﻿72 FREER. 



rapidly advanced, will serve as a foundation for plans to combat malaria ; 

 and the work done in the study of immunity can not fail to bring 

 with it far-reaching results in the preparation of serums and vaccines. 

 The activity of the veterinary physicians has been such that violent out- 

 breaks of rinderpest, which in certain sections of the Islands threatened 

 a complete destruction of the horned animals, have been prevented by the 

 use of anti-rinderpestic serum, and the methods of preparation of the 

 latter have been markedly improved, so as to increase its efficiency. Work 

 in medical science has also been advanced by the formation of the Army 

 Board for the Study of Tropical Diseases, and by the union of its 

 interests with those of the Bureau of Science. The results of this hearty 

 cooperation are already evident in a series of interesting publications. 

 Work in medical zoology has also been undertaken and we expect most 

 fundamental advances in this important branch of tropical medicine 

 during the year to come. The plans for a medical school founded upon 

 modern laboratory instruction and clinics are about completed and we 

 hope, at no distant date, to have an institution which will be as capable 

 as any which may be found in America or Europe of thoroughly training 

 medical students along the lines universally approved to-day. 



Xo doubt then, but that the past year has shown a great advance, and 

 no doubt also but that the next one will be equally prolific of results. We 

 can not stand still, for that in all countries and ages has meant re- 

 trogression. 



In tropical countries medical studies most peculiarly concern them- 

 selves with the diseases of infectious origin. The white man coming 

 here runs the liability of contracting certain of them, the native again 

 is exposed to others, and the best means of limiting and combating 

 the outbreaks which occur have been topics for study in all parts of the 

 world. So seriously do America, and Europe take the question of limiting 

 infectious diseases that specially endowed institutions have been estab- 

 lished for work in methods of prevention and cure. Great masters in 

 this direction of work have arisen, and far-reaching theories as to the 

 causes of natural immunity to certain diseases in individual races and 

 species and as to the production of artificial immunity have been estab- 

 lished as the result of difficult experimental work. The advancement 

 of these theories, their discussion, and the laboratory investigations neces- 

 sary to prove or disprove the various views has served to advance the 

 cause of the study of immunity in the past few years with a rapidity 

 perhaps equaled by no other branch of science, unless it be that of the 

 physical study of the phenomena of radioactivity.* It has been the great 

 service of Ehrlich, of Frankfurt, to explain the existing phenomena by 

 a fundamental view of the causes of immunity which is founded upon 

 chemical considerations and which, to-day, is accepted by the majority 

 of workers in this field and, although it has opponents, even the latter 



