life and the way to bring them to an end, there should be a thousand. It should be as much the purpose of civilized governments to protect their citizens in this respect as it is to provide defence against human aggression. Yet it is the fact that this immensely important control of a great and constant danger and injury to mankind is left to the unorganized inquiries of a few enthusiasts. So little is this matter understood or appreciated, that those who are responsible for the welfare of States, with the rarest exceptions, do not even know that such protection is possible, and others again are so far from an intelligent view as to its importance, that they actually entertain the opinion that it would be a good thing were there more disease in order to get rid of the weakly surplus population!
Six weeks ago I was enabled to examine in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the minute spiral thread which has just been discovered and shown to be the cause of the most terrible and widely spread of human diseases, destroying the health and strength of those whom it does not kill and damaging the lives of their children, so that it has been justly said that this malady and the use of alcohol as a beverage are together responsible for more than half the disease and early death of the mature population of Europe. For more than thirty years a few workers, here and there, have been searching for this parasite and the means of suppressing the awful curse of which it is the instrument. It would have been discovered many years ago had greater value been set on the inquiries which lead to such discoveries by those who direct the public expenditure of civilized States. And now the complete suppression of this dire enemy of humanity is as plain
