devoted to research. 

 It is strongly supported by the new tendency 

 to maintain in medical schools professorships 

 of comparative anatomy, physiology, and patho- 

 logy. The importance of comparative psycho- 

 logy is just coming to be recognised. Inasmuch as 

 animal experimentafion, with the help of anaesthesia 

 and asepticism, is nowadays the principal means of 

 extending knowledge of the causes of disease 

 and of the means of remedy and preven- 

 tion, the importance of comparative studies 

 on many species of animals, including man, 

 has become obvious to all persons who think about the 

 improvement of the human race and of its useful 

 animal associates. 



In regard to the treatment of contagious diseases, 

 the story of the recent past cannot but suggest hopes 

 of even more rapid progress in the future towards the 

 effective control of some of the worst diseases that 

 afflict humanity. Thus, in the ten years from 1903 to 

 1913, syphilis was transmitted artificially to certain 

 lower animals ; the characteristic bacillus of that 

 disease was discovered ; the Wasserman test was in- 

 vented, a test which enables an expert in its use to 

 detect those cases which have no external symptoms ; 

 the value of salvarsan, as a safe destroyer of the 

 bacillus within the human body, was demonstrated; 

 and the bacillus was grown in pure culture outside 

 the body, whence resulted luetin, an important aid 

 in the diagnosis of obscure cases ; and finally the 

 bacillus was detected in the brain of patients suffering 

 from general paresis, and in the spinal cord of patients 

 with locomotor-ataxy. This series of discoveries and 

 inventions has given to man a much-improved control 

 over this terrible scourge; but this control is not yet 

 applied on an adequate scale. It remains for the 

 future to cause this destructive disease to be early 

 recognised, reported, and dealt with effectively. It is 

 for State and municipal boards of health to invent and 

 put into practice the means of contending against the 

 spread of this horrible disease. This is a public health 

 problem of the gravest sort. That public health autho- 

 rities may succeed in the future against the horribly 

 destructive effects of syphilis on every civilised race 

 in the world is one of the hopes of the future — a hope 

 inspired by the recent progress of biological science. 



The progress of biochemistry and bacteriology has 

 already enabled civilised Governments to do much for 

 the protection of their people from injury by foods not 

 fit for consumption and by adulterated drugs. This is 

 a branch of the public health service which is capable 

 of large extension hereafter. The efficiency of the 

 methods now used will be greatly increased; and they 

 will be used in new fields. It is only about forty years 

 since the Massachusetts Board of Health gave effectire 



