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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 187. 



as these conditions continue unchanged, and we 

 are unable artificially to alter them, there is no 

 instance known of such morbid organisms 

 having been 'stamped out,' as the expression 

 in our daily reports is, by the will of men. If 

 it were otherwise there would be no typhoid 

 fever in the European barracks in India ; or the 

 microbe of cholera, let us say, would have been 

 'exterminated' from the plains of Bengal, or 

 the microbe of malaria from the rest of the 

 country. Every time, therefore, said Dr. HafF- 

 kine, that you may think of these matters, recall 

 to your memory that rabbit question of Aus- 

 tralia, or the phylloxera problem in the vine- 

 growing countries of Europe. I hope you will 

 then cease to wonder at the fact that, when the 

 government and municipalities appoint com- 

 mittees to deal with and to ' stamp out ' the 

 plague, the disease does not seem always to 

 obey their measures. 



There are, it must be admitted, many phe- 

 nomena in nature which it is not in our power 

 to arrest ; but we can run away from them, or 

 protect ourselves against them individually. 

 The marvellous success of vaccination against 

 smallpox, and the history of the bacteriolog- 

 ical efforts of the last 15 years, made the plan 

 for effecting such a protection against plague 

 obvious ; and, early after the outbreak of plague 

 in Bombay, I put myself to the task of work- 

 ing out a preventative inoculation to check the 

 liability of individuals to that awful disease. 



The first demonstration of the working of 

 this system can be made in the laboratory, and 

 this has been already repeated and confirmed 

 by many observers. You are aware that rats 

 are exceedingly susceptible to plague. One 

 takes 20 rats from a ship that has newly arrived 

 in harbor, say from Europe, where there is no 

 plague. Ten of them are inoculated with the 

 prophylactic against plague, and the others are 

 left as they are. Put back all the 20 rats to- 

 gether, and introduce among them a rat that 

 has the plague, or infect them all artificially 

 with virulent plague microbes. In the course 

 of time you will find that eight or nine, or the 

 whole of the unprotected, will die of the disease; 

 while perhaps only a single rat that has been 

 inoculated with the protective lymph, or even 

 not a single one, will contract the disease. 



During the month of January, 1897, a large 

 number of leading European and native gentle- 

 men offered themselves to be inoculated, to 

 prove the harmlessness of this method, and by 

 the end of that month this question was solved, 

 I believe, to the satisfaction of every one who 

 took the trouble of attentively examining it. 



The results of the Inoculations, up to the end 

 of 1897, were given in some detail from several 

 different localities. The general facts were 

 that the inoculated and uninoculated persons 

 were everywhere living under the same condi- 

 tions and exposed to the same risks of infec- 

 tion, and that not only were the occurring cases 

 relatively much fewer among the inoculated, 

 but they were also much milder and attended 

 by a much smaller proportionate mortality. 

 To take totals, there wei'e 1,268 deaths among 

 7,803 uninoculated persons, and, in the same 

 towns or districts, 62 deaths among 11,968 in- 

 oculated persons. In Lower Damaum the 

 number of cases was not stated, either for the 

 inoculated or the uninoculated ; but the deaths 

 were 36 in 2,197 of the former, against 1,482 in 

 6,033 of the latter. This population being 

 omitted, 259 cases among uninoculated persons 

 were productive of 186 deaths, and 73 cases 

 among the inoculated were productive of 26 

 deaths. It must be borne in mind, in consider- 

 ing the figures, that a large proportion of the 

 cases occurring among the inoculated became 

 declared within 24 hours of the inoculation, and 

 were evidently the consequences of infection 

 previously received into the sj'stem. 



AN EXHIBIT OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 



As we have already noticed, the Seventeenth 

 Congress of German Men of Science and Phy- 

 sicians will be held at Diisseldorf from Septem- 

 ber 19th to 24th. In connection with the Con- 

 gress there will be several exhibits, one of 

 scientific apparatus, one of scientific photography 

 and one illustrating the history of medicine and 

 science. The British Medical Journal gives some 

 account of what is aimed at in the last men- 

 tioned exhibit. It will comprise two main 

 divisions : (a) general history of medicine, (b) 

 special exhibits. The former class includes : 



(1) Ancient Phoenician and Egyptian medicine ; 



(2) Assyrio-Babylonian, Medo-Persian and Old 



