78 



NATURE 



[September 17, 1914 



This, after all the centuries, was the doleful position 

 of medical science in the year 1876, when suddenly 

 light began to shine upon it, brought not by the 

 agency of any member of the medical profession, but 

 by a physiological chemist, and he was led to his 

 great discovery, not in an attempt to solve some prob- 

 lem of practical medicine, but by scientific observa- 

 tions devoted to an apparently purely philosophical 

 critical research into the supposed origin of life in a 

 particular way. 



It was the experimental or research method in bio- 

 chemistry supported by physiological experiments on 

 animals which, in the hands of Louis Pasteur, laid 

 the foundations of true knowledge, and transformed 

 medicine from what has been described above into 

 the glorious, living, evolving science that we possess 

 to-day. 



The men who fought side by side with Pasteur in 

 his famous struggle against orthodoxy in medicine as 

 represented by the leading physicians and surgeons of 

 the period between i860 and 1880 were mainly chem- 

 ists, biologists, and physiologists, such as Claude 

 Bernard, Paul Bert, J. B. Dumas, Biot, Belard, and 

 Sainte-Claire Deville, in his own country, and Tyn- 

 dall and Huxley in ours. A few physicians and sur- 

 geons of scientific training in France and England 

 recognised the importance of his discoveries, such as 

 Alphonse Gu^rin, Villemin, and Vulpian, in his own 

 country, while Lister in ours was already at work, 

 had experimented widely and wrote his memorable 

 letter of congratulation to Pasteur in 1874, informing 

 him of the work he had been doing in introducing 

 antiseptic surgery in England during the preceding 

 nine years. Against this intrepid little band of experi- 

 mental men of science were massed all the batteries 

 of orthodox medical nescience served by the distin- 

 guished physicians and surgeons of the time ; but 

 truth is mighty and must prevail. Davaine applying 

 Pasteur's principles in a medical direction had found 

 out the bacterial origin of anthrax, and although he 

 was violently attacked by oratorical arguments in 

 opposition to experimental proofs, and accused, as 

 many physiologists are to-day, of having "destro}ed 

 very many animals and saved very few human beings," 

 his facts held fast, and combined with the later experi- 

 ments of Koch and of Pasteur, not merely established 

 the etiology of anthrax as we know it to-day, but 

 gave a support and forward growth to that new-born 

 babe, bacteriology, which without such animal experi- 

 ments could never have grown into the beneficent 

 giant that it is to-day in all its glorious strength for 

 the weal of humanity. 



Pasteur himself meanwhile was hard at work in the 

 small ill-equipped laboratory of physiological chemistry 

 of the Ecole Normale at Paris, from which the fame 

 of his discoveries began rapidly to spread and shed a 

 new light forth on the medical world. Pasteur at this 

 stage had already largely rehabilitated the national 

 prosperity of his own country by his successful re- 

 searches on silk-worm disease and on fermentation 

 maladies and the diseases of wines. All this effect upon 

 nationalindustries, it is to be noted, followed on from 

 an inquiry of apparently no practical importance on 

 spontaneous generation. He now turned his genius 

 towards disease, there also utilising the same discovery 

 arising from a research that contained at first sight 

 no possible applications to disease, and the remainder 

 of his life was devoted to the extension of these 

 studies. The subsequent history of this discovery is 

 the science of bacteriology with all its ramifications 

 and manifold applications in industry, in agriculture, 

 in medicine, and in public health, investigated by the 

 experimental method by thousands of willing workers 

 all over the civilised world. Who but the ignorant 



NO. 2342, VOL. 94] 



Philistine, who knows not what he prates about, can 

 deny the profound influence of animal experimenta- 

 tion, and the philosophic application of the principle 

 of research upon the history of the world? 



Let us now, from the vantage-point of the present, 

 look back at the past and glean from the study of 

 the manner in which this science took origin some 

 knowledge to guide us, first, as to how research may 

 be fostered and encouraged in the future, and, 

 secondly, as to how the results of research may be 

 applied for social advantage. 



The first and perhaps the finest thought of all is 

 that research must be pursued with the highest ideals 

 of the imaginative mind apart from all desired applica- 

 tions or all wished-for material advantages. If we 

 might personify nature, it would seem that she does 

 not love that researcher who only seeks her cupboard, 

 and never shows her finest treasures to him. She 

 must be loved for her own beauty and not for her 

 fortune, or she will ne'er be wooed and won. Not 

 even the altruistic appeal of love for suffering mankind 

 would seem to reach her ears ; she seems to say : 

 " Love me, be intimate with me, search me out in my 

 secret ways, and in addition to the rapture that will 

 fill your soul at some new beauty of mine that you 

 have discovered and known first of all men, all these 

 other material things will be added, and then I may 

 take compassion on your purblind brothers and allow 

 you to show them these secret charms of mine also, so 

 that their eyes may perchance grow strong, and they, 

 too, led hither by you, may worship at the shrine of 

 my matchless beaut)'." By all the master discoveries 

 in all the paths of science, nature is ever teaching us 

 this great doctrine to which we have closed our ears 

 so long. She tells us the creation of the world is not 

 finished, the creation of the world is going on, and 

 I am calling upon you to take a part in this creation. 

 Never mind that you cannot see the whole, love that 

 you see, work at it, and be thankful that I have given 

 you a part to play with so much pleasure in it, and 

 so doing you will rise to the highest ideal. 



This is religion with thirst for knowledge as its 

 central spring ; does it differ much from those aspira- 

 tions which have made men of all nations worship 

 throughout all the ages? Anthropology teaches us 

 that the religious system of a race of men gives a 

 key to their advancement in civilisation. If this be 

 so, growth in natural knowledge must elevate our 

 highest conceptions, furnish purer ideals, and give us 

 more of that real religion that is to be found running 

 so strongly in the minds of great individuals, such as 

 Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur, 

 Auguste Comte. A great man may be strongly 

 opposed to the orthodox creeds of his day, he may even 

 sneer at them, he may be burnt at the stake by their 

 votaries, and yet be a man of strong religious feelings 

 and emotions which have furnished the unseen motive 

 power, perhaps unsuspected even by himself, that leads 

 to a whole life of scientific heroism and enthusiasm. 



The practical lesson for us to learn from all this is 

 that we must consider research as sacred and leave it 

 untrammelled by fetters of utilitarianism. The re- 

 searcher in functional biology, for example, must be 

 left free to pursue investigations as inspiration leads 

 him on any living structure from a unicellular plant 

 to a man, and must not be expected to devise a cure 

 for tuberculosis or cancer. In his research he must 

 think of something higher even than saving life or 

 promoting health, or he is likely to prove a failure 

 at the lower level also. 



As an example of the wrong attitude of mind 

 towards science, there may be taken the point of view 

 of those utilitarians who complain of the amount of 

 time and discussion at present being given to 



