FERMENTATION 301 



the progress is marked by the loss of all power of moving 

 the trunk or extremities, diminution of temperature, mu- 

 cous and sanguinolent alvine evacuations, and similar dis- 

 charges from the mouth and nose." In a single district 

 of Russia, as above remarked, fifty- six thousand horses, 

 cows, and sheep, and five hundred and twenty- eight men 

 and women, perished in this way during a period of two 

 or three years. What the annual fatality is throughout 

 Europe I have no means of knowing. Doubtless it must 

 be very great. The question, then, which I wish to sub- 

 mit to your judgment is this: Is the knowledge which re- 

 veals to us the nature, and which assures the extirpation, 

 of a disorder so virulent and so vile, worth the price paid 

 for it ? It is exceedingly important that assemblies like 

 the present should see clearly the issues at stake in such 

 questions as this, and that the properly informed sense of 

 the community should temper, if not restrain, the rashness 

 of those who, meaning to be tender, become agents of 

 cruelty by the imposition of short-sighted restrictions upon 

 physiological investigations. It is a modern instance of 

 zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, the ex- 

 cesses of which must be corrected by an instructed public 

 opinion. 



And now let us cast a backward glance on the field we 

 have traversed, and try to extract from our labors such 

 further profit as they can yield. For more than two thou- 

 sand years the attraction of light bodies by amber was the 

 sum of human knowledge regarding electricity, and for 

 more than two thousand years fermentation was effected 

 without any knowledge of its cause. In science one dis- 

 covery grows out of another, and cannot appear without 



