July ig, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



47 



respect to these classes, we recommend that the returns of persons 

 doubly and trebly afflicted be not classed with the deaf, the idiotic, 

 etc., respectively, but be grouped in classes by themselves, and 

 placed in charge of some specially qualified person for the careful 

 examination and verification of the returns, and for an investigation 

 into the causes of these terrible afflictions. 



" 9. An impression is prevalent that deafness, blindness, idiocy, 

 and insanity are often due to consanguinity in the parents ; and 

 statistics have been collected which show that a considerable per- 

 centage of the deaf, blind, idiotic, and insane are the children of 

 first-cousins. These statistics, however, can be of little value in 

 determining the questions involved until we know what percentage 

 of the general population are the offspring of such unions. We 

 therefore recommend that in Schedule No. i the question be asked, 

 ' Were the parents of this person first-cousins ? 



" We trust that these suggestions will commend themselves to 

 your judgment, and believe that, if adopted, they will result in a 

 more accurate and satisfactory census of the class in whose wel- 

 fare we are especially interested than has yet been obtained." 



HEALTH MATTERS. 



Baking Bacilli. 



At a meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, June 20, 

 Dr. A. Jacobi read some notes on the baking of bacilli, being a 

 denunciation of Weigert's advertising scheme, and a review of his 

 own experience with the inhalation of hot air in the treatment of 

 phthisis. Weigert, supposed to be an American physician, now of 

 Germany, claimed to have discovered a method of curing phthisis 

 by the inhalation of hot air, and he had made free use of Dr. 

 Jacobi's name in advertising his apparatus for carrying out this 

 treatment. The treatment was not original with Weigert ; nor 

 had Dr. Jacobi, as had been asserted, bought, indorsed, or recom- 

 mended the apparatus in question. Moreover, as appeared further 

 along, he had little confidence in the method. To Halter belonged 

 the honor of suggesting the treatment of phthisis by the inhalation 

 of hot air with the view of killing the bacilli in the lungs. The 

 idea arose from observing the immunity from phthisis of workmen 

 in a lime-kiln where they were exposed to a high degree of heat 

 (122° to 158° F.), — so high that it would destroy the tubercle 

 bacilli, provided it continued at that degree until it had reached the 

 lungs. The air inhaled by workmen in a lime-kiln was dry and 

 rarefied. A moist atmosphere of a like temperature would be 

 more destructive of the bacilli, but was less endurable by the 

 phthisical patient. Dr. Jacobi said, that, having been requested to 

 admit Weigert's apparatus into his wards at Bellevue Hospital, he 

 did experiment with it some time ago, and for a while the results 

 made a favorable impression on the physicians in attendance, for 

 the patients, or a part of them, seemed to improve under the treat- 

 ment. More careful observation, however, showed that the im- 

 provement was doubtless due to rest in the hospital, in an atmos- 

 phere much purer than that in which the patients had lived in their 

 tenement homes. The instrument itself was not as good as that 

 which one of ordinary ingenuity could improvise. The atmosphere 

 on its way to the lungs from the flame was found to have fallen 

 from above 300° F. to about the temperature of the body when it 

 had reached the mouth. Of course, if it were above the tempera- 

 ture of the blood, it would become further cooled on its passage 

 toward the lungs. Some of the hot air might get into the alveoli, 

 but very little. In order to obtain benefit from such treatment, it 

 would be necessary not only that the air inhaled be of a high tem- 

 perature, but that the patient be in a room in virhich the thermome- 

 ter registered at least 105.5° F.: in other words, it would be neces- 

 sary to produce a sort of artificial fever, and it was evident that 

 such treatment must prove injurious to any other than patients in 

 the very first stage of phthisis. 



Professor Huxley and M. Pasteur on Hydrophobia. 



On Monday, July i, a meeting called by the lord mayor of London 

 to hear statements from men of science with regard to the recent 

 increase of rabies in England, and the efficiency of the treatment 

 discovered by M. Pasteur for the prevention of hydrophobia, was 

 held at the Mansion House. Several letters were read from those 

 who were unable to attend. Among these letters was one from 



Professor Huxley, in which he says, " I greatly regret my inability to 

 be present at the meeting which is to be held, under your lordship's 

 auspices, in reference to M. Pasteur and his institute. The unre- 

 mitting labors of that eminent Frenchman during the last half- 

 century have yielded rich harvests of new truths, and are models 

 of exact and refined research. As such they deserve, and have 

 received, all the honors which those who are the best judges of 

 their purely scientific merits are able to bestow. But it so happens- 

 that these subtle and patient searchings-out of the ways of the 

 infinitely little — of that swarming life where the creature that 

 measures one-thousandth part of an inch is a giant — have also 

 yielded results of supreme practical importance. The path of M. 

 Pasteur's investigations is strewed with gifts of vast monetary 

 value to the silk-trader, the brewer, and the wine merchant; and,, 

 this being so, it might well be a proper and "a graceful act, on the 

 part of the representatives of trade and commerce in its greatest 

 centre, to make some public recognition of M. Pasteur's services, 

 even if there were nothing further to be said about them. But 

 there is much more to be said. M. Pasteur's direct and indirect 

 contributions to our knowledge of the causes of diseased states, 

 and of the means of preventing their occurrence, are not measur- 

 able by money values, but by those of healthy life and diminished 

 suffering to men. Medicine, surgery, and hygiene have all been 

 powerfully affected by M. Pasteur's work, which has culminated in 

 his method of treating hydrophobia. I cannot conceive that any 

 competently instructed person can consider M. Pasteur's labors in 

 this direction without arriving at the conclusion, that, if any mark 

 has earned the praise and honor of his fellows, he has. I find it 

 no less difficult to imagine that our wealthy country should be 

 other than ashamed to continue to allow its citizens to profit by the 

 treatment freely given at the institute without contributing to its 

 support. . Opposition to the proposals which your lordship sanc- 

 tions would be equally inconceivable if it arose out of nothing but 

 the facts of the case thus presented. But the opposition which, as 

 I see from the English papers, is threatened, has really, for the 

 most part, nothing on earth to do either with M. Pasteur's merits 

 or with the efficacy of his method of treating hydrophobia. It 

 proceeds partly from the fanatics of laissez faire, who think it 

 better to rot and die than to be kept whole and lively by State in- 

 terference, partly from the blind opponents of properly conducted 

 physiological experimentation, who prefer that men should suffer 

 rather than rabbits or dogs, and partly from those who for other 

 but not less powerful motives hate every thing which contributes 

 to prove the value of strictly scientific methods of inquiry in all 

 those questions which affect the welfare of society. I sincerely 

 trust that the good sense of the meeting over which your lordship 

 will preside will preserve it from being influenced by these un- 

 worthy antagonisms, and that the just and benevolent enterprise 

 you have undertaken may have a happy issue." 



M. Pasteur, in a letter dated Paris, the 27th ult., and read by Sir 

 H. Roscoe, writes, " I am obliged by your sending me a copy of the 

 letter of invitation issued by the lord mayor for the meeting on July 

 I. Its perusal has given me great pleasure. The questions relat- 

 ing to the prophylactic treatment for hydrophobia in persons who 

 have been bitten, and the steps which ought to be taken to stamp- 

 out the disease, are discussed in a manner both exact and judi- 

 cious. Seeing that hydrophobia has existed in England for a long 

 time, and that medical science has failed toward off the occurrence 

 even of the premonitory symptoms, it is clear that the prophylactic 

 method of treating this malady which I have discovered ought to 

 be adopted in the case of every person bitten by a rabid animal. 

 The treatment requirpd by this method is painless during the whole 

 of its course, and not disagreeable. In the early days of the ap- 

 plication of this method, contradictions such as invariably take 

 place with every new discovery were found to occur, and especially 

 for the reason that it is not every bite by a rabid animal which gives 

 rise to a fatal outburst of hydrophobia : hence prejudiced people 

 may pretend that all the successful cases of treatment were cases 

 in which the natural contagion of the disease had not taken effect. 

 This specious reasoning has gradually lost its force with the con- 

 tinually increasing number of persons treated. To-day, and speak- 

 ing solely for the one anti-rabic laboratory of Paris, this total number 

 exceeds 7,000; or exactly, up to the 31st of May, 1SS9, 6,950. Of 



