THE PAST EVOLUTION OF MAX 81 



unjustifiable — upon man. My writing of this 

 chapter, indeed, has bet-n interrupted by the arrival 

 of news from Paris which deals with a medical 

 discovery of the first importance. A terrible and 

 terribly prevalent disease, long thought to be 

 peculiar to man., has lately been shown, by the 

 workers at the Pasteur Institute, to be com- 

 municable to the anthropoid aj)e. A German 

 bacteriologist discovered a microbe which he 

 thought likely to be the causative agent of the 

 disease. Having no anthropoid apes l at his dis- 

 posal HeiT Schaudinn was unable to proceed any 

 further with his work ; but he sent some of his 

 preparations to the Pasteur Institute, where Messrs. 

 Metchnikoff and Pioux have been enabled, 

 periment on these animals, to confirm his results. 

 It may also be noted that these workers have 1 

 enabled to obtain, from the anthropoid ape, a serum 

 which arrests the course of the disease in man. 

 This is, perhaps, the first instance in which man's 

 relationship to the anthropoid ape has actually been 

 turned to the direct account of the higher animal. 

 In the case of the practising surgeon, the anthro- 

 poid ape is not absolutely indispensable ; but, in 

 this instance, it is, for no lower animal is susceptible 

 to this disease, and therefore from none other can 

 a protective serum be prepared. 5 



In discussing the evolution of man it is impossible 



1 So valuable have these creatures become that the compara- 

 y affluent - ::c centres are apt to leave none available for 



ir poorer rivals. 

 - This paragraph, written in May, will not appear in print unless 

 researches are confirmed in the interval. 



F 



