514 REPORT—1883. 
mediate result of investigations which he was commissioned to carry on at the 
public expense, in the specially erected Laboratory of Public Health, by the 
German Imperial Government. The diseases known as erysipelas and glanders or 
farey have similarly, within the past few months in German State-supported 
laboratories, been shown to be due to the attacks of special kinds of Bacteria, At 
present this knowledge has not led to a successful method of combating those 
diseases, but we can hardly doubt that it will ultimately do so. We are warranted 
in this belief by the fact that the disease known as ‘splenic fever’ in cattle and 
‘ malignant pustule’ or anthrax in man has likewise been shown to be due to the 
action of a special kind of Bacterium, and that this knowledge has, in the hands of 
MM. Toussaint and Pasteur, led to a treatment in relation to this disease similar 
to that of vaccination in relation to small-pox. By cultivation a modified growth 
of the anthrax parasite is obtained, which is then used in order to inoculate cattle 
and sheep with a mild form of the disease, such inoculation having the result of 
rendering the cattle and sheep free from the attacks of the severe form of disease, 
just as vaccination or inoculation with cow-pox protects man from the attack of 
the deadly small-pox. One other case I may call to mind in which knowledge of the 
presence of Bacteria as the cause of disease has led to successful curative treatment. 
A not uncommon affliction is inflammation of the bladder accompanied by ammoniacal 
decomposition of the urine. Microscopical investigation has shown that this ammo- 
niacal decomposition is entirely due to the activity of a Bacterium. Fortunately 
this Bacterium is at once killed by weak solutions of quinine, which can be injected 
into the bladder without causing any injury or irritation. This example appears 
to have great importance, because it is the fact that many kinds of Bacteria are 
not killed by solutions of quinine, but require other and much more irritant 
poisons to destroy their life, which could not be injected into the bladder without 
causing disastrous effects. Since some Bacteria are killed by one poison dnd some 
by another, it becomes a matter of the keenest interest to find out all such poisons ; 
and possibly among them may be some which can be applied so as to kill the 
Bacteria which produce phthisis, erysipelas, glanders, anthrax, and other scourges 
of humanity, whilst not acting injuriously upon the body of the victim in which 
these infinitesimal parasites are doing their deadly work. In such ways as this 
biology has turned the toy ‘magnifying-glass’ of the last century into a saver of 
life and health. 
No. less has the same agency revolutionised the thoughts of men in every 
branch of philosophy and speculation. The knowledge of the growth of the 
chick from the egg and of other organisms from similarly constituted beginnings 
has been slowly and continuously gained by prodigious labour, extending over 
generation after generation of students who have occupied the laboratories and 
lived on the stipends provided by the Governments of Huropean States—not English, 
but chiefly German. It is this history of the development of the individual animal 
and plant from a simple homogeneous beginning to a complex heterogeneous adult 
which has furnished the starting-point for the wide-reaching Doctrine of Evolution. 
It is this knowledge, coupled with the knowledge of the myriad details of structure 
of all kinds of animals and plants which the faithful occupants of laboratories and 
the guardians of biological collections have in the past hundred years laboriously 
searched out and recorded—it is this which enabled Darwin to propound, to test, 
and to firmly establish his theory of the origin of species by natural selection, and 
finally to bring the origin, development, and progress of man also into the area 
of physical science. I have said enough, in referring only to two very diverse 
examples of the far-reaching consequences flowing from the discoveries of single- 
minded investigators in biological science, to remind my hearers that in the domain 
of biology, as in other sciences, the results attained by those who have laboured 
simply to extend our knowledge of the structure and properties of living things, in 
the faith that every increase of knowledge will ultimately bring its blessing to 
humanity, have in fact led with astonishing rapidity to conclusions affecting most 
profoundly both the bodily and the mental welfare of the community. 
We who Imow the beneficent results which must flow more and more from the 
labours of those who are able to create new knowledge of living things, or, in other 
on 
