June 16, iOOo.] 



SCIENCE. 



913 



best medical schools devote very little time 

 to any adequate instruction in these sub- 

 jects. It may be that this is wise and that 

 the pressing necessities of practical medi- 

 cine forbid any extended instruction in 

 public health science. I am willing to be- 

 lieve, if I must, that this may be the case ; 

 but if it is, then the community must look 

 for the most part elsewhere than to medical 

 men for adequate investigation, legislation 

 and administration of public health science. 

 ^Medical men, must, of course, always par- 

 ticipate in the work, in connection, particu- 

 larly, with the control of epidemics and in 

 those forms of preventive medicine which 

 have to do with vaccines, serums and other 

 means of modifying the vital resistance of 

 the human body. But as regards the care 

 and control of the environment, medical 

 knowledge is not indispensable, and the 

 entrance of the engineer and the sanitary 

 expert upon the field, as foretold by Dr. 

 Bowditch nearly twenty years ago, is to- 

 day a conspicuous, and probably a whole- 

 some, fact. As to the attitude of engineer- 

 ing education toward public health science 

 there can be no question. If what I have 

 said before is true, then engineers are 

 bound in the future to take constantly a 

 larger and more important part in public 

 health work, and must be informed, and 

 if possible trained, accordingly. Moreover, 

 as regards both medicine and engineering, 

 the problem is by no means insoluble, for a 

 very short course of instruction rightly 

 given would easily inculcate the necessary 

 fundamental principles, while electives or 

 post-graduate work might enable those few 

 whose tastes led them in this direction to 

 investigate and specialize and more thor- 

 oughly prepare themselves for public serv- 

 ice. 



I can not treat, nor do I need to treat, as 

 thoroughly as I would be glad to do, the 

 mutual relations existing between medical 



science, especially the science of medical 

 bacteriology, and i^ublic health science. 

 These are already sufficiently obvious and 

 well known. From time immemorial med- 

 ical men have served, often devotedly and 

 sometimes heroically, in the cause of public 

 health science. I take it, however, that 

 since we have in this congress and in our 

 own department a section of preventive 

 medicine, I may pass over without com- 

 ment this part of my subject. 



As regards sanitary bacteriology, how- 

 ever, the relations existing between this 

 and public health science are so funda- 

 mental, so extensive and so important, not 

 only on the medical, but also on the engi- 

 neering side, that although we have also 

 in this congress under the department of 

 biology, as is entirely proper, a section of 

 bacteriology, I may linger at this point for 

 one moment. The bacteria and other 

 microscopic forms of plant and animal 

 life,' all of which are conveniently included 

 under the term microbes, have so lately 

 begun to be understood and appreciated 

 that we must still emphasize their extreme 

 importance. The discoveries of the botan- 

 ists and zoologists and revelations of the 

 microscopists in this domain are compar- 

 able, in their importance to public health 

 science, with nothing less than the revela- 

 tions of the telescope to astronomy. As- 

 tronomy had, indeed, existed long before 

 the invention of the telescope, and public 

 health science, as we have shown above, 

 had its beginnings nearly a century before 

 any considerable progress had been made 

 in micro-biology. But it is not too much 

 to say that the developments in micro- 

 biology since Pasteur began his work have 

 not only revolutionized our ideas of the 

 nature of the infectious diseases, but have 

 also placed in our hands the key of their 

 complete control. 



Concerning the relations of physiology 



