SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 249 



establishment of this germ-theory, now the germ-fact of 

 disease, investigations in this direction have received in- 

 creasing support; until hi recent years we have seen the 

 establishment of several institutions for general medical in- 

 vestigation, such as the Rockefeller Institute in New York 

 City and the State Cancer Laboratory in Buffalo. So im- 

 mediate have been the results, we may well believe that 

 laboratories of this character are destined in the near future 

 to be generously supported by public and private funds. 

 The fact of most importance, however, is that these recent 

 triumphs in an applied science had their beginnings in the 

 days of Leeuwenhoek. He was the first of a host of investiga- 

 tors in this field, who did not consider the immediate utilita- 

 rian values of what they sought. These men persevered in 

 the belief that all facts of nature are worth while and lived 

 and died in the faith that somehow, sometime, the facts 

 they established would find a place in man's scheme of the 

 universe. 



"Then the wood failed then the food failed 



then the last water dried 

 In the faith of little children 

 we lay down and died." 



Did our space allow, we could follow this history in more 

 detail; we could show that the more important of the earlier 

 workers were students in pure science, attempting to make 

 what were termed in the earlier days " Contributions to 

 Knowledge"; that the long fight over the question of sponta- 

 neous generation was for centuries only an abstract and 

 academic matter, of no seeming value in everyday affairs; 

 that the burden of this pioneer work was borne by men who 

 were given scant public assistance and little recognition, who 

 followed no path of least resistance. 



tained in Oliver Wendell Holmes' essay upon "Puerperal Fever," written in 

 1843. This is a medical classic and has the advantage of being found in almost 

 every library. 



