116 
Pasteur and his Worh, 
cannot be estimated at a money value ; nor can the effect of 
these discoveries on present and future investigators be over- 
looked. The possibilities which his researches have thrown open, 
to my mind, are amazing, and have surprised Pasteur himself. 
His discoveries he looked upon as only a mere beginning, 
and he has often said, " You will see how all this will grow in 
time. Would that my life were longer !" And all friends of 
science and humanity must heartily echo the wish. 
Some may be inclined to ask what practical value Pasteur's 
" Vaccination" is likely to have in dealing with contagious 
diseases ; and others may deny that the method will ever 
possess advantages over the ordinary methods of combating 
them. This question of practical utility is worthy of considera- 
tion, and until his vaccination has been tried extensively for some 
time, it would be somewhat imprudent to hazard an opinion 
one way or the other. We have no evidence that, in the en- 
feebling or attenuating of the virus of these disorders, the germs 
are positively destroyed. On the contrary, we know they are 
sufficiently active to remove from the blood and tissues the 
pabulum which would serve for the multiplication of another 
generation of their kind, or produce in the body they invade the 
hypothetical inhibitory substance which will act as a poison to 
them. And we also know that weakened germs can regain 
their pristine virulency when placed in favourable conditions. 
Better by far, then, to utterly destroy the germs, even should 
this necessitate the destruction of the animals whose bodies they 
have taken possession of for their breeding ground, than keep 
them alive in a semi-latent condition, from which they may start 
with all their lethal vigour whenever circumstances allow them. 
The apparently barbarous and unscientific " stamping-out" 
process has this to commend it, that, if thoroughly carried 
through, it exterminates the germs, as pulling up and burning 
noxious weeds before they seed clears the land of them. There- 
fore, in special cases, as where the disease is not very widely 
spread, and can be eradicated in this way without heavy losa^ 
" stamping-out" by slaughter — repulsive though it always must 
be — must be preferable to protective inoculation. But it is 
evident that such a summary method can never be attempted 
with mankind; and even with animals, under certain conditions, 
it would be futile. Take such a malarious malady as the South 
African horse-sickness, for example, which is indigenous to the 
Vleys, or low-lying valleys, and is due to germs in the water or 
on the moist herbage, which horses eat at a certain season. 
Such a disorder cannot be extinguished by destroying the sick 
horses, as the germs infest the soil, the grass, the water, and' 
perhaps the very air is laden with them at certain hours during; 
