I/O 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No 425 



the making of new oyster-beds, legislation is necessary, in order 

 that citizens may spend the money necessary to prepare and sow 

 them, and that they may feel sure that their investment shall be 

 protected from theft. As to protection from theft, I am informed, 

 on what I believe to be good authority, that a private oyster-bed, 

 made in accordance with full provisions of the law, was robbed of 

 840,000 bushels of oysters last season, with no effective interfer- 

 ence from the oyster navy. 



This navy, what is it ? and our laws, what are they ? 



Let me tell you a short story, but a true one, — a story of an 

 oyster-steamer with some scientific students on board. On every 

 side dredgers were violating the law. About dark each day the 

 captain felt sufficiently braced up to make au arrest: he made for 

 the nearest oyster-sloop, quite sure that it was breaking the law ; 

 and, as every oyster-sloop does violate the law, the captain was 

 safe in going for the nearest. The commander of the pirate was 

 arrested and taken before a justice of the peace, who had his 

 ■office near the place of arrest. The magistrate, more likely than 

 not a shareholder in the oyster-stealing sloop, was asked to wait 

 until the accused person could bring his witnesses. The outraged 

 captain answered that he could not waste the time of his scientific 

 friends, and he therefore withdrew the charge, that they might 

 not suffer ; and this sort of thing went on day after day. 



Is not this oyster navy, on the whole, a fraud, or perhaps rather 

 a sham, — the scoff of the oyster thieves and the scorn of the 

 whole State ? Perhaps not so bad as it used to be, but even now 

 a public scandal. 



Some friends wish the university to undertake the breeding of 

 oysters. That is purely a commercial matter, and should be done 

 by business-men. The engagement of the proper man as man- 

 ager, the hiring of laborers, the purchase of machinery,^ all that 

 is a business matter, and not university work at all. 



They say, "We want to get the oyster out of politics." The 

 university cannot take it out, though the oyster might get the 

 ■university into politics, which may a merciful Providence forever 

 Sforefend 1 You cannot get the oyster out of politics, and it would 

 not be right to do it if you could. As oyster-catching is a chief 

 industry of the State, the oyster question must always be a politi- 

 cal question. The one thing necessary is to make our politicians 

 as good as our oysters. 



The fact remains that the Maryland oyster is becoming extinct. 

 To preserve it, to maintain our heritage, needs some little honest 

 ;and intelligent legislation, needs some active, instructed, and 

 well-meaning control. Will you see to it ? 



RECENT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE.^ 



Emancipated from the thraldom of authority in which it was 

 fast bound for centuries, medicine has progressed with extraor- 

 dinary rapidity, and even within the present generation has under- 

 gone a complete revolution. The advance has been in three 

 directions: first, in the prevention of disease. A study of the 

 conditions under which epidemics develop has led to the impor- 

 tant work of sanitary science. For fifty years the watchword of 

 the profession in this matter has been cleanliness; and clean 

 streets, good drains, and pure water have in many towns reduced 

 the mortality from certain diseases fifty per cent. In this de- 

 partment certainly medicine has achieved its greatest victories. 

 It is a thought full of encouragement to know that such diseases 

 as typhoid-fever and diphtheria may ultimately be stamped out, 

 and be as rare among us as leprosy and small-pox. In this work 

 the profession requires, and can often obtain, the intelligent co- 

 operation of city authorities and the public. People scarcely 

 understand how much has already been done, nor do they yet 

 fully appreciate the possibilities of preventive medicine. 



The second great advance which medicine has made relates to 

 the knowledge which has been gained of the agents producing 

 diseases. Dating from the studies on fermentation by Pasteur, 

 and the early work of Lister, we have gradually learned to recog- 

 nize the importance of the structures known as bacteria, which 

 has revolutionized the practice of surgery and gynecology. To- 



I Address by Dr. William Oaler, professor o£ medicine, at the flfteenth 

 anniversary of the Johns Hopkins University, Feb. 2.3, 1891. 



day surgery is a new art, and hundreds now recover after opera- 

 tions from which hundreds previously died. The information 

 which we now have on these subjects has been slowly and pain- 

 fully acquired, here a little and there a little; but the outcome of 

 it all is that as clean streets and good drains and pure water mean 

 municipal health, so absolute cleanliness and absence of contami- 

 nation mean in great part freedom from infection. So univer- 

 sally present are the infective agents, particularly of suppuration, 

 that it is only by the most scrupulous care that the infection of 

 wounds can be prevented ; and it is now generally acknowledged 

 that the highest type of this antisepticism is obtained, not by the 

 use of various solutions which destroy the germs, but by such 

 measures of cleanliness as effectually prevent the possibility of their 

 presence. Now, the point for the public to appreciate in this 

 whole question is that they are reaping the benefit of advances 

 rendered possible by work done in laboratories without a thought 

 of its application to life-saving. 



The researches showing the relation of special microscopic or- 

 ganisms to special diseases are likely to lead to the most important 

 results. The cultivation of the germs of disease outside of the 

 body has enabled us to study the products of their growth, and in 

 several instances from them to obtain materials which, when in- 

 jected into an animal, act as a sort of vaccine against the disease 

 itself. The hope of obtaining in some of the most important dis- 

 eases vaccines which will bear the same relation to them as 

 ordinary vaccine to small- pox is very reasonable, and likely ere 

 long to be realized. In another direction, too, the recent studies 

 of Koch have shown that in the growth of these baciUi materials 

 are obtained which may act most powerfully upon the body, and 

 attack the elements ot the disease itself. His discovery of the 

 action of the product of the growth of the tubercle bacilli upon 

 tuberculous tissue ranks as one of the most remarkable of late 

 years. His claims that this will cure early tuberculosis and lupus 

 win, I believe, be substantiated. Great as is this fact in itself, the 

 possibilities which it opens up to our view are still greater, and it 

 may be safely said, that, apart altogether from the action of the 

 lymph, no more encouraging discovery has been made in the past 

 twenty-five years. 



But I hear the householder say, "All that is very well; but 

 Tommy gets the measles, and Mary has the mumps, and Susie 

 gets the whooping-cough, just as my grandmother tells me her 

 children had fifty years ago. My doctor's bills are possibly a little 

 larger than were father's, and I know his drug bill could not have 

 been as heavy as was mine for the last quarter." This may be 

 perfectly true, for the millennium has not yet come; but it is 

 perfectly true that to-day Mrs. Householder's risks have been re- 

 duced to a minimum in the necessary domestic emergencies, and 

 her children's chances of reaching maturity have been enormously 

 enhanced. 



The third great advance has been the diffusion in the profession 

 and among the public of the more rational ideas upon the treat- 

 ment of disease. Dieting and nursing have supplanted in great 

 part Ijleeding and physicking. We know now that a majority of 

 febrile affections run a definite course, uninfluenced by drugs. 

 We recognize daily the great fact that disease is only a modifica- 

 tion of the normal processes of health, and that there is a natural 

 tendency to recover. We cannot claim in the medicinal treat- 

 ment of disease to have made great positive advances; still, to 

 have learned not to do what we did is for the poor patients a great 

 gain. The past half-century has placed only half a dozen abso- 

 lutely indispensable drugs which must be used by all indiscrimi- 

 nately who practise the healing art. 



A desire to take medicine is, perhaps, the great feature which 

 distinguishes man from other animals. Why this appetite should 

 have developed, how it could have grown to its present dimen- 

 sions, what it will ultimately reach, are interesting problems in 

 psychology. Of one thing I must complain, — that when we of 

 the profession have gradually emancipated ourselves from a rou- 

 tine administration of nauseous mixtures on every possible occa- 

 sion, and when we are able to say, without fear of dismissal, that 

 a little more exercise, a little less food, and a little less tobacco 

 and alcohol, may possibly meet the indications of the case — I 

 say it is a just cause of complaint that when we, the priests, have 



