96 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



6. The old belief, that consumption was 

 innate and inevitable, has given way to the 

 more hopeful assurance that the actual germs 

 of the disease are not transmitted. 

 In all these ways, Koch's discovery told, and is 

 telling, on the course of the world. Those of us 

 who are old can remember the time when consump- 

 tion was regarded as a sort of congenital affliction, 

 wellnigh hopeless, non-infective, non-communicable 

 from animals to man, non-discoverable (save in a 

 very advanced stage) by any microscope-test. It 

 was fought, by doctors and nurses, in hospital and 

 in private practice, to the best of their power : but 

 there was no talk of the whole nation fighting it. 

 And we may fairly say of Koch, that he, when he 

 proved that the disease is due " not to a nameless 

 something, but to a definite inmate of the body," 

 set every civilised country thinking what could be 

 done, by national united effort, to " shut off the 

 sources whence the infective material comes." 



