NATURE 



[June 4, 1891 



Fund, which has provided for the treatment in Paris of 

 many English sufterers from the bites of rabid dogs, 

 some of the members of the Committee of that Fund, 

 as well as of the Mansion House meeting at which it 

 was inaugurated, knowing the importance to the com- 

 munity of having a similar institute in Great Britain, 

 determined to make an effort to establish the same. 



A survey of the conditions under which bacteriology is 

 practised in Great Britain is sufficient to show at once 

 the pressing need of creating a centre of the kind, since, 

 although several medical schools and Universities have 

 provided for the teaching of bacteriology to a degree 

 suitable for diplomas in public health medicine, and 

 although in the laboratories of the College of Physicians 

 and Surgeons in Edinburgh, and of the conjoint London 

 Colleges, besides those of University College, King's 

 College, and the College of State Medicine, there is room 

 and provision for a certain amount of original work, still 

 it is quite notorious that the majority of original inves- 

 tigators are driven to go to Paris and Berlin, not only on 

 account of the splendid collection of material and free- 

 dom of experiment there, but also for lack of sufficient 

 accommodation in the laboratories of the United King- 

 dom. To remedy this state of things, and to pro- 

 vide an establishment which would greatly assist the 

 medical schools and technical education generally, 

 is therefore the object of the promoters of the 

 British Institute of Preventive Medicine. The deve- 

 lopment of the scheme has now arrived at a very inter- 

 esting point, which, as usual in this country, resolves 

 itself into a contest between the friends and enemies of 

 science. The object of the Institute being purely charit- 

 able and scientific, it was from the outset necessary to 

 give its constitution a firm basis, in order to obtain the 

 confidence of the public from whom naturally the cost of 

 creating the Institute is to come. It has therefore to 

 be incorporated, and such incorporation can practically 

 only be obtained by permission of the Board of Trade, 

 which grants leave for the registration of such institutes 

 as limited companies, the word limited being omitted, 

 thus insuring the appropriation of the funds for none 

 but purposes identical with the original object for which 

 they were intended. The Executive Committee of the 

 British Institute, therefore, made through their solici- 

 tors, Messrs. Hunter and Haynes, the formal appli- 

 cation for such registration to Sir Michael Hicks Beach, 

 the President of the Board of Trade. To their surprise 

 Sir Michael refused to register the Institute, and this 

 without assigning in his letter any reason for his refusal. 

 It is, however, understood that he has done so in con- 

 sequence of his having received petitions from a few 

 bodies of anti-vivisectionists, among whom are to be found 

 as usual certain names, mostly ecclesiastical, of gentle- 

 men whose intentions, however admirable, are dictated 

 by absolute ignorance of the questions which they pre- 

 sume to discuss. 



We understand (though it is incomprehensible how a 

 Minister should have allowed himself to be placed in such 

 a false position) that Sir Michael Hicks Beach alleges 

 privately that by registering the Institute, a portion of 

 the work of which will naturally include experiments on 

 animals, he will be encroaching on the duties of the 

 Home Office, to which department alone, ho vever. as a 

 NO. I 127. VOL. 44] 



matter of fact, is intrusted the administration of the 

 utterly incompetent and harassing so-called Vivisection 

 Act. Nothing can excuse the confusion of mind or ignor- 

 ance which is thus displayed by an official of the Govern- 

 ment, for, as is evident to the merest tyro in law, the 

 question of experimental science has nothing whatever to 

 do with the matter submitted to the Board of Trade, 

 That body has only to make sure that the funds of the 

 Institute cannot in the future be misappropriated to any 

 other object. That is all it is asked to do, and that solely 

 in the interests of the public. 



The official seal of the Board of Trade having thus 

 been given to stamp the Institute with the character 

 designed for it by its promoters — namely, that of a 

 charitable and not a commercial undertaking — it would 

 then, of course, be necessary for the Executive Committee 

 to apply to the Home Office for the registration of the 

 Institute as a place where experimental science may be 

 carried on. 



With this second registration the Board of Trade has 

 nothing whatever to do, and by taking upon himself the 

 duty of considering this part of its constitution, the 

 President has gone out of his way to raise difficulties in 

 the formation by private individuals of a National Institute, 

 which in other more intelligent and far-seeing countries 

 the Governments have hastened to take the initiative in 

 establishing and liberally supporting. 



It is evident that Sir Michael Hicks Beach has been 

 greatly misinformed on this matter, and we look forward 

 with interest to the result of the representations of a very 

 powerful deputation which we learn is to wait upon him 

 on Friday, June 5, at 11 a.m., and which, constituted as 

 it is of distinguished men in all branches of science, as 

 well as of those of the general public who are interested 

 in philanthropic sanitary measures, will point out to him 

 the real facts of the case on which he has to adjudicate, 

 and rescue the question from the erroneous position 

 which it now occupies, owing to his unfortunate readiness 

 to listen to the calumnious assertions of the haters of 

 science and progress. 



It is not difficult, we believe, to read between the lines 

 in such a case as this. No beings are more human than 

 Ministers and members of Parliament, or, in fact, all 

 those whose own position or that of their party depends 

 upon popular clamour. Such unfortunates listen like 

 Eve with a fatal fascination to the voice of the deceiver, 

 but, with a taste less worthy than hers, the fruit which 

 attracts them is not that of the tree of universal know- 

 ledge, but of the ballot-box. They have hitherto laboured 

 under the mistaken impression that an energetic and noisy 

 group of agitators, leading in their train a few unscientific 

 quasi-public men, were an important political body, and 

 they consequently sacrifice to their misrepresentations 

 the liberties of science and the good of commerce. The 

 day is coming, or is rather come, when the scientific and 

 cultured world will refuse to submit any longer to such a 

 condition of affairs, and when all its branches, physio- 

 logists, agriculturists, chemists, engineers, medical and 

 legal men, will unite in a compact body for the protection 

 of their common interests, and we rather welcome the 

 present difficulty, which has served to bring prominently 

 forward the spirit animating them, and which no adminis- 

 trator will do wisely in failing to recognize. 



