PASTEUR'S WORK 



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

 have received, all the honours 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 the 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 trades, the brewer, and the wine 

 merchant. And this being so, it might well be a proper and 

 graceful act on the part of the representatives of trade and com- 

 merce 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 knowl- 

 edge of the causes of diseased states, and of the means of pre- 

 venting their recurrence, are not measurable 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 labours in this direc- 

 tion without arriving at the conclusion that, if any man has 

 earned the praise 'and honour 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 Lord- 

 ship sanctions would be equally inconceivable if it arose out of 

 nothing but the facts of the case thus presented. But the opposi- 

 tion which, as I see from the English papers, is threatened has 

 really for the most part nothing to do either with M. Pasteur's 

 merits or with the efficacy of his method of treating hydro- 

 phobia. 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 interference, partly from the blind opponents 

 of properly conducted physiological experimentation, who prefer 

 that men should suffer 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 enquiry in all those questions which affect the wel- 

 fare of society. I sincerely trust that the good sense of the 

 meeting over which your Lordship will preside will preserve it 



