506 
EDITORIAL. 
an article : “ British Congress of Tuberculosis for the Preserva¬ 
tion of Phthisis .” 
Is it sardonic enough ? 
And, yet, is it not correct ? Prof. Koch has no doubt made 
the most sensational among the numerous important communi¬ 
cations that were presented to the Section on Bacteriology. 
In the article that I refer to I find the answer of Prof. 
Nocard, who opens his refutation by a most flattering compli¬ 
ment, a salute to the greatest bacteriologist of the whole world . 
Prof. Nocard is in reality too modest, and his opening remarks 
when he alludes to the sympathy expressed by Koch towards 
the French scientific mission (Roux, Strauss, Nocard and 
Thuillier), which in 1883 was sent into Egypt to study the pre¬ 
vailing epidemy of cholera, and when Thuillier died from the 
scourge in 48 hours, were certainly worthy of the great new 
struggle which is going to be inaugurated. 
Koch’s communication charms and satisfies Nocard, but 
again it frightens him, and seems to him full of dangers. 
What Nocard likes in the communication is that it justi¬ 
fies the efforts of those who at first protested against exaggera¬ 
tion of the prophylactic measures. Truly a wise reaction has 
taken place since a few years. The communication of Koch 
will increase it; will it not exaggerate it ? “I am in fear, that 
after having resorted to excessive and absurd measures against 
imaginary dangers,we will not protect ourselves any more against 
the real dangers that bovine tuberculosis threatens public health 
with.” Nocard, we all know, has always said that dangers 
from bovine tuberculosis were small, but small as they are, they 
exist, nevertheless, and it would be a serious mistake to ignore 
them. 
From his experiments, Koch concludes that bovines are 
refractory to human tuberculosis, that man has nothing to fear 
from bovine tuberculosis, that it is useless to guard against it. 
But the principle of experimental method says that nega¬ 
tive facts, no matter how numerous, do not upset positives, and 
those are numerous. 
