Two Great Discoveries.

Otago Witness, Issue 1917, 13 November 1890, Page 39

Two Great Discoveries.

I The medical celebrities assembled at Berlin recently had before them some particulars respecting two alleged discoveries, which, if they stand the test of experiment, may prove to be of inestimable value. One of these is the alleged discovery, by the eminent bacteriologist, Dr Koch, of a germicide which can destroy the bacillus of tuberculosis. If this discovery prove to be genuine, it may well be hailed with feelings similar to those with which the blind man : hails the surgical operation which restores him his sight. Tubercular consumption in the human subject has always been regarded 'as an incurable disease, which condemns thousands every year to a lingering death : and nothing but a change to a very dry climate in a foreign country has ever been known to check, even for a time, the progress of this fell disease. Among cattle and poultry, tuberculosis is a deeply-rooted and widely-ramified disease, which slays its tens of thousands every year. The feeling of fear that haunted the public mind on account of the prevalence of these diseases was intensified by the confessed impotence of veterinary or medical science to ward off that danger. It was well known that the disease was hereditary; that it was communicable from man to animals, and from animals to man ; and that was about all that was known about it. Our "expert" friends were always wrangling with each other as to whether the milk or meat from a tuberculous beast could be safely used as an article of diet ; and while the meat inspector tried to guard the public against eating of the tuberculous flesh, no one could ever be sure that the milk he was drinking was not loaded with the germs of this deadly disease. But if Dr goch/s dis.ooye.ry proves genuine^

all this waste of human health and life, and all this loss to dairy farmers and stockbreeders in general will be saved for the time to come.

The other discovery is that by M. Roux, and is to the effect that broth made from brewers' grains kills the microbes of Asiatic cholera. Should this discovery also stand the crucial test, it will certainly prove a valuable one too. Medical science has made vast progress during the last half century, but these more recent discoveries, if genuine, will prove equal in value to any discoveries that this science has made during the whole course of the Victorian Era.

The events of the Berlin Conference, however, go to show that there still remains another discovery which medical science has much need to make, though it were only in the interests of its own devotees. That desiderated discovery is, to use a figurative expression, a germicide to kill the bacillus of alcohol. After the conference a grand banquet was got up in honour of the Medical Congress, and the blood of the grape flowed like a mountain stream in full flood. Before the Bachanalian orgie — for it was nothing else — broke up, the medical savants were nearly all weltering in the last; stage of " Gemuthlichkeit," as some of the newspapers euphemistically phrased it. Berlin is situated on the " Spree," and a large proportion of these eminent medicals were then in the same situation. In the present state of our medical science, it is as impossible for medical scientists, as for ordinary mortals, to lie in the lap of Lady Circe without being turned into swine.