330 
tion as to the precise nature of the disease with which he has 
to deal. Then, as regards the bacteriological department— 
there, again, diagnosis will be greatly facilitated. You are most 
of you aware that the diagnosis of diphtheria can now be made 
by bacteriological examination. It is of the utmost importance 
in the treatment of a case of diphtheria that its nature 
should be distinctly defined; that it should be known with 
certainty whether it is true diphtheria or a disease which 
closely simulates it, and may deceive the most experienced 
practitioner, and yet have none of the deadly character- 
istics of true diphtheria. Now for the future any 
medical man in the North of Ireland will only have to send, 
in a suitable tube, which will be provided by the institu- 
tion, a little of the false membrane in the case with which he 
is dealing, and in a very short time he will have sent to him 
a bacteriologically made diagnosis of whether it is a case of true 
diphtheria or not. Again, with reference to what is more 
immediately connected with the objects of this College, such an 
institute will be of very great help in the training of students in 
their education for the medical profession. In it the student 
will have the opportunity of practically studying the various 
forms of morbid growths and the diseases which are of the nature 
‘of microbes. These are days when the subjects of medical 
‘examination are becoming more and more complex, and the 
student is too much tempted to get up his knowledge in a super- 
ficial way, cramming to satisfy the examiner, rather than to 
obtain thorough-going practical information. That is more 
especially the case when the student is not examined by his own 
teachers, under whom he might work with some confidence that 
his labour would not be thrown away with reference to that 
really subordinate, but in his eyes vastly important, matter of 
the passing of his examination. May I venture to interpose a 
remark on that point, and to express the hope that the time is 
not very far distant when the great northern metropolis of 
Ireland will have its own university, a true teaching and 
graduating university on the same lines as most of the German 
universities and the Scoteh? But passing from that, inde- 
pendently altogether of the difficulty a student may have in 
preparing for examination by strangers, the great complexity 
of the subjects of medical education makes it extremely 
important that there should be afforded ample opportunities of 
practical study. The bacteriological department will be of 
peculiar value in the education of the student. It will in the 
first place convince him of the reality of the microscopic foes 
with which we have at the present day so largely to deal—the 
microbes, which are the cause of so large a proportion of human 
disease. He will not only read that such things are, and when he 
gets into practice perhaps forget that they exist, but he will know 
them as acquaintances. He will see the evidence not only of their 
existence, but also of their effects. The bacteriological training 
will besides be of special advantage in teaching the student 
accurate observation and also dexterity of manipulation—both 
most important matters in a medical man’s practice. If a student 
is told to prepare a culture of a particular microbe in a state of 
purity, in order to do that he must be very sharp indeed in his 
observations, and very clever, too, in his manipulations ; and if 
he fails, the fact will very soon declare itself. There will be an 
impure culture, and instead of having only the one microbe he 
wished to cultivate, with its well-known special characteristics, 
it will be seen that he has allowed others to get in at the same 
time. His own imperfections will thus declare themselves ; 
‘but he will persevere, and go on and on until he becomes per- 
fectly competent to produce a pure culture. This will be of 
great importance in his education. There is another aspect of 
‘a pathological institute which I feel some delicacy in alluding 
ito, Ihecause there are some people who take strange views 
with regard to these matters—exaggerated views. There 
are people who do not object to eating a mutton-chop— 
people who do not even object to shooting a pheasant with 
the considerable chance that it may be only wounded and may 
have to die after lingering in pain, unable to obtain its proper 
nutriment—and yet who consider it something monstrous to in- 
troduce under the skin of a guinea-pig a little inoculation of some 
microbe to ascertain its action. Those seem to me to be most 
inconsistent views. With regard to all matters in which we are 
concerned in this world, everything depends upon the motive. 
A murderer may cut a man’s throat to kill him ; any one of you 
medical students may have to cut a man’s throat to save his 
life. The father who chastises his son for the sake of the good 
of his morals is a most humane man: a father who should beat 
NO. 1423, VOL. 55] 
BRATORE 
[Fepruary 4, 1897 
his son for the mere sake of inflicting pain upon him would be 
an inhuman monster. And so it is with the necessary experi- 
ments upon lower animals. If they were made, as some people 
seem to assume, for the mere sport of the thing, they would 
be indeed to be deprecated and decried; but if they are made 
with the.wholly noble object of not only increasing human 
knowledge, but also diminishing human suffering, then I hold 
that such investigations are deserving of all praise. Those little 
know who lightly speak on these matters how much self-denial 
is required in the prosecution of such researches when they are 
conducted, as indeed they always are, so far as I am aware, 
with the object of establishing new truth. The exercise of a 
little charity might lead those who speak of us as inhuman to 
reflect that possibly we may be as humane as themselves. The 
profession to which I have the great honour to belong is, I firmly 
believe, on the average, the most humane of all professions. 
The medical student may be sometimes a rough diamond; but 
when he comes to have personal charge of patients, and to have 
the life and health of a fellow-creature depending upon his indi- 
vidual care, he becomes a changed man, and from that day forth 
his life becomes a constant exercise of beneficence. With that 
beneficence there is associated benevolence: and. in that prac- 
tical way, our profession becomes the most benevolent of all. If 
our detractors knew this, common sense would enable them to 
see that our profession would not be unanimously in favour of 
these researches if they were the iniquitous things which they 
are sometirnes represented to be. I was reading the other day 
a very interesting account of Pasteur’s work on rabies, written 
by one who was associated with him from an early period (M. 
Duclaux). It had been established that the introduction of 
a portion of the brain of a mad dog under the skin of a healthy 
animal was liable to cause rabies, and Pasteur had reason to 
believe that it was principally in the nervous centres that 
the poison accumulated. He felt a very strong desire to 
introduce some of the poison into the brain of an animal ; 
but he was a peculiarly humane man. He _ never could 
shoot an animal for sport. He was more humane than the 
great majority of human beings; and for a long time he could 
not bring himself to make the experiment of trephining an 
animal’s skull, and introducing some of the poison of rabies 
into the brain. He was exceedingly desirous of doing it to estab- 
lish the pathology of the disease, but he shrank from it. On 
one occasion, when he was absent from home, one of his 
assistants did the experiment, and when Pasteur came back he 
told him that he had done so. ‘‘Oh!” said Pasteur, ‘‘ the 
poor creature! His brain has been touched. I am afraid he 
will be affected with paralysis.” The assistant went into a 
neighbouring room and brought in the animal, which was 
a dog. It came in frisking about and investigating everything 
in a perfectly natural manner; and Pasteur was exceedingly 
pleased, and though he did not like dogs, yet he lavished his. 
affection upon that particular animal and petted it ; and from that 
time forth he felt his scruples need no longer exist. The truth 
is that the pain inflicted by this process of trephining is exceed- 
ingly slight, and yet the operation is sometimes described as 
being a hideously painful one. That is a mistake. In point 
of fact the operation is always done now under anesthetics, so 
that the animal does not feel it at all ; but even without that the 
operation is not seriously painful. I look forward to the time 
when there will be an institute in connection with this 
College, where investigations of the kind to which I 
have referred can be carried on, and where pathological 
knowledge of the first importance may be promoted, 
Think also of the practical advantages of an institution where 
the materials can be provided for the treatment of diseases on 
the principles which have been recently established. It appears 
to be now placed beyond doubt that that dreadful disease 
diphtheria may by the antitoxic treatment be reduced in mor- 
tality from about 30 per cent. to about 5 per cent. if the proper 
material is promptly used. It is exceedingly important that in 
a city like Belfast the supply of such material should be within 
easy reach of the practitioner—that he should not be compelled 
to send to London for the requisite serum, and thus lose much’ 
valuable time. Every hour that is lost in the treatment of a 
case of this nature is a very serious loss indeed. But it is by 
no means only in diphtheria that such an institute is likely to 
confer benefits of this kind, In the case of the streptococcus, 
which is the cause of erysipelas and kindred disorders, including 
that very terrible disease, puerperal fever, there are very 
promising indications that the use of antitoxic serum will 
