SELF-EXPERIMENT 



307 



himself with it, an act of scientific devotion which 

 cost him his life. # Besides those who have died, 

 there are many who have only escaped with their 

 lives after long and painful illness. Professor 

 Kourloff contracted anthrax in a laboratory at 

 Munich, and was saved only by vigorous surgery. 

 Dr Nicolas supplied, in his own person, the first 

 example of tetanus produced in man by inoculation 

 of the pure toxin of the bacillus of Nicolaier." 

 {Brit. Med. Journal, 18th March 1899.) 



This list is three years old now ; it is twice 

 the length by this time. Typhoid, malaria, yellow 

 fever, have all taken toll of those who study them. 

 It is a long record of the men who fell ill, or died, 

 or killed themselves over their work ; and the 

 deaths of Barisch, Dr Miiller, and Nurse Pecha, 

 from plague at Vienna (October 1898) are another 

 instance that there is danger in the constant hand- 

 ling of cultures. But these deaths at Vienna were 

 due to the great carelessness of one man. In 

 laboratories in all parts of the world there are stored 

 cultures of all sorts of organisms, yet no harm 

 comes of it. " More cases of infection occur 

 amongst young medical men attending fever cases, 

 whether in private practice or hospital wards, in 

 a single month, than have occurred in the whole 

 of the laboratories in the world since they were 

 established." {British Medical Journal, 29 th 



* Daniel Carrion, born 1859 at Cerro de Pasco, proved, by 

 self-inoculation, the identity of the two forms of the disease, 

 27th August 1885 ; died of the disease, 5th October. See 

 Ann. de VInst Past, Sept. 1898. 



