5o8 



NATURE 



[September 23, 1897 



somewhat complicated electric system designed to get rid of the 

 overhead wire, the car itself carrying a length of wire overhead 

 sufficiently long to make connection between a series of poles 

 and studs in the paving. The general opinion of all the elec- 

 trical engineers who took part in it, both British and American, 

 seemed to be that for smaller towns with comparatively un- 

 crowded streets, and for the outlying roads of great cities, 

 especially those extending into residential suburbs (most of the 

 existing tram-lines in London run mainly on such roads), the 

 overhead trolly wire system was at present, at any rate, the only 

 possible system ; its great cheapness and simplicity, as compared 

 ■with all conduit systems, practically gave it a monopoly. For 

 the main business streets of great cities, however, if street tram- 

 ways are to be allowed at all, a somewhat doubtful point, then 

 some system which abolishes both the overhead wire and the 

 open conduit seems the ideal one. At present no satisfactory 

 one has yet been brought into use. One thing is certain : every 

 British visitor to Toronto, after experiencing the comfort and 

 value of the quick, well-lit, and frequent car service of that 

 city, will return to the Old Country an ardent advocate of the 

 adoption of electric traction on our street-cars. The contrast 

 between this splendid system of street-cars and our slow, 

 wretchedly-lit system is so great, that one can only wonder 

 that we have put up with the latter so long. The abolition 

 from our streets of the thousands of horses required by tram- 

 Cars and busses, is of itself a great argument in favour of electric 

 traction ; the filth of the streets would at once be sensibly re- 

 duced, and we should be spared the pain of seeing the sight — 

 now only too common in our streets — of overworked horses 

 struggling painfully to start overloaded cars and busses. 



The bugbear of the hideousness of the overhead wire is, let us 

 hope, at last being seen in its true light; in any street of 

 Toronto, where the overhead wires of the car-system were the 

 only ones, they were inconspicuous and almost unnoticeable ; 

 the people responsible for the frightful mass of wires and poles 

 which disfigure the leading streets of American cities, are not 

 the tramway companies, but the telegraph, telephone, and 

 electric light companies. The overhead wire tramway poles 

 would be practically unnoticeable in any street of an English 

 city ; and most certainly-there are very few, if any, streets where 

 they would be obtrusive, or do anything to increase the already, 

 alas, existing prevalent ugliness. 



The conditions of modern city life, the absolute necessity of the 

 worker living — if he is to secure a healthy cheap dwelling — miles 

 from his place of work, render imperative some system of cheap 

 and efficient transport through the streets. Though our under- 

 ground electric railways may do something towards solving this 

 problem in London, still, in the other cities, and in London itself, 

 the street-car must be the chief method adopted ; and jit is 

 monstrous that we should still be compelled to put up with our 

 antiquated and inefficient system of horse traction, while every 

 little town of mushroom growth in America has already solved the 

 problem, and given its inhabitants the most perfect systems of 

 street traction. Liverpool is to show the way ; let us hope, that in 

 a year or two the electric street railways of great Britain will 

 increase so rapidly that we shall be able to compare them, as 

 regards mileage, with the thousands of miles already in use 

 across the Atlantic. If the meeting of the Association in Toronto 

 should hasten on this desirable social improvement, it will not 

 have been in vain, and will be looked back to with pleasure by 

 all those anxious to make life in our great cities more healthful 

 and more perfect. 



THE WORK OF PASTEUR AND THE 

 MODERN CONCEPTION OF MEDICINE. 



lyr R. PRESIDENT, Ladies, and Gentlemen,— It is not 

 •^ -^ without emotion that I rise to address this learned 

 assembly. I know, indeed, that I am addressing men who are 

 not my fellow citizens, but among them are some, enfants de 

 noire vieille nation Gauloise, who have the same mother tongue 

 as we ; they speak from childhood our beloved French language, 

 they are thus a little more than my fellow citizens, for they are 

 my compatriots, and I feel myself animated by a truly fraternal 

 affection for them ; and as to my English colleagues, they have 

 given evidence of so much good will and of a courtesy so 



1 An address delivered before the British Medical Association, at 

 Montreal, by Prof. Charles Richet. (Reprinted from the British Medical 

 Journal.) 



delicate, that I need make no great effort to assure them of my 

 gratitude. In one word, although a stranger I seem to be 

 among friends. 



I am somewhat troubled, also, because I am addressing 

 medical men and am speaking before a medical congress. 

 Now, although I belong in some small degree to the great 

 medical family, since my father has conferred honour upon the 

 profession of medicine by his labours and by his works ; and 

 although I have the great honour to be the delegate of the 

 Faculty of Medicine of Paris, yet I am not a medical man, and 

 a physiologist displays some temerity in venturing to speak 

 before you on medical matters. 



The Reconciliation of Medicine and Science. 



Still I have an excuse. It is this, that I desire to attempt 

 to bring about a complete reconciliation between medicine 

 and science. It may seem that this is a commonplace, and that 

 any such attempt would be unnecessary. But it is not so, 

 gentlemen. We might find, perhaps, somewhere — not, I am 

 sure, in this assembly — medical men ready, unhesitatingly, 

 to assert that there is discord between medicine and science, 

 and that all those sciences which are called auxiliary — physics, 

 chemistry, physiology — are impedimenta with which the clinician 

 has nothing to do. Yes, there are to be found in the world medical 

 men, among them even men of high attainments, who are ready 

 still to say : " What have I got to do with your experimental 

 science ? Observation of the sick and clinical study are worth 

 more than all your clever experiments, and it is not from labora- 

 tories that the means of curing disease can come." Such an 

 opinion appears to me to be erroneous, and I would with all 

 the energy which I possess help to upset it. I hold that 

 it is by experimental science alone that medicine has made 

 and can make progress. It will suffice to describe the work 

 of Pasteur, my illustrious master, in order to give you a 

 convincing demonstration of this. 



I shall not be contradicted when I say that the value of this 

 work is greater than all that the history of medicine has given 

 us since the commencement of our era. Through his labours 

 everything has been renewed, regenerated, and, thanks to him, 

 medicine has made more progress in twenty years than had 

 been made previously in twenty centuries. 



The Life-Work of Pasteur. 



Louis Pasteur was born at Dole in the Jura in 1821, and at 

 the beginning of his career gave himself up to the study of 

 chemistry. He became deeply interested in a difficult and 

 important problem — molecular dissymmetry. Here was a ques- 

 tion in pure chemistry which would seem to take us very far 

 from medical questions, but it was to lead Pasteur directly to 

 the study of fermentations. If a solution of tartaric acid (in 

 the form of tartrate) be left untouched, a change occurs after 

 some time in the chemical constitution of the liquid, which 

 before Pasteur's time had been overlooked. The original solu- 

 tion had no action on polarised light, but after fermentation this 

 same solution has become capable of deflecting polarised light. 

 Pasteur explained this phenomenon by showing that the original 

 tartaric acid is a mixture of an acid deviating light to the right 

 with an acid deviating it to the left, and that a process of partial 

 decomposition takes place ; one of the acids is destroyed and 

 the other is not altered, so that the action upon polarised light, 

 previously masked by the mixture of the two acids, becomes 

 evident. Here we have a fundamental experiment. It is told 

 how when the young Pasteur desired to show it to Biot, that 

 great physicist, who had discovered the phenomena of polar- 

 isation, the old savant grasped the trembling hand of the young 

 man, and, before beginning the optical examination of the 

 crystals submitted to him by Pasteur, said to him with tears in 

 his eyes, "■ Mon cher enfant, I have loved science so much, 

 that in face of the beautiful experiment which you relate to me 

 I cannot prevent myself from being deeply moved." 



The explanation given of this phenomenon at that time was 

 that the tartaric acid was decomposed by fermentation. Men 

 were then content to use this magic word, which appeared to 

 explain everything, but which in reality told nothing at all. 

 Neither Lavoisier, nor Liebig, nor Fremy had been able to dis- 

 cover its meaning, and were reduced to the theory of half- 

 organised matter — a childish conception worthy of Paracelsus. 



One of Pasteur's experiments, perhaps the most beautiful 

 which he ever made, demonstrated the nature of this mys- 

 terious phenomenon. If a sugary solution of carbonate of lime 



NO. 



1456, VOL. 56] 



