Dr. Roux sums up this splendid result in the following modest words: "Il ne suffit pas de donner de l'anti-toxine, il faut la mettre au bon endroit."
The significance and far-reaching application of this most important discovery cannot easily be overestimated. Hitherto the preparation of an anti-toxin has been the chief point considered, but Dr. Roux and his able coadjutor, M. A. Borrel, have shown how great may be the results which attend its method of administration, and have opened up an entirely new direction for investigation.
Although the subject of immunity is not, as we have seen, by any means wholly a latter-day creation, yet its approach and consideration from a modern point of view, assisted by the resources and equipment provided by modern scientific methods, justifiably entitles the nineteenth century to claim it as its own discovery.
However brilliant and successful the labours may be of those who will follow in the future, subsequent generations will know how to venerate those great leaders of scientific thought, amongst whom we must rank Pasteur, to whose genius the world owes so great a debt of gratitude, and the vast extent of whose labours cannot be adequately measured at the present day by reason of the restricted scientific horizon which encircles public opinion in this country.
THE END
PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
PRINTERS
Footnotes
[1] Since the above was written, the first international conference of the Central Committee for the Prevention of Consumption has been held in Berlin. The official report of the English National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis was presented to the Congress, and the encouraging announcement was made that the Corporations of Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool had made expectoration in tramcars a punishable offence; and that the Glamorganshire County Council had passed a bye-law providing as penalty for expectoration in public buildings a fine of £5, which enactment had been sanctioned by the Secretary for the Home Department.
[2] See "Sunshine and Life."