2Q2 BACTERIOLOGY. 



even captious, we can always understand why 

 many younger physicians adhere to his mode 

 of expression, although it lies more than a 

 generation behind us, and pay too little heed 

 to that development of pathology which has 

 taken place outside of Virchow's sphere of 

 ideas or in opposition to them. 



Proceeding in this w^ay, Behring has lately 

 assumed that we can arrive at a uniform causal 

 method of treating and curing disease only 

 by holding fast to Koch's view of the " speci- 

 ficity " of the disease germ, a view already 

 exploded. Such a view of course relegates 

 Virchow's cellular pathology to the back- 

 ground. I hope to have shown that the con- 

 sistent development of the doctrine of causa- 

 tion upon the firm basis of cellular pathology 

 leads to the same conception as that held by 

 Behring, namely, that a disease can be treated 

 in a uniform way with one substance. By 

 this method of treatment we interfere only with 

 one part of the process and trust to nature 

 herself to obstruct the further action of the 

 disease stimulus. 



My conception is less one-sided than that of 

 Behring in so far as that I should not like to 

 forget that a successful treatment can in no 

 wise take into account merely the " specificity " 

 of the disease germ but must consider above 



