296 
NATURE 
[NoveMBER 6, 1913 
syphilis, general paralysis of the insane, epidemic 
infantile paralysis, and rabies. None who heard 
Prof. Noguchi and saw the great crowd of physi- 
cians and surgeons listening to him could fail to 
recognise the profound significance of this 
occasion. 
No man of science works alone or in isolation : 
and a vast amount of cooperative work is being 
done in diverse parts of the world on what may 
be called the “‘ higher types” of germs. Let us 
note the development of the work. Let us go 
back half a century, to the earliest methods of 
Pasteur. We may take 1855 as an approximate 
date for the beginning of the founding of “the 
germ-theory.” For many years the only method 
which Pasteur had for the growth of germs in 
pure culture was the use of fluid media, such as 
broth; and, under the conditions of bacteriology 
fifty years ago, the use of these fluid media was full 
of difficulties. He had to wait until 1872 for the 
discovery that germs could be grown on solid 
media, such as gelatine or slices of potato. He 
had to wait until 1875 for the discovery that 
germs could be stained with aniline dyes so as to 
distinguish them, under the microscope, from their 
surroundings. 
Pasteur lived until 1895—that is, ten years after 
the first use of his protective treatment against 
rabies, and two years after the first use in practice 
of diphtheria antitoxin—but he did not live to see 
more than the beginning of the study of the higher 
types of germs. At the time when he died, many 
of the lower types—the bacilli and the micrococci 
—had heen discovered, isolated, grown in pure 
culture on solid media, and proven, by the inocu- | 
lation of test animals, to be the very cause of 
this or that infective disease. But the higher 
types, such as the plasmodium of malaria, were 
still waiting to be worked out. Then, after 
Pasteur’s death, came Ross’s fine work on 
malaria; and then came two discoveries of no less 
importance—the discovery (Schaudinn, Hoffmann) 
of Spirochaeta pallida in cases of syphilis, and the 
discovery (Forde, Dutton) of Trypanosoma gam- 
biense in a case of sleeping sickness. These two 
discoveries brought syphilis and sleeping sickness, 
at last, within the range of practical bacteriology. 
Long ago, Moxon had said of syphilis that it was 
“a fever cooled and slowed by time”; but the 
cause of that fever was unknown until the Spiro- 
chaeta pailida was discovered. 
But to prove that it does not merely accompany, 
but actually causes the disease, it had to be grown 
in pure culture, and inoculated into test animals, 
producing in them some characteristic sign. 
Syphilis must be studied as diphtheria, tetanus, 
typhoid fever, and tubercle had been studied. That 
is the meaning of all the work done by Ehrlich and 
his school upon salvarsan—that, in particles of 
tissue from a rabbit in which the disease has been 
produced, the Spirochaeta pallida is present, 
under the microscope, before a dose of salvarsan, 
and is absent after it. 
The work has been of immeasurable complexity, 
NO. 2297, VOL. 92] 
and there is much still to be done. 
or that condition of bodily life, besides Spirochaeta — 
pallida ; indeed, Prof. Noguchi demonstrated seven © 
species. But he has cleared the way in this field of — 
He has distinguished those which — 
bacteriology. 
need some air for their growth from those which 
cannot grow in air; he has discovered the method — 
of adding a fragment of sterilised animal sub- 
stance to each tube of pure culture: and these 
methods are of great value. 
But that is not all. 
chaeta pallida in the brain, in general paralysis 
of the insane. He has found it in twelve out of 
seventy specimens. There is no need to underline 
the importance of that statement. 
Also, Prof. Noguchi has obtained in pure culture 
the germs of anterior polio-myelitis (epidemic 
infantile paralysis). Of all the many diseases of 
childhood in which the art of medicine, apart from 
its science, is of no great use, few are more unkind 
than infantile paralysis. It is the Rockefeller 
Institute that we must thank here. First came 
Flexner’s magnificent work on epidemic cerebro- 
spinal meningitis, and his discovery (1908) of the 
special antitoxin for that disease; then came the 
study of epidemic infantile paralysis. To have in 
one’s hands, in a test-tube, infantile paralysis, is a 
grand experience for a man who has attended a 
children’s Hospital, year in year out, long before 
the Rockefeller Institute was born or thought of. 
It is enough to make him believe that the doctors 
some years hence may be able to stop the disease 
before it can inflict irremediable injury on the 
nerve cells of the spinal cord. 
Finally, Prof. Noguchi spoke of rabies (hydro- 
phobia). He has been able to obtain, in pure 
culture, the microscopic bodies which Negri dis- 
covered in the brain in that disease. He demon- 
strated to the Royal Society of Medicine, on the 
lantern-screen, photographs showing the cycle— 
not unlike that of the plasmodium malariae— 
through which these bodies pass until, like minia- 
ture shrapnell, they break, setting free their con- 
stituent granules; and each granule becomes a 
“Negri body,” and starts the cycle again. 
Happily, the protective treatment against rabies 
did not have to wait for the discovery of these 
Negri bodies. Pasteur worked at rabies, as Reed 
and Lazear worked at yellow fever, knowing 
that the virus was there, and able to control, fight, 
and beat it, without seeing it under the micro- 
scope. = 
The Royal Society of Medicine deserves the 
thanks of the public for inviting Prof. Noguchi to 
give this demonstration in London. He is indeed, 
in width and originality of work, equal to his 
fellow-countryman, Prof. Kitasato. He has helped 
to make it possible for men of science to extend 
to other diseases those methods of study which 
brought about the discovery of diphtheria anti- 
toxin, and the protective treatments against 
cholera, typhoid fever, and plague. 
STEPHEN PAGET. 
There are — 
many species of spirochzetes#discoverable in this — 
For he has detected Spirvo-— 
‘ 
