Introduction 



renews its themes and carries onward its witchery 

 from old romance into present ideals. 



But enough of this world of aesthetics and its 

 cultivated senses. What of the general life ? what 

 of the medical and biological sciences which deal 

 with this ? That the study of microscopic germs 

 has yielded a transformation at one time of whole 

 industries, at another of medicine, and again of 

 surgery, are matters of common knowledge, doubt- 

 less ; yet is the common knowledge sufficient ? 

 With all advances of application, are the con- 

 ditions of industry yet adequate ? Is the pro- 

 duction of wealth or the production of health 

 yet anything like what, with even our present 

 imperfect knowledge, it might be ? We boast our 

 lead in the colonial world, 1 our expansion into 

 the vastest of historic empires, yet though science 

 has lately given us a new control of health con- 

 ditions throughout the tropics, is it not notorious 

 that we are lagging behind other peoples in apply- 

 ing these to the countries we govern, to the very 

 towns to which our countrymen go out to die ? 

 Why ? Because our rulers and our public alike 

 are at this moment, in average and in majority, 

 less conversant with the results of the sciences 

 and less influenced by its methods and spirit 

 than are Frenchmen or Germans, Americans or 

 Japanese, less probably than are the members of 

 any of the small nationalities of Western Europe, 



1 Ronald Ross (on his malaria mosquito researches and the 

 encouragement and application of them even by Colonial 

 Office) in the University Review, vol. i., No. i. May 1905. 



xiv 



