Present and Prospective 2 1 1 



virulent fury. One may suppose, perhaps, that 

 the specific virus, however generated, affects in- 

 juriously the stability of the nerve-molecule, an 

 effect nowise apparent while the person is strong 

 and well, but manifestly destructive when vitality 

 of nerve-element is weakened by abuse of func- 

 tion or other cause. For it is with elements of 

 tissue as with individuals : to be weak is to be 

 miserable.* 



In the discoveries of microbic toxins and their 

 antitoxins, and of the immunising virtues of anti- 

 toxin serums, there is a discernible promise of 

 scientific therapeutics, when chemical agents will 

 be used, not empirically, but with scientific pre- 

 cision for a definite end. An optimistic outlook 

 all the more legitimate, seeing how the chemist in 

 his laboratory, by substitution of atoms in mole- 

 cules, now creates new substances, which, so far 

 as we know, never existed before in Nature, and 

 some of which have proved to be of good medical 

 service. Thus creating, our hope is that he will 

 on the whole turn out to be a benevolent creator 

 by inventing more beneficent than maleficent 

 compounds for human use ; range himself, in fact, 

 on the side of the good genius of the universe, 

 which, it must be admitted, still much needs help. 



* A surmise now is that the specific organism — the so-called 

 Spirochata pallida — is allied to the trypanosomes and is a 

 protozoon, not a bacterium, and that there may be varieties of 

 this protozoon. 



