984 REPORT—1896. 
In accounting for the first origin of life on this earth, the nitrogen theory does 
not require that the planet should have been at a former period, as Pfliiger 
suggests, ‘a glowing fire-ball.” The author prefers to believe that the circum- 
stances which support life would also favour its origin. 
The theory may, however, be extended to the whole universe. For, even if 
there be no other world where nitrogen is the critical element, yet other elements 
may be in the critical state on the moon, or Mars, or the sun, or even in unknown 
and unimagined regions of the universe. 
3. The Réle of Osmosis in Physiological Processes. 
By Dr. Lazarus Bartow. 
4. The Organisation of Bacteriological Research in Connection with Public 
Health. By Sims Woopnean, M.D., Director of the Conjoint Labora- 
tories of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians, London. 
Dr. Woodhead pointed out that it was not an easy matter to define accurately 
where pure science ends and applied science begins, but he maintained that Pasteur, 
Lister, and Koch had all proved to demonstration that the most notable advances 
in our knowledge of the causes, prevention, and treatment of disease are extremely 
closely bound up with the increase in our knowledge of bacteriology, and he 
maintained that the practical needs in connection with the treatment and pre- 
vention of disease had been the prime moving forces in determining the lines on 
which great scientific advances had been made in the subject of bacteriology. 
Anyone who had followed the work of Pasteur, Koch, and such investigators 
would be struck by the fact that in every instance the work carried on and the 
results obtained were the outcome of a desire to find a means of removing some 
specific evil which was either commercially or through the public health crippling 
some section of the community. In the same way the development of the great 
principle of the antiseptic treatment of surgical wounds was the direct outcome 
of a desire on the part of Sir Joseph Lister to remedy those evils which had for 
so long a period crippled surgery, especially in our large hospitals. Turning to 
the value of bacteriological research in public health questions, he spoke of the 
work that had been done abroad in connection with the treatment of diphtheria, 
tetanus, rabies, snake-bite, and numerous other diseases, and pointed out what 
admirable work was being done in Government and municipally-supported foreign 
laboratories. In this country we have numerous laboratories in all our large 
Universities and University Colleges, but all are crippled by want of funds. 
Speaking of the work that had been done in this country, he mentioned the 
pathological laboratories of University College, Liverpool, Owens College, Man- 
chester, the British Institute of Preventive Medicine and the Laboratories of the 
‘Conjoint Board of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, London, where large 
numbers of investigations had been going on, and at the same time numerous 
questions concerning the public health, often raised by medical officers of health, 
had been worked out. In the University Colleges investigations on cholera, on 
‘typhoid, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and similar subjects had been carried on; in the 
British Institute of Preventive Medicine similar work had been done, and various 
antitoxic serums had been prepared and distributed to medical men, and several 
most important questions connected with the bacteriology of water and sewage 
had been investigated with most satisfactory results. In the laboratories of the 
‘Conjoint Board, with the work of which he was of course more specially ac- 
quainted, they had examined for the Metropolitan Asylums Board during last 
year 11,500 specimens from the throats of patients suspected to be suffering from 
diphtheria, while they had already examined nearly 11,000 specimens during the 
current year. They had prepared antitoxine for the treatment of these patients with 
such satisfactory results that he was now in a position to state that, since the figures 
given by their President in his opening address were published, in one hospital 
