RELATION OF THE UNIVERSITY TO MEDICINE 



(Extracts from address at the dedication of the 

 Lane Medical Library) 



THE danger of the red plague present everywhere is infinitely 

 'greater than war with any part of Europe or Asia. The terrible 

 infliction of the unknown parasite which shows itself as infantile 

 paralysis awaits the strong arm of the people to set it aside 

 entirely. No disease would long exist if we made adequate 

 quarantine provision. Its germs, animal or plant, must be 

 carried from man to man or from animal to man, else the race 

 of parasites would die out. Now that we know what our enemies 

 are it is possible for us to fight them, as I said in a review of 

 Tyndall's work . . . thirty-five years ago. Now that we 

 know what our enemies are, and now that we know that they 

 can be fought successfully only by national and international 

 cooperation, it is our duty thus to fight them. It shows a lack 

 of national manliness to continue to bear these ills when a little 

 energy with the knowledge we have is adequate to throw them 

 all off. . . . 



(When in 1875 I took my degree in medicine) the world of 

 science and therefore the province of medicine knew nothing 

 of invisible one-celled animals and plants, bacteria, and pro- 

 tozoa, which flourish and run their courses in the life blood of 

 living animals. 



The source of infection in disease was then called a "virus," 

 and the growth of a virus was an extension of death. Carlyle 

 had said that a fallen leaf must still have life in it, else how could 

 it rot? But neither the poet nor the prophet realized that this 

 life which tore the fallen leaf to pieces was the life of a multi- 

 farious group of one-celled vegetation whose function it is to 

 return all organic matter not still active back to the universe 

 in its constituent elements. In those days malaria was an evil 

 spirit or miasma, the product of bad air or maybe of bad water. 

 All plagues were of the same sort. No one suspected the mos- 

 quito, the fly or the flea, the louse, the bedbug, or the wood tick 

 of harboring any vices worse than those which their bite or 

 their presence suggests. There was no science of infectious 



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