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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1336 



proved again that science consists — as Plato 

 said five centuries before Ckrist — in measure- 

 ment. So in the St. Andrews research, not 

 only have the initial warpings to be discovered, 

 in their many ways and tides, but their vol- 

 umes and their curves also to be measured as 

 precisely as were those of the circulation by the 

 polygraph. The physicist and the biochemist 

 will need all their expertness in valuing mo- 

 lecular motions, analyzing secretions, record- 

 ing blood tests and morphologies, and so forth, 

 in their earliest and subtlest phases. For it is 

 in molecular dynamics that the first deviations 

 will arise; massive visible changes come later, 

 and happily are now in large part calculated, 

 or calculable. Mere observation — Nature's 

 march past — will not count for much now; 

 and as to family histories — well, they vary 

 with each historian. And we practitioners 

 will need a more searching discipline before 

 we can occupy ourselves with problems so 

 subtle. 



The laws of inheritance must, I think, be 

 sought out, at any rate at first, on animals; 

 the generations of man are too long for com- 

 prehension; besides, something else seems 

 lacking in this study of the genetics of man? 

 ... Is it a sense of humor? 



And there is something more to be said. If 

 light is to be thrown upon the generation of 

 diseases in man it must be in part also by study 

 in a far larger field; we must discover and com- 

 pare the elements and phases of disease in ani- 

 mals and in plants. Sir James Paget, in his 

 admirable address to the Pathological Section 

 of this Association at Cambridge in 1880, re- 

 flected on the difiiculties of human pathology 

 because of its great complexity. He had 

 " long and often felt that in this diiSculty we 

 might gain help from studying the conse- 

 quences of injury and disease in the structure 

 of plants " as less complex and under simpler 

 conditions. To this field of pathology he de- 

 voted almost the whole of the address. A 

 large part of my address in medicine to this 

 association in Glasgow in 1888 was given to 

 this appeal; it has found no response, hardly 

 an echo. Yet what would anatomy be without 

 comparative anatomy; language without com- 



parative philology; anthropology, law, history, 

 and even religion, without a like comprehen- 

 sion? Without an Institute of Comparative 

 Pathology in Cambridge our range of vision 

 and work is contracted. In the " Field Labora- 

 tories," it is true. Professors Woodhead and 

 ISTuttall, ably seconded by Dr. Stanley Griffith, 

 are doing as much as lies in the power of a few 

 individuals; but any such effort is puny beside 

 the sphere of observation and research await- 

 ing us. The comparative survey must cover 

 the diseases of plants as well as of animals ; of 

 the lowest of living things up to the highest. 

 The money loss year after year caused by the 

 depredations and the diseases of animals and 

 plants is enormous; and many of the methods 

 of dealing with them — as with foot and mouth 

 disease and swine fever — barbarous; if at pres- 

 ent imperative. 



Yet no one stirs, save to gyrate each in his 

 own little circle. There is no integration, no 

 organization of research, no cross light from 

 school to school, no mutual enlightenment 

 among investigators, no big outlook. The de- 

 struction by insects in forestry and agricul- 

 ture alone in Great Britain is put at £30,000,- 

 000 per annum.5 An Institute of Comparative 

 Pathology in Cambridge with the endowment 

 of professorial chairs and subordinate workers 

 would cost no doubt a quarter of a million, a 

 |big sum; but what is this to the wastage of 

 disease throughout the world of life ! — to swine 

 fever, diseases of cattle and horses, of crops, of 

 forests, and so forth — utilitarian ends it is 

 true, but to be followed on paths of discovery 

 which would illuminate the whole field of 

 nosology. Diseases are not " entities," nor 

 even recurrent phases of independent events, 

 but partial aspects of a universal series. The 

 young graduates we have, many of them of 

 great capacity; but every day we are losing 

 them because they are not taken up at once into 

 scientific teams; so they slacken, or drift into 

 some other means of livelihood, and things 

 muddle on as before. How blind we are! 



T. Clifford Allbutt 

 8 Mr. L. Scott, M.P., in the House of Commons. 



