AND PREVENTION OF PHTHISIS. 423 



circumstances, is the duty of the English public and 

 the English Government ? " Will the former suffer 

 themselves to be deluded, and the latter frightened, by 

 a number of loud-tongued sentimentalists, who, in view 

 of the researct they oppose, and the fatal effects of 

 their opposit' *, might be fairly described as a crew 

 of well-meaning homicides. The only way of com- 

 bating this terrible scourge of tuberculosis and, indeed, 

 of abolishing all other infectious diseases, is experi- 

 mental investigation; and the most effectual mode of 

 furthering such investigation, just now in England, is 

 the establishment of that " Institute of Preventive Medi- 

 cine " which, I am rejoiced to learn, has, after due con- 

 sideration, been licensed by the President of the Board 

 of Trade. Whatever my illustrious friend, the late 

 Mr. Carlyle, may have said to the contrary, the English 

 public, in its relation to the question now before us, 

 are not " mostly fools " ; and if scientific men only ex- 

 hibit the courage and industry of their opponents, they 

 will make clear to that public the beneficence of their 

 aims, and the fatal delusions to which a narrow and 

 perverted view of a great question has committed the 

 anti-vivisectionist. 



The letter to the " Times " of April 22nd, 1882, de- 

 scribing Koch's epoch-making discovery of the tubercle 

 bacillus, is here introduced: 



To the Editor of the " Times." 



SIR, On the 24th of March, 1882, an address of 

 very serious public import was delivered by Dr. Koch 

 before the Physiological Society of Berlin. It touches 

 a question in which we are all at present interested 

 that of experimental physiology and I may, therefore, 



