Sir John Scott Bur don- Sanderson, Bart. vii 



He retained his Paddington appointment for eleven years, one notable 

 incident, the cholera epidemic of 1865-66, occurring towards the end of 

 his period of office. His rare abilities and scientific acumen were soon 

 recognised by the late Sir John Simon (at that time Mr. Simon), the Medical 

 Officer of the Privy Council, and in 1860 he was appointed an Inspector in 

 the Medical Department of- the Council. In the discharge of these duties he 

 sent in many sanitary reports, which were so valued that, although he ceased 

 to be an acting inspector in 1866, he was frequently asked to undertake 

 scientific investigations for the Government authorities, and continued to 

 contribute to the annual reports of the Privy Council and Local Government 

 Board for a further period of ten years. His contributions contain the 

 results of experimental investigations on a number of scientific problems, 

 which have subsequently become of extreme importance in connection with 

 the prevention and etiology of infectious and other diseases. Sir John 

 Simon, in his " Eeview of English Sanitary Institutions," gives some details 

 which display the scope of Burdon-Sanderson's early work in practical 

 sanitation, but a true appreciation of the debt which civilisation owes to 

 Burdon-Sanderson can only be derived from a perusal of the reports 

 themselves. It appears that from 1860 to 1864 he co-operated with 

 others in collecting reliable information as to the utility of vaccination, 

 and it was largely on the strength of this mass of information that a Bill 

 to amend the Vaccination Law was laid before the Legislature, and that 

 the important sanitary statute relating to this matter was passed in 1866. 

 But the mental attitude of Burdon-Sanderson towards the problems presented 

 by hygiene was one which impelled him to undertake a more profound 

 experimental study of morbid processes, the subject being treated along 

 chemical and physical lines without losing sight of the essential biological 

 setting. In 1865 he commenced for the Medical Department of the Privy 

 Council a laborious investigation of the chemical aspects of infective processes, 

 and in particular of those which were associated with the presence of 

 contagious diseases in animals. The special portion of this work with which 

 his name will be always identified, is that devoted to the study of cattle 

 plague, undertaken towards the close of 1865 for the Eoyal Commission 

 appointed to investigate this very important matter. He ascertained that 

 the true contagium could be separated by physico-chemical means from the 

 animal tissues which contained it, and that the extracts of these tissues 

 lost, in consequence of such separation, their infective power. This work 

 brought the experimental study of contagious diseases in this country into 

 line with the work of Pasteur upon fermentation and putrefaction. Another 

 suggestive feature of his work at this time is furnished in the reports which 

 he produced dealing with the subject of tuberculosis. The researches 

 described in these reports are models of exactitude, and the descriptions 

 of the way in which chronic tuberculous infection invades the organism 

 is in all essentials that which is still put forth. At this period there was 

 grave doubt as to the causative factor of tuberculosis, and even the 



