789 
SCIENTIFIC SECRESY. 
At a recent meeting of the Academie de Medecine, a short 
discussion arose which involved a point of some importance. 
M. Toussaint, a veterinary professor at Toulouse, addressed 
a note to the Academy, stating that he has been able to 
devise a means of preventing carbuncular disease in animals 
by manipulating the virus in such a way as to render it a 
preventive agent, or what he calls, by an abuse of terms, 
“ vaccinating 33 by its means. He, how ever, furnishes no 
particulars as to how this is done, although Professor Bouley 
stated that it is effected on the principle of attenuation devised 
by Professor Pasteur as a preventive of fowl-cholera. On 
the proposition that this communication should be inserted in 
the Bulletin of the Academy, M. Jules Guerin protested 
against the reception of communications which professed to 
make known the results of experiments obtained by methods 
or procedures which their authors kept secret, rendering all 
control and criticism impossible. The case w r as not made any 
better by Professor Pasteur having furnished the precedent of 
a similar procedure. Professors Le Fort and Depaul joined 
in M. Guerin's protest. 
Dr. Revillout, in the Gazette des Hopitaux, commenting 
upon this incident, makes the following appropriate observa¬ 
tions : 
“ In France the medical family has its traditions, its 
scruples, and its delicacy, which it considers in some mea¬ 
sure connected with professional dignity, and to w hich it 
adheres as a most precious inheritance. Those who do not 
belong to this great body* and are not medical, though 
members of the Academy of Medicine, are liable sometimes 
to irritate the susceptibilities of their colleagues, which they 
do not appreciate, and seem quite astonished at the opposi¬ 
tion which they raise without knowing why. We have made 
this observation recently in relation to Professor Pasteur, 
who, keeping secret his procedures for the attenuation of the 
chicken-cholera, nevertheless related to the Academy the good 
effects which he had obtained from the inoculation of this 
attenuated virus. When this illustrious savant was desirous, 
generalising the conclusions he had drawn from his first 
results, of reasoning from them as to the affinities of variola 
and vaccinia, he w T as surprised at finding how little medical 
men felt disposed to follow 7 him in this course. That w'as 
because he was ignorant of the customs of our body, not 
knowing that the rule here is to place all in common, whether 
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