JuiTE 2, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



845 



The public schools will surely become a 

 medium of transmitting instruction in this 

 line. Public sanitation in the course of its 

 career may reach that abomination of con- 

 trivances in so .far as offended hygienic 

 conditions are concerned, namely, the sleep- 

 ing car. It is difficult to imagine any con- 

 trivance which human ingenuity could con- 

 struct better calculated to secure the best 

 conditions for disease and the best methods 

 for propagation thereof than the sleeping 

 car. Constructed in such a way that ven- 

 tilation is practically impossible ; parti- 

 tioned into small compartments, carefully 

 curtained to prevent any circulation of air, 

 if there should be fresh air ; provided with 

 enough heating surface to the cubic yard 

 to complete the installation of a Turkish 

 bath, and manned by porters to whom high 

 temperature is an evidence of heavenly 

 bliss, it is not difficult to conceive of the 

 tortures to which the helpless passenger is 

 exposed. These compartments often carry, 

 without any precautionary inspection, per- 

 sons in all stages of phthisis and even other 

 contagious diseases. There is no health 

 officer to inspect incoming passengers, no 

 provision of the law requiring complete 

 fumigation and no systematic appliance of 

 any kind to prevent or eradicate disease. 

 It has been claimed that the blankets are 

 washed at least twice a year, as if that 

 alone were a sufficient excuse for all of the 

 dangers that exist! Perhaps, if one used 

 the same blanket himself all the time he 

 might not be jiistified in objecting to such 

 frequent abhitions, but what right have we 

 to ask if such a careful purification of a 

 blanket used by a different person every 

 night is based on any of the broad prin- 

 ciples of hygiene or good taste? 



The composition of the air in a sleeper 

 filled with passengers, after a night of low 

 temperature can better be imagined than 

 described. It is true that no one is com- 



pelled to spend the night in these compart- 

 ments, but the ordinary coaches are not 

 much less objectionable, and thus the 

 traveler is left only with the option of 

 staying at home or walking to his destina- 

 tion. 



The physician of the future will gradu- 

 ally teach the people the principles and 

 necessity of public and private sanita- 

 tion, for domestic hygiene is no less impor- 

 tant than public. That dread scourge of 

 humanity, consumption, will find its most 

 effective foe in the establishment of true 

 principles of hygiene both at home and in 

 public places. 



The medical profession of the future will 

 also see extended and placed upon sounder 

 scientific foundations the antitoxin theory 

 of prevention and cure. The world owes 

 a debt of gratitude to Pasteur and his 

 co-laborers in this and other countries 

 for establishing the foundation, on broad 

 scientific grounds, of the idea that im- 

 munity may be artificially, as well as nat- 

 urally, produced. Jennei- was the fore- 

 runner of this great school of medicine, 

 but his practise was absolutely empirical. 

 Neither he nor his followers had any idea 

 whatever of the manner in which vaccina- 

 tion renders the subject practically im- 

 mune to smallpox. Advanced medical sci- 

 ence has revealed the fact, however, that 

 not only smallpox, but many other deadly 

 diseases owe their toxic development to the 

 compounds produced in the system chem- 

 ically allied with the nitrogenous constitu- 

 ents of the body. The moment these poi- 

 sons become dominant in the system nature 

 makes an effort to eliminate them or to 

 neutralize them. In other words, the toxic 

 body is met and combated by the antitoxic 

 body. One of the greatest triumphs of the 

 science of chemistry has been the deter- 

 mination of the character both of toxic and 

 of antitoxic substances and the development 



