the main plot of his dramas, it is said, from those who had written before him. The charge is true, and we may give Racine the barbarous title, which Charles Blanc, who did not like Raphael, gave to that painter, and call him a Profiter. By that Blanc meant, I think, that as Raphael had not invented drawing or perspective, or chiaro oscuro, or painting in oil, or Madonnas with an infant, or the beautiful girls of Tuscany or Umbria who sat to him as models, it was not difficult for him to make use of all the resources of his art to surpass those of his predecessors who had invented the things named. Blanc, however, forgot, first, that we are all "profiters," inasmuch as we profit by the discoveries and inventions of those who have lived before us, and, second, that it is the true "profiters" who are rare and not the inventors. It rains inventors, so to speak. I have known dozens of them, and so has everyone. The people seldom met with, are those who can render the inventions of others practical, rectify the mistakes of the inventor, and make his work a useful and valuable thing.

This is what Racine did in his "Andromaque." He took old elements and renewed and transfigured them by his genius. Greek and classic though Andromaque" be, it is none the less modern or even contemporaneous with ourselves, and is the first of our tragedies in which we can find Frenchmen of our day. The language of Corneille has grown old; and far older than his language have become the sentiments of his characters. The language of Racine, however, is such as we use to-day, and the sentiments of his characters are of all time. His verses, while truly poetical, give utterance to the feelings of men and women of flesh and blood. His characters partake of human nature, and we recognize them as like ourselves. We care not whether his women be queens or duchesses or washerwomen. It is sufficient to know that they belong to the human race to awaken our interest and touch our sympathies.

CASTILIAN IMITATIONS OF "DON QUIXOTE.” DON CÉSAR MORENO GARCÍA.

THA

Revista Contemporanea, Madrid, December 15. HAT a work which succeeded so well and so quickly as "Don Quixote " should have imitators was a matter of course. By 1615, said Cervantes, through the mouth of the bachelor, Carrasco, in the droll argument he has with Don Quixote and Sancho in the Second Part of the tale, more than ten thousand copies of the story had been printed in Spain— an enormous number for that time.

The first edition, published at Madrid in 1605, was followed by an edition at Brussels in 1607, and one at Milan in 1610. In ten years there were issued ten editions of the First Part, and in two years five of the Second Part. In Spain more than five hundred editions of " Don Quixote" have been printed, a great number in England, where they pride themselves on having been among the first to publish and translate the work, while in France they have produced some splendid editions. In Italy, in Portugal, in Germany-which possesses one of the best translations in the version of Tieck-in Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Russia, and even in Turkey, translations have been made.

The first imitation of the work in Castilian is pretty well known at home and abroad. It appeared in 1614, a year before the appearance of the Second Part, written by Cervantes himself. The imitation purported to be written by one Avellaneda. That this was a fictitious name is certain, but the identity of the writer is a problem which has greatly exercised Spanish critics. The weight of opinion is in favor of the name being the disguise of Fray Luis de Aliaga, a low-born man, who was the confessor of the Duke de Lerma, high in power during the reign of Philip III. That Aliaga found assistance among the writers of the period is very probable; and there is only too much reason for suspecting that the great Lope de Vega himself was one of Aliaga's allies.

The affection in which Cervantes is everywhere held, has caused his indignation at this attempt to rob him of his fame to be shared by his readers; and great contempt has been generally expressed for Avellaneda's book. It has even been declared a reproach to Spain that the false "Don Quixote" has been reprinted in that country, and been suffered to retain a place in its national collections. Yet Le Sage, and even some later critics, both French and Spanish, have declared the imitation, if not superior at least equal in merit to the true "Don Quixote."

A second imitation of "Don Quixote" was not published until Cervantes had been in his grave more than one hundred and fifty years. It was published at Seville in 1767, a duodecimo of 277 pages. The title of the book is: "Life and Literary Undertakings of the Most Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Manchuela. First Part. Composed by Don Cristoval Anzarena, Presbyter."

The hero of the book is thus described. "In Manchuela de Jaén, a small town of the beautiful kingdom of Andalusia, lived, from remote times, the ancestors of the hero of this tale. His parents were Blas Panarra and Juana Repulga, living in this town, where they were accounted rich. After having been married a long time, the wife gave birth to a strong and big boy, who was baptized Cirilo, but to whom the popular voice gave the nickname of Quijada, afterwards changed to Quijote, from the fact that one day the child, in gaping, opened his mouth so wide, that he seemed likely to break his jaw (quijada)." The book then goes on to relate the adventures of its hero, which began when he was a boy by running away from school, to the despair of his teachers, who had calculated that he would be a shining example of the excellence of the mode of instruction pursued by them. He was not found, but his various deeds are related at length in the pages which follow the account of his sudden departure from the place where he was receiving his education.

This imitation of Cervantes is ingenious, and its leading qualities are ease in writing, a limpid and clear style, elegance and grace in the abundant descriptions, and fine and pungent satire. The object of the work, beyond doubt, was to make ridiculous the most salient vices of the system of education then in use for youth, and show the sad consequences of such a mode of instruction. The story is not wholly without application to our time, when the mind of youth is burdened with a variety of knowledge badly digested, which, learned with difficulty and soon forgotten, answers no good purpose. Among the personages of the book are an old grandfather, who fills his grandson's skull with fantastical ideas; the father, who like many fathers, thinks his son is a sage; the mother, a personification of goodness, who is the cause of her son's misdeeds; the sexton, who knows nothing and teaches everything; and, finally, the parson, a model of discretion, tact, and judgment, but whose advice, precisely because he is such a man, none of the other personages will follow.

The author promised a Second Part of his story, which, however, was never published.

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THE GREAT UNKNOWN versus THE SMALL KNOWN. The Monthly Packet, London, December. HEN, in 1827, Sir Walter Scott formally revealed his identity with The Great Unknown, he said, “I am the Small Known now." It is nearly sixty years since, and there is a pathetic irony in the unconscious prophecy. He is left now to those whose acquaintance with him dates from "sixty years since." Our maidens vote him dull; our youths open him under compulsion only as a holiday task. At whose door lies the fault? Is The Great Unknown really superseded? Are the characters in Robert Elsmere and the Witch of Prague more powerfully drawn than in Kenilworth and the Heart of Midlothian? Are there no situations in Guy Mannering or Quentin Durward that will compete in excitement with

Treasure Island? Is Romola really a more vivid study of the past than The Abbot or Old Mortality?

What are the elements we look for in a novel? If those elements be character, plot, description, and motive, of what kind should these be, and in what measure are they given by Walter Scott?

The characters should be living. They should be as real to us as our friends and acquaintances; in fact, more real, for the innermost thoughts and springs of action should be revealed in the principal characters, till we know them as we know ourselves. The plot should be conceived as a whole, and unfolded to us with gradually increasing interest. Like Wordsworth's cloud, it should "move altogether if it move at all "; no irrelevant character or circumstance being introduced. The novelist should treat life as the artist treats nature, selecting and combining from endless variety those objects which best suit his purpose.

Character and plot should be inseparable, mutually modifying and developing each other. The descriptions should, by calling the imagination into play, leave an image on the memory as of a place that we have seen. An historical novel should transport us into the past, and make us know the figures of history face to face. In the ideal novel there should be effective situations, striking contrasts, and a full share of both humor and pathos. The old, conventional novel was a love story. It dealt with the passion of the hero and the heroine, the obstacles they met, their final union, and ended for the most part in happiness. The modern novel proceeds frequently on different lines; it may be questioned whether it is as healthy.

As to the motive and aim, they should be, in one word, good; enlisting the sympathies on the side of virtue. This is not saying that the characters are to preach or the author to moralize, for the work, in that case, will defeat its own object. Last, but not least, the novel must entertain, being mentally what a game is physically. The more to be gained from it in mind and character is no doubt the better; still its essence is recreation.

Let us see how far the author of Waverley obeys the canons just laid down. What shall we say of his plots? There is not one novel, not even The Monastery, for which he so humbly apologizes, that is not conceived as a whole; and in none is any character or incident introduced that has not some ultimate bearing on the development of the story. The plot is gradually unfolded, each chapter increasing in interest till we reach the catastrophe.

Scott's characters are, with some exceptions, as alive as if we knew them in the flesh. They are all individual. The same model does duty more than once with Dickens, but among Scott's crowd of figures no two are alike.

There is always an orthodox love-story in the Waverley Novels, in various degrees of subordination to public interest. Humor abounds, though, no doubt, pathos is rare. Yet pathos is there. The last parting between Waverley and Fergus MacIvor, the meeting of Effie and Jeanie Deans in prison, Queen Mary's forced abdication, and Sir Hugh Robsart sorrowing over his daughter, are scenes that few can read without "tears."

As far as motive is concerned, nobody will deny that the influence of Scott's novels is uniformly good and healthy beyond those of others. Without preaching or moralizing, our sympathies are won by virtue. Vice is never palliated, never condoned, never finally triumphant.

In regard to the historical romances, they seem to combine all the good qualities of that form of fiction. Scott admitted the charge of historical inaccuracy. He even gloried in it. Practically, he treated history as Turner treated landscape, sacrificing truth of fact to truth of impression.

All these things being so, why has Walter Scott lost favor, as he undoubtedly has; and how far justly? Not because he

is dull, not because he is historical, not because he is long, not because he is old-fashioned. It seems to me that there are two reasons: His beginnings are tiresome, and his characters drawn from without, not from within. He is not, in fact, analytic. The first reason deters superficial readers. Those readers who are not superficial have nowadays a passion for introspection and analysis; their enjoyment is to dissect character, to watch it in its growth and decay. Yet is the dissection of souls the legitimate end of a novel, considered in its primary aspect as a source of recreation and refreshment? The "Great Unknown," the idol of our parents, now for a season neglected, is really undergoing a reaction of every thought and feeling that tended to his popularity. Reactions, however, do not last. When a generation arises weary of doubt and sick of dissection of its souls, the Waverley Novels will once more be taken from the shelf—and not soon replaced there.

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SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. XIV. THEOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. ANDREW D. WHITE, LL.D., L.H.D. Popular Science Monthly, New York, January. MONG questions on which the supporters of right reason in political and social science have conquered theological opposition only after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on loans. In hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter of our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious. Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, is that of St. Vincent of Serins, that it has been believed in the Church, always, everywhere, and by all, then on no one point may a Christian of these days be more sure than that every savings institution, every loan and trust company, every bank, every loan of capital by an individual, every means by which accumulated capital has been lawfully lent, even at the most moderate interest, to make men workers rather than paupers, is based on deadly sin.

The early evolution of the belief that taking interest for money is sinful, presents a curious working together of metaphysical, theological, and humanitarian ideas.

ment.

In the great centre of ancient Greek civilization, the loaning of money at interest came to be accepted, at an early period, as a condition of productive industry, and no legal restriction was imposed. In Rome there was a long process of develop The greed of creditors in early times led to laws against the taking of interest, but, though these lasted long, the strong practical sense of the Romans, which gave them the empire of the world, substituted finally, for this absolute prohibition, the establishment of rates fixed by law. Yet many of the leading Greek and Roman thinkers opposed this practical settlement of the question, and foremost of all, Aristotle. In a metaphysical way he declared that money is by nature "barren" and that the birth of money from money is, therefore, unnatural." Pluto, Plutarch, both the Catos, Cicero, Seneca, and various other leaders of ancient thought, arrived at much the same conclusion-sometimes from sympathy with oppressed debtors, sometimes from hatred of usurers, sometimes from simple contempt of trade.

From these sources there came into the early Church the germ of a theological theory upon the subject.

But far greater was the stream of influence from the Jewish and Christian sacred books. In the Old Testament stood a multitude of texts condemning usury, the term usury meaning any taking of interest; the law of Moses while it allowed usury in dealing with strangers, forbade it in dealing with Jews. In the New Testament stood the text in St. Luke: Lend, hoping for nothing again." These texts seemed to harmonize with the Sermon on the Mount, and with the most beautiful

characteristic of primitive Christianity-its tender care for the poor and oppressed; hence we find, from the earliest period, the whole weight of the Church brought to bear against the taking of interest for money.

All the great fathers both of the Eastern and Western Churches denounced usury as one of the vilest offenses, and this unanimity of the fathers of the Church, brought about a crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into numberless decrees of popes and councils and kings and legislatures throughout Christendom during more than fifteen hundred years, and the canon law was shaped in accordance with these. These prohibitions were enforced by the Council of Arles in 314 and a modern church apologist insists that every great assembly of the Church, from the Council of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienna in 1311 inclusive, solemnly condemned money lending at interest. The greatest rulers under the sway of the Church-Justinian in the Empire of the East, Charlemagne in the Empire of the West, Alfred in England, St, Louis in France-yielded fully to this dogma.

Nor was this doctrine enforced only by rulers; the people were no less strenuous. In 1390, it was enacted by the city authorities of London that “if any person shall lend, or put into the hand of any person, gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such person shall have the punishment for usurers." And in the same year the Commons prayed the King that the laws of London against usury might have the force of statutes throughout the realm.

The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly hindered by this conscientious policy; and one evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews, so strong in will and acute in intellect, were virtually drawn or driven out of all other industries and professions by the theory that their race, being accursed, was only fitted for the accursed profession of money-lending.

The Reformation inaugurated no change; usury was condemned by Luther, Melancthon, and the English Reformers as uncompromisingly as by the Catholic Church. But Calvin cut through the metaphysical arguments of Aristotle, and characterized the mass of subtleties devised to evade the Scriptures as a "childish game with God." In place of these subtleties there was developed among Protestants a serviceable fictionthe statement that usury means illegal or oppressive interest. With the distinction between these two words thus evolved the tide of battle turned. Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought, could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavorable to economic development. The Catholic Church was in a more difficult position, but the forces of right reason pushed on, and by the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authorities at Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession; and finally, in 1873, there appeared a book, published under authority from the Holy See, allowing the faithful to take moderate interest.

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DEMOGRAPHY.

IN A HUNDRED YEARS. CHARLES RICHET.

It

Revue Scientifique, Paris, December 1 LTHOUGH the science of demography has hitherto busied itself with the present and past only, there is no good reason for it to refrain from a glance at the future. is true, the future must always be more or less uncertain. Nevertheless, while making large allowance for the unforeseen, it is still possible, on the basis of authentic statistics and positive facts, to make a calculation which may be called scientific as to what is in store for the world in a not very distant future. Let us select, for instance, a hundred years from now, or, to use round numbers, the year 2000. What does demography tell us we may anticipate will be the state of the globe in the year named?

We may expect, in the first place, that then the physiological,

and, so to speak, the geological conditions of humanity will not have changed materially. There will be a glacial period hereafter, very probably, but that will not be for some twenty thousand years to come. In a hundred years from now, the earth, the air, the water, and man himself, will be what they are to-day.

Yet, if the human race remains physiologically the same, socially it changes, and very quickly. What will be the numbers a hundred years from now of the different nations which people the earth?

At present, according to the best calculations, there are in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia about 1,450,000,000 people. It is safe to estimate that in the year 2000 this number will have increased to 2,500,000,000.

There are peoples which increase slowly, like the French, for example. There are others which increase rapidly, like those of the United States and Australia. These differences are likely to become greater. It is very probable that the rate of increase among European peoples, with the exception of Russia, will diminish from year to year. In America, both North and South, it is pretty certain that the rate of increase will become larger. In both Americas the births will increase, as well as the immigration. It will be several centuries before the population will be equally dense in America and Europe; but the disproportion between the two, in regard to the number of people to a square mile, will be less in the year 2000 than now. As to European nations, it is evident they will not increase in an equal ratio. Throughout Europe, with the exception of Russia, the density of population is likely a hundred years from now, to be nearly stationary. Emigration will correct any excess in the number of births; and immigration any deficiency of births. Russia is an exception to the rest of Europe, and her population will increase much faster than that of other European peoples. To-day Russia represents nearly two-sevenths of Europe; in a hundred years from now she will represent one-third.

The two civilized nations, then, which will be the greatest powers in the year 2000, will be the United States on one hand, and Russia on the other. Their united population will probably be about 600,000,000, that is, more numerous than the population of Europe will be at that time.

What languages will the peoples speak a hundred years from now? This question is of fundamental importance; for civilization and nationality depend, in great part, on language.

In answering this question, it must be borne in mind that it is almost impossible to destroy the language of a civilized or half-civilized people. It must not be supposed that the small peoples, whose language is spoken by few only, will adopt a language different from their maternal tongue. Nevertheless, it is certain that the languages of the small peoples will be spoken less and less, while the languages of the great peoples will be spoken more and more. With these two factors included, a rigorous demographic calculation makes the number of millions, in round numbers, who will speak each language named below, in the year 2000, as follows:

Counting by numbers alone, the Chinese will have the preeminence; but it is probable that China will remain apart from general civilization. Moreover, the Chinese language is so absurd, with its strange alphabet, its grotesque characters, and its interminable vocabulary, that there is no chance of its becoming general.

There remain, then, the five following languages: English, which will be spoken or understood by 500,000,000; Russian, by 350,000,000; Spanish, by 250,000,000; German and French, each 100,000,000.

It is clear, then, that the English language will be used by many more people than any other; and it has great advan

tages. It is simple, easy to understand, and, if it were not trameled by a ridiculous orthography, or rather pronunciation, it would be very suitable for rapid diffusion.

What will give the English language a marked superiority over the Russian is its Roman alphabet. The Russian alphabet, with its guttural sounds, is outside of current reading for the peoples of Western Europe. The German language has also a special alphabet. It is very probable, however, that when the present affectation for old Germanism has passed away, the Gothic alphabet will be laid aside among the curiosities of other ages. Already, in all scientific works, and in some newspapers, the Roman alphabet has dethroned the Gothic.

Without putting any faith in such chimeras as Volapük, we may hope that the languages now in use, which have the best chances of becoming general, like English and the Latin tongues (classing under one head Spanish, French, and Italian), will fuse together more and more, each borrowing this or that term from the vocabulary of the others.

Assuredly the fusion will not be effected in a century. Save some modifications, the English spoken at New York and London in the year 1992 will be the same as that spoken in those cities to-day. We may, however, dream of, and even hope for, the introduction into the English language, some time in the future, of more and more numerous Latin-that is, French, Spanish, and Italian-expressions.

that the diaries and letters of Marie Bashkirtseff would amply supply what may be lacking. That she was a true genius her pictures attest. They also prove the ardor and vehemence with which she gave herself up to art.

When she was fifteen, she wrote: I have no inclination for anything but painting. One cannot become a great painter without great mechanical toil. At twenty-two I shall be either famous or dead." She worked nine or ten hours a day, took no care of her health, gave up all pleasure. One of the foundations of her moral craziness was an immense vanity and megalomania. These showed themselves at an early age. When she was but three years old, she had aspirations for imaginary grandeur; her dolls were always queens. At the age of five she dressed herself in her mother's laces, and went into the drawing-room with the hope of attracting admiration.

She said: "I am a woman on the outside only, and this outside is devilishly feminine; the rest of me is devilishly something else."

Later she wrote: 'I swear on the Gospel that I will be famous." "I will present society with a woman who will be something, in spite of all the obstacles which society will put in my way."

When she was twenty, she wrote: I am reading Balzac to my own injury, for the time given to reading him would aid me to become another Balzac in painting."

In her bock she declares that she had never really loved anyone, She had so little affection for her family, that when there was no stranger at table, she preferred to dine alone with a book, so that no one might disturb her. Yet she was adored by her family.

Moreover, this young girl who loved neither her mother nor any of her relatives, had, like many another morally crazy person, an extraordinary affection for beasts. "I would prefer," she wrote, "to sce C." (who was in love with her) sick or even dead, rather than lose my dog.”

She did not understand that shrinking modesty, which is

She had attempted, or at least had an idea of, suicide. “If painting does not bring me fame soon, I will kill myself." "I want to kill myself and must do it, although the idea seems stupid and grandiose." "In Russia I tried to commit suicide, but I was afraid. I will kill myself when I am thirty; up to that age one is still young and can hope." Her father, blond, pale, and wicked, was the son of a vigorous man and a sickly woman who died young. Her father's sisters were hunchbacks. Two of her great-grandmothers and two of her aunts died of consumption.

Another woman who was an artist and neurotic, but of a character essentially different from Marie Bashkirtseff, was Julie Hasdeu. She was born at Bucharest in 1869, and died at the age of nineteen, leaving two volumes of prose and poetry. She was extremely precocious. When she was nine years old, she was acquainted with five languages and wrote satires on her professors. At thirteen she was entered at the Sorbonne. While still quite young she had fits of hypochondria, Like Marie Bashkirtseff, she showed a feverish activity, rising at four o'clock in the morning and working by lamplight. Unlike Marie, however, who had parted with all her femininity, Julie Hasdeù preserved all a woman's sweetness. She foresaw she would die young; but she was a believer, very religious, and looked forward to death with pleasure. She was seized with a galloping consumption in the midst of youth, wealth, and happiness. Among her grandparents, one died very young: another was melancholy and misanthropical; her grandfather died a prey to religious exaltation.

Women of genius, as has been judiciously remarked, manifest a masculine tendency in their works and sometimes in their persons. Madame de Staël had the face of a man. George Sand wore a man's dress. Sappho fell in love with women, and her famous poem appears to have been addressed to one of her own sex.

Mary Wollstonecraft, the first to advocate the emancipation of woman, was the daughter of a man morally crazy, and of a woman who was a maniac and a sister of lunatics. Mary kept herself so dirty and unkempt when at school that she was given the name of “philosophical sloven." She was full of neurotic contradictions. Though religious, she called the priests "lazy lice." After having preached free marital union, she was indignant beyond all bounds at Imlay, who deserted her, and, nevertheless, afterwards married Godwin.

George Eliot had a man's countenance, with an enormous head, hair always in disorder, a big nose, thick lips, a heavy jaw, altogether bearing some resemblance to a horse's head. She also was neurotic-so timid that she was frightened at night without any cause. Although she declared herself overwhelmed with grief by the death of Lewes, she married again a few months after, when she was sixty, and her new husband a young man.

As a final instance of neurosis in women of superior intellect, I note the case of Minna Mayländer, who died quite recently in Germany, where she had a high reputation as an author. Her conduct was erratic. She had all the whims and instability of a neurotic person. Always embarrassed pecuniarily, it was no use to help her, for she threw away her money like a millionaire. After being obliged to quit several lodgings in succession, because she could not pay her rent, the people of the house in which she died, unable to keep her for nothing, leased her room over her head. Then she begged to stay in the house until she could find another roof to cover her. The man and wife, who were her landlords, good-naturedly, though

ONE

NE of the greatest philosophers of modern times maintains that the advance of each science is dependent on corresponding advance in other sciences.

[Beginning with the discovery, 230 years ago, by the Jesuit Father Althanasius Kircherus, of microscopic moving, and apparently living, things in blood, pus, putrid meat, milk, etc., Dr. Ruffer traces the progress of bacteriology through the discoveries of Leeuwenhoek in 1695, the experiments of Gay-Lussac, Schulze, Schwann, Pouchet, and others, down to the researches and experiments of Louis Pasteur, who proved that the atmosphere surrounding us contains innumerable microbes and that their spontaneous generation never takes place under any known conditions; and mentions the fact that in many hospitals, the slightest wound, like that of opening a cyst or a small abscess was not unfrequently followed by blood poisoning and death, while women in childbirth died in enormous numbers for the same cause.]

Guided by his own and Pasteur's researches, the English surgeon, Joseph Lister, was led to suppose that blood poisoning following wounds might be due to the presence of living micro-organisms. Resolving to find means for preventing the entrance of the ubiquitous microbe to a wound, he hit upon careful disinfection, not only of the patient's skin, but also of the surgeon's hands, instruments, dressing, ligatures—in fact, everything which might possibly come in contact with the wound during or after the operation. In short, he invented "antiseptic surgery."

It must be remembered that at this time bacteriology did not exist as a science. The micro-organisms causing blood poisoning had never been isolated, and scientific men of the first rank doubted their very existence. Lister's discovery has proved a blessed boon to humanity. By his method, slight operations-which formerly were frequently followed by painful suppuration, and sometimes by erysipelas, pyæmia, and death -may be performed without fear of evil results, and practically without after pain to the patient; fractured limbs may be saved which formerly must have been amputated if the patient's life was not to be sacrificed. Operations on diseased joints, the abdomen, brain, lungs, etc., may now be made which before would most probably have proved fatal.

In lying-in charities the mortality from blood poisoning was formerly often ten per cent., and sometimes much greater. The confinements in most maternities are now conducted on antiseptic principles, and blood poisoning has almost entirely disappeared, the mortality from all causes combined being less than one per cent. An eminent professor has well said:

It is impossible to estimate the matter accurately in figures, but I may say that I believe that many thousands annually have been saved from death by Sir Joseph Lister's system of antiseptic surgery; and the number of those who have been saved from terrible suffering, not necessarily resulting in death, is far larger still, and must amount to hundreds of thousands of cases in the year.

Ferdinand Cohn, a botanist, discovered, in 1857, peculiar glistening bodies in the interior of certain micro-organisms. These bodies, generally called "spores," may be compared to the seeds of plants; they germinate and produce new microorganisms after the death of the microbes that produce them. The discoverer had drawn attention to the fact that these spores resisted the action of external influences, such as heat, cold, and antiseptics, for an almost incredible time; but the importance of this fact was not noted until Koch began his researches on anthrax. Anthrax is a peculiar infectious

disease which proves fatal to a large number of sheep, cattle, and even horses, and which is caused by a specific micro-organism, the bacillus anthracis. There are pasture lands in England where farmers dare not place their sheep or cattle, for there they invariably die of anthrax.

Koch observed that the anthrax bacillus forms spores that resist the action of heat, cold, dryness, and antiseptics for long periods; and that when reintroduced into a suitable medicum they grow into extremely virulent bacilli. An animal afflicted with anthrax contaminates with those bacilli the ground where he grazes, and the bacilli form spores soon after leaving the animal body. A healthy animal, years afterwards perhaps, grazing over the place, inhales some of the anthrax spores or swallows them with its food. If an animal, dead of anthrax, has been buried in a field, numerous spores form in and about the carcass, and find their way to the surface of the ground.

Among the diseases afflicting man and animals, which in some countries-the West Indies, for instance-cause numerous deaths, is that known as tetanus, or lock-jaw, which follows the infliction of wounds. Years ago various observers saw characteristic bacilli in the wounds of men and animals having lock-jaw, but they could not be isolated from other microorganisms. Starting with the fact that the tetanus bacillus contains spores, which resist high temperatures that prove fatal to full-grown bacilli, a Japanese investigator, Dr. Kitasto, placed some of the matter, excised from a wound, in a cultivating medium, heated it for a considerable time, and so killed the foreign microbes and the bacilli of tetanus, while the spores of the latter were unaffected by the heat. When the medium cooled the spores began to grow, and gave an abundant crop of pure tetanus bacilli. Once in possession of pure virus, Dr. Kitasto, with Dr. Behring, extracted from this culture a substance which "vaccinated "animals against tetanus; and finally devised means to cure tetanus in animals even when this disease is actually in progress, and death is imminent.

A man who has once suffered from any infectious disease is for a time, at least, proof against that same disease. Pasteur knowing that even a mild attack is a protection, concluded that if an animal were given a modified form of a specific malady caused by a specific microbe, the animal would be in future proof against attacks of the same micro-organism. He successfully vaccinated fowls against fowl-cholera; and, turning his attention to anthrax, published in 1881 his method of vaccinating animals against this disease, which has been employed with such signal success. Animals are also effectively protected against black-quarter by similar vaccination. The wonderful success of Pasteur's method of treatment of rabies or hydrophobia, is one of the triumphs of science. Before its application, the mortality among people bitten in the face by rabid animals amounted to 80 per cent. From 1885 to '89, out of 593 persons bitten in the face who were inoculated at the Institute Pasteur, the total mortality was 2.23 per cent. Since the foundation of this institute in Paris, similar institutes have been established throughout the world. The reports from Russia, Hungary, Italy, Sicily, Brazil, Turkey, the United States, Roumania, and other countries, confirm the great success of the treatment, and in many the success has been even greater than in Pasteur's hands. Of all the treatments which have ever been invented for the prevention of an infectious disease, not one (vaccinia perhaps excepted) has proved so successful as Pasteur's treatment against rabies.

In addition to Koch's discoveries relating to tuberculosis, there are indications that in a short time bacteriologists will have discovered ways of curing diphtheria with methods based on strictly scientific principles. The important part played by micro-organisms appcars to warrant the establishment in England of an institute specially devoted to bacteriological research, and I have attempted to show that such an institute would prove of immense benefit to science, to health, to agriculture-in fact, to the community at large.