PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 545 
Let us then learn to have a catholic spirit about research, and try to convince 
the world that it commands devotion not merely because of material advantages 
which it may bring, but because it is the most lovely and most holy thing that 
has been given to man. So may we clear the fair name of Science of the false 
charge of materialism that is so often brought against it by those who do not 
know and judge Science purely by mechanical inventions. 
Next let us consider the applications of scientific discovery and see if we 
cherish aright the gifts of the fairy godmother, for her gifts are dangerous if 
wrongly used. Consider, if this be doubted, the enormous advantages given 
by mechanical and chemical contrivances in producing the material comforts 
necessary to civilised human existence, and then turn your eyes to the reeking 
slums of our great cities. It is clear that natural science cannot go on success- 
fully alone, it must take sociology with it if our world is to be a better world 
to live in because of the gifts brought by scientific discovery. 
Nor is the ideal and the outlook different in the least from that given above 
for pure research, when we come to consider its applications, the same high 
spirit must prevail in all our endeavours, or we shall defeat our own ends and 
miserably fail. Selfishness here, as everywhere, must recoil on the culprit, who 
only deadens his own soul. Health is needed not to grow wealthy or to prolong 
to greater length a ‘lingering death’ as Plato puts it, but to fill life with 
happiness, and beckon the bold and adventurous forward to higher things. 
Here we must copy Nature’s own plan and take care of the race as a whole 
instead of spending our energies upon single individuals or favoured classes. 
Nor need anyone fear that any individual or any particular class in the com- 
munity is going to suffer from the adoption of the true scientific attitude towards 
disease. The penalty taken by Nature on the more comfortable classes, who have 
hitherto enjoyed the greater share in government for allowing the existence of 
poverty, disease, and slumdom, is to utilise this neglected area as a culture- 
ground for diseases, which invade the classes above. Nature is still at work 
creating, still conducting evolution at the highest level, and disease is at 
present the tool with which she is working. So long as those poverty-stricken 
slums are allowed to remain, just so long is she grimly prepared to take her 
toll of death and suffering from those who ought to know how to lead on and do 
it not. The disease and the crime below are to the social community what 
pain is to the individual, and just as the special senses become more highly 
organised and sensitive as the nervous system becomes more highly developed, 
so as the civilisation of the community intensifies does the public conscience 
awaken to forms of mischief and crime in one generation that were unsuspected 
in a previous one. So social evils become intolerable and finally are removed. 
How then are we employing our knowledge as to the causation of disease to the 
public problem of its removal or abatement? 
In regard to the physical environment much has been done during the past 
generation towards applying the laws of hygiene, as is shown in the sanitation 
of our great cities, and especially in regard to the question of water-supply. It 
is good, for example, that Glasgow goes to Loch Katrine for her water-supply, 
Manchester to the English Lakes, and Liverpool to the Welsh hills. Each of 
these great cities carries for many miles the pure distillate of the hills to its 
million of inhabitants. It has cost much in pounds sterling, though not more 
than if each family had a pump in its back-yard. On the other hand, think 
of the disease and suffering and death prevented, enteric fever almost gone 
where thousands would have died of it, and tens of thousands been debilitated, 
and these of the best of the citizens, for disease is no eliminator of the unfit. 
Think of all this, and then say, Did it not pay these great cities to bring the pure 
water from the lakes in the hills? 
But why do these good cities content themselves to allow their little children 
ab a most susceptible age to be supplied still with milk which contains the 
bacillus of tuberculosis in so large a percentage as five to ten per cent.? And 
why does the law of the land prevent these Corporations from searching out 
tubercular cows in all the areas supplying them with milk? If it is part of 
the business of a municipality to see that its citizens have a pure water-supply, 
why should it not also be allowed to see that they have a clean milk-supply ? 
Loug ago the power to make the lame to walk was regarded as a divine cift, 
1914. NN 
