AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 3600, 14 April 1886, Page 4

AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

♦ The French doctors are about to try an extremely interesting, and it may be a very memorable experiment. Although the Germans call consumption Die Englische Krankheit, as it our insular constitutions had a special predisposition for it, yet it is well known that the French also suffer severely. In Paris alone the mortality from phthisis m a couple of months has amounted to more than a thousand. It is proposed to get subscriptions for a series of experiments, to be conducted ov a large scale over a considerable area and for .i period sufficiently prolonged to make the results trustworthy. The principle of inocu'atiou, which, under M. Pasteur's recent discoveries, has been received with such extraordinary favout by French professional men, is to be tested m this new direction. The attenuated virus will be communicated to such animals ac seem likely subjects for the experiment, and the result will be awaited with extraordinary interest. The influences o£ climate will bo tested by the establishment of different Stations for these tentative researches and operations. Thus it is proposed to have one on the northern coast near Boulogne, another m the warmer temperature of the Riviera ; and to study all the varieties ol result which may be obtained by the location of these little hospitals on monntait and valley, seashore and inland, wood and plain. Records would be kept of the differ ent experiments, and a journal devoted t< chronicling them. Several of the mosi .eminent French specialists, and notably Doctors Cornil, Bouchard, Potain, anc Grancher, have alarady promised their aid and 3000f. has already been contributed The society, addressing itself chiefly t< experiments on live animals by inoculation •would also study to effect the alleviation o phthisis by the destruction of microbes.