A year’s progress in medicine. 
199 
course in our impatient way, we are prone to forget that the 
progress of the world is in the main by slow and laborious steps. 
It is only at intervals that we are dazzled by some great and 
brilliant diseovery, as by the eomet in the depths of the spaee 
around us. So also in our lives, when we sum up the year’s 
work in a pecuniary way, after dedueting our expenditures from 
our reeeipts, our aetual savings may be very small indeed. So 
also in science, the sum total of progress in the year may seem 
very small. But the work has been done, it has been good 
work and useful, and at the end of the year there is a gain 
though it may seem disproportionately small. 
Perhaps the most interesting and important part of this sub¬ 
ject of bacteriological work is that of serums, their prophylae- 
tive and eurative powers. The subject is broad and deep, the 
results thus far obtained are at the least very encouraging. We 
have learned one great truth beyond any question, and that is 
that a healthy blood serum is very deeidedly germieidal, so much 
so that the baeteriologist often fails to grow his organisms upon 
it. Thus with the addition of leueocytes, we are, so to‘speak, 
twice armed against the germs that may be introduced within 
our systems. By means of eertain methods and proeesses, we 
are able to procure serums which when introduced into the ani¬ 
mal eeonqjny are found to prevent, or to aet as an antidote to 
certain diseases. Espeeially among the lower animals has this 
new truth a great eommercial value, apart from what I may eall 
its humanity. How these animals may be inoeulated; how 
they may be inmunized ; how their early infeetion with disease 
may be diagnosed ; how they may be cured by means of attenu¬ 
ated toxins and anti-toxins. These are some of the questions 
and problems whieh confront us and which are being answered 
one by one for now this disease and then that. 
I am aware that this subject of micro-organisms is perhaps 
beeoming tiresome, espeeially to those who are yet skeptieal in 
regard to it, but it seems to me that the revelations of the 
mieroseope and of the staining methods and eultures and experi¬ 
ments of the baeteriological laboratory are not fairly appreeiated 
even by the most enthusiastic students. The light is as yet too 
dim to see mueh of this, as well as of other vast vistas in seienee. 
I believe that we as yet but remotely conceive the far reaehing 
expansion of our vision in the next decade. 
I pass by the other items of the pathologieal advances of the 
year and will touch for a moment upon the work of the elinieal 
laboratory. This indeed has revolutionized and is revolutioniz- 
