Science in Public Affairs 



To the biologist the city is thus no mass of mere 

 inorganic structures, but a group of organic beings 

 which individually pass away but racially abides, 

 continues and develops towards a definite ideal or 

 degenerates to its opposite. And the ideal of the 

 city is therefore to the biologist the full realisa- 

 tion of racial potency. Who amongst biologists 

 are stimulated into activity by this vision of 

 civic potency ? Increasingly large numbers of the 

 medical profession are animated by the ambition 

 of preventing rather than curing diseases. The 

 noblest instances of missionary enterprise are 

 paralleled by the self-sacrificing adventures and 

 exploits which daily engage the lives of the en- 

 thusiasts of the newer medicine. The missions 

 that go out from the Pasteur Institute in Paris 

 to study (say) typhoid fever in Brazil, or from 

 the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool 

 to investigate (say) yellow fever in New Orleans, 

 are merely conspicuous instances of a heroic 

 activity that is normal in that increasing wing of 

 the medical profession beginning to be called the 

 hygienists. Of these many are already organised 

 into large and well-established Secular orders, such 

 as the various institutes of public health, sanitation, 

 &c., to be found in every large city. Others, less 

 directly but still more vitally, are beginning to 

 influence both civic and national policy through 

 great institutions of the more regular type of 

 order, such as the Pasteur Institute, and similar 

 organisations incipient elsewhere. 



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