“The most surprising feature about it is, that in the case of almost every institution copied after us, and there are some eighteen or twenty of them in various parts of the world, the income is much larger than ours. At Berlin and St. Petersburg the incomes are four or five times as large as ours, and, excepting Berlin, we are the only Pasteur Institute doing practical work. It is the old story,” said the doctor resignedly, “one sows and another reaps.”
M. ROUX.
There is certainly injustice and short-sightedness in such a state of things. The investigations of Pasteur have taken too heavy a bundle from the load of horrors which humanity carries, to be allowed to be limited for lack of money:
Immunity from infectious diseases, and nothing else is the logical outcome of the Pasteur doctrines, means too 338 much to make economy on the part of purse-holders excusable, when it is a question of funds for the investigations. When men like Doctor Roux and his associates, men trained in the severe Pasteur spirit and passionate for truth, are ready to sacrifice their lives to this work, overcoming the earth’s plagues, money is the last thing they should be wanting. Especially is this true now, when the work on two of the most terrible scourges of humanity—diphtheria and cholera—stands at critical stages.
There is something harshly ironical, too, in the idea that the institution of Louis Pasteur, whose discoveries have, declares Professor Huxley, made good the war indemnity of five thousand million francs paid by France to Germany, should be crippled for funds.
The doctor’s confidences were cut short by an imperative summons from without. I rose to go.
“Take a stroll through the building,” advised he as he said good-by. I followed his advice.