president's address. |7 



in North Africa, in the Philippines and East India are all traced to 

 peculiar species of Trypan osouie. Other allied forms are responsible for 

 Delhi-sore, and certain peculiar Indian fevers of man. A peculiar and 

 idtra-minute parasite of the blood cells causes Texas fever, and various 

 African fevers deadly to cattle. In all these cases, as also in that of 

 plague, the knowledge of the carrier of the disease, often a tick or acarid 

 — in that of plague the ilea of the rat — is extremely important, as well as 

 the knowledge of reservoir-hosts when such exist. 



The zoologist thus comes into closer touch than ever v/ith the pro- 

 fession of medicine, and the time has arrived when the professional 

 students of disease fully admit that they must bring to their great and 

 hopeful task of abolishing the diseases of man the fullest aid from every 

 branch of biological science. I need not say how great is the content- 

 ment of those who have long worked at apparently useless branches of 

 science, in the belief that all knowledge is good, to lind that the science 

 they have cultivated has become suddenly and urgently of the highest 

 practical ^■alue. 



I have not time to do more than mention here the effort that is beinjr 

 made by combined international research and co-operation to push further 

 in our knowledge of phthisis and of cancer, with a view to their destruc- 

 tion. It is only since our last meeting at York that the parasite of 

 Phthisis or Tubercle has been made known ; we may hope that it will not 

 be long before we have similar knowledge as to Cancer. Only eighteen 

 months have elapsed since Fritz Schaudinn discovered the long-sought 

 parasitic germ of Syphilis, the Spirocheta pallida. As I write these 

 words the sad news of Schaudinn's death at the age of thirty-five comes 

 to me from his family at Hamburg — an irreparable loss. 



Let me finally state, in relation to this study of disease, what is the 

 simple fact — namely, that if the people of Britain wish to make an end of 

 infective and other diseases they must take every possible means to dis- 

 cover capable investigators, and employ them for this purpose. To do 

 this, far more money is required than is at present spent in that direction. 

 It is necessary, if we are to do our utmost, to spend a thousand pounds of 

 public money on this task where we now spend one pound. It would be 

 reasonable and wise to expend ten million pounds a year of our revenues 

 on the investigation and attempt to destroy disease. Actually, what is 

 so spent is a mere nothing, a few thousands a year. Meanwhile our 

 people are dying by thousands of preventable disease. 



II. The Advancement of Science as Measured by the Support given 

 TO it by Public Funds, and the Respect accorded to Scientific 

 "Work by tbe British Government and the Community at Large. 



Whilst I have been able, though in a very fragmentary and incomplete 

 way, to indicate the satisfactory and, indeed, the wonderful progress of 

 science since this Association last met in York, so far as the making of 



