Chapter VII: Part 7

The substance which he employed was the tungstate of calcium. Taking crystals of this chemical compound, he spread the same over a cloth or paper screen, and used that screen to catch and convert the invisible images carried against it by the X-rays. To his surprise, his experiment was completely successful. All that is needed in this case is the cathode light, the object to be examined (as for instance the hand), and the screen treated with tungstate of calcium. The observer looks through the screen, or into it, and sees _with the unaided eye_ the invisible interior parts of the object examined, held between the screen and the cathode light. The invisible rays take the image of the interior parts of an opaque object, and carry that image to the screen, where it is reconverted into visibility and delivered to the eye of the observer, without the aid of any instrument at all! It is on this simple principle that Edison has invented his surgical and physiological lamp. The announcement is that with this lamp the surgeon may look through the calcium tungstate screen and examine, for example, the fractured bones of the hand, and set them perfectly by actual inspection of the parts with his eye!

What then _is_ the cathode ray? At the present time its nature is not understood. That it is a form or mode of motion goes with the saying--unless it should be presently shown that all the imponderable forces are really _material_ in their nature; that is, that they are an inconceivably fine and attenuated form of matter in varying manifestations.

The cathode rays are not light. They are not sound. They are not electricity or magnetism. They are not heat. They are not any of the known forms of force. They seem to be a new transformation of some one or more of the known agents. It has long been observed that _motion_ is accompanied with _sound_, and that motion also, if increased, becomes manifest in _heat_. It is known that heat is convertible into light, and light into electricity.

It is possible that at the bottom of all these phenomena lies the force of gravitation. This force is absolute and universal. All the others are partial and limited. All the others, even the newly discovered cathode rays, are subject to obstruction by certain forms of matter; that is, to them certain forms of matter are opaque. But gravitation knows no opacity in the universe. No atom of matter is exempt from its sway. It streams through all obstructive media as though such media did not exist. It would appear that heat, light, electricity, sound, the cathode rays, and all other forms of force in nature are probably variations, and as it were limited expressions and manifestations, of _the one supreme force_ that supports the constitution of the physical universe; and that one supreme force is _gravitation_!

Stages in Biological Inquiry.

THE NEW INOCULATION.

Any account of the scientific progress of this century which omits the name of Louis Pasteur would be lamentably incomplete. In that part of science which relates strictly to human life and the means of preserving it, the work of this great man must be placed in the first rank. Indeed, we believe that no other stride in biological investigation from the beginning of time has been so great in its immediate and prospective results as has been the increment contributed by Pasteur and his contemporary Koch. The success of these two experimental philosophers grew out of the substitution of a new theory for one that had hitherto prevailed respecting some of the fundamental processes in living matter.

Up to about the close of the third quarter of this century, the belief continued to prevail in the possibility of the propagation and production of germ life without other germ life to precede it. It was held that fermentation is not dependent upon living organisms, and that fermentation may be excited in substances from which all living germs have been excluded. This belief led to the theory of _abiogenesis_ so-called--a term signifying the production of life without life to begin with.

The question involved in this theory was hotly debated by philosophers and scientists in the Sixties and Seventies. The first great work of Pasteur in biological investigation was his successful demonstration of the impossibility of spontaneous generation. About 1870, he became a careful experimenter with the phenomena of fermentation. As his work proceeded, he was more convinced that fermentation can never occur in the absence and exclusion of living germs; and this view of the deep-down processes in living matter has now been accepted as correct.

The next stage in the work of Pasteur was the discovery that certain substances, such as glycerine, are products of fermentation. From this foundation firmly established he passed on to consider the phenomena of disease. He had been, in the first place, a teacher in a normal school at Paris. In 1863, when he was thirty-nine years of age, he was a professor of geology. Afterward he had a chair of chemistry at the Sorbonne. In 1856 we find him experimenting with light, and after that he turned to biological investigations. This led him to the results mentioned above, and presently to the discovery that the contagious and infectious diseases with which men and the lower animals are affected are in general the results of processes in the system that are nearly analagous to fermentation, and that such diseases are therefore traceable ultimately to the existence of living germs.

This view of the case brought Pasteur to a large and general investigation of bacteria. The bacterium may be defined as a microscopic vegetable organism; or it may be called an _animal_ organism; for in the deep-down life of germs there is not much difference between vegetable and animal--perhaps no difference at all. The bacterium is generally a jointed rod-like filament of living matter, and its native world seems to be any putrefying organic substance.

Bacteria are the smallest of microscopic organisms. They are widely diffused in the natural world, existing independently and also in a parasitical way, in connection with larger forms of organic life. They multiply with the greatest rapidity. On the whole, the bacterium fulfills its vital offices in two ways, or with two results; first, _fermentation_, and secondly, _disease_.

To this field of inquiry Pasteur devoted himself with the greatest assiduity. He began to investigate the diseased tissue of animals, and was rewarded with the discovery of the germs from which the disease had come. It was found that the bacteria of one disease are different from those of another disease, or in a word that the microscopic organisms which produce morbid conditions in animals are differentiated into genera and species and varieties, in the same manner as are the animals, birds and fishes, of the world. A new realm of life invisible save by the aid of the microscope, began to be explored, and practical results began to follow.

Pasteur at length announced his ability to _produce_ infectious diseases by inoculation; and of this his proofs and demonstrations, were complete. In the next place he announced his ability to _counteract_ the ravages, of certain classes of diseases (those called zymotic) by inoculating the animal suffering therefrom with what he called an "attenuated" or "domesticated" virus of the given disease.

The matter first came to a practical issue by the inoculation of well animals with the attenuated virus. The animals so treated became _immune_; that is, exempt from the infection of the given disease. Pasteur gave public demonstrations in the fields near Paris, using the disease called splenic fever, and sheep as the subjects of his experimentation. The whole civilized world was astonished with the results. The tests were conducted in such a way as to preclude the possibility of error. It was shown, in a word, that by the simple process of inoculating well animals with the modified poison the infectious disease might be avoided.

It were long to tell the story of the experimentation and discovery that now followed. The last quarter of the century has been fruitful in the greatest results. The bacilli of one disease after another have been discovered, and the means have been invented of defending the larger animal life from the ravages of microscopic organisms.

But what is an "attenuated" virus? Pasteur and other scientists have shown that by the inoculation of suitable material, such as a piece of flesh, with the poison of a given disease, the bacteria on which that disease depends rapidly multiply and diffuse themselves through the substance. If poison be taken from the _first_ body of infected material and carried to _another_, that other becomes infected; and from that the third; from the third the fourth, and so on to the tenth generation.

It was noticed, however, that with each transference of the virus to a new organic body the bacilli were modified somewhat in form and activity. They became, so to speak, less savage. The bacterium which at the beginning had been for its savagery a wolf, became in the second body a cur; then a hound; then a spaniel; and then a diminutive lapdog! The bacteria were thus said to be "domesticated;" for the process was similar to the domestication of wild animals into tame. The virus was said to be "attenuated;" that is, made thin or fine; that is, its poisonous and death-dealing quality, was so reduced as to make it comparatively innocuous.

If after the process of attenuation was complete--if after the bacteria were once thoroughly domesticated and the poison produced by them be then introduced into a well subject, that subject would indeed become diseased, but so mildly diseased as scarcely to be diseased at all. In such a case the result was of a kind to be called in popular language a mere "touch" of the disease. In such case the severe ravages of the malady would be prevented; but the subject would be rendered incapable of taking the disease a second time.

On this line of fact and theory Pasteur successfully pressed his work. One disease after another was investigated. It was demonstrated in the case of both the lower animals and men that a large number of maladies and plagues might be completely disarmed of their terrors by the process of inoculation. The name of Pasteur became more and more famous. The celebrated Pasteur Institute was founded at Paris, under the patronage of the French Government, and in some sense under the patronage of the whole world. To this establishment diseased subjects were taken for treatment, and here experimentation was carried on over a wide range of facts.

The value of the results attained can hardly be overestimated. The fear which mankind have long entertained on account of plagues and epidemics, and the loss which the animal industries of the world have sustained, were largely abated. As yet the use of the Pasteur methods for the prevention and cure of disease is by no means universal; but the knowledge which has come of his investigations and of the results of them has diffused itself among all civilized nations, and the hygienic condition of almost every community has been most favorably affected by the new knowledge which we possess of bacteria and of the means of destroying them.

Pasteur, whose recent death has been mourned by the best part of mankind, was an explorer and forerunner. His industry in his chosen field of investigation was prodigious. When he was already nearly seventy years of age, he undertook the investigation of hydrophobia, with the purpose of discovering, if he might, the germ of that dreaded disease, thus preparing a method for inoculation against it.

Hydrophobia is one of the most subtle diseases ever known. So obscure and uncertain are its phenomena that many able men have been led to doubt the _existence_ of such a disease! The mythological origin of the malady in the supposed influence of a dog-star seemed to strengthen the view that hydrophobia, as a specific disease, does not exist. It is undeniably true that the great majority of the cases of so-called rabies are pure myths. Under investigation they melt away into nothing but alarm and fiction. However, there appeared to be a residue of actual hydrophobia, though the disease as tested by its name exists in fancy rather than fact.

In any event, Pasteur began to investigate hydrophobia, and at length discovered the bacilli which produce it. At least he found in animals affected with rabies, notably in the spinal marrow of such animals, minute living organisms, having the form of thread-like animalculæ, with heads at one end. The microscope showed also among these thread-like bodies other organisms that were like small circular black specks, or disks.

The next step in the work was to test the result by inoculating a well animal with these bodies. Pasteur selected rabbits for his experimentation. When the experiment was made, the inoculated rabbit was presently attacked with the disease, and soon died in spasms. The repetition of the experiment was attended with like results.

The philosopher next tried his established method of domesticating, or attenuating, the poison. The spinal cord of a rabid dog was obtained, and with this the first rabbit was inoculated. In about two weeks it took hydrophobia. Hereupon the spinal cord was extracted, and the second rabbit was inoculated; then the third; then the fourth, and so on. It was observed, however, that at each stage the intensity of the disease was in this way strangely increased; but the period of inoculation became shorter and shorter.

It was next found that by preserving the spinal cords of the animals that had died of the disease--by preserving them in dry tubes--the poison gradually lost its power. At last the virus seemed to die altogether. Then the experiment of inoculating against the disease was begun. A dog was first inoculated with dead virus. No result followed. Then he was inoculated with stale virus, and then with other virus not so stale. It was found that by continuing this process the animal might be rendered wholly insusceptible to the disease.

The next step was the human stage of experimentation. It was in July of 1885 that Pasteur first employed his method on a human subject. A boy had been bitten and lacerated by a rabid dog. The inoculation was thought to prove successful. Soon afterward some bitten children were taken from the United States to Paris, and were treated against the expected appearance of hydrophobia. Others came from different parts of the continent. Within fourteen months more than two thousand five hundred subjects were treated, and it is claimed that the mortality from hydrophobia was reduced to a small per cent of what it had been before.

It should be said, however, that neither have the results arrived at by Pasteur respecting the character of rabies been so clear, nor have his experiments on subjects supposed to be poisoned with the disease been so successful as in the case of other maladies. It remains, nevertheless, to award to Louis Pasteur _the first rank_ among the bacteriologists of our day, as well as a first place among the philanthropists of the century. Only Robert Koch, of Germany, is to be classed in the same list with him.

KOCH'S BATTLE WITH THE INVISIBLE ENEMY.

There was a great _negative_ reason for the success of the World's Columbian Exposition. The cholera did NOT come! It is quite true that there is no _if_ in history; but IF the cholera had come, IF the plague had broken out in our imperial Chicago, what would have become of the Columbian Exposition? Certainly the Man of Genoa would have had to seek elsewhere for a great international gathering in his honor.

The cholera did not arrive, although it was expected. The antecedent conditions of its coming were all present; but it came not. The American millions discerned that the dreaded plague was at bay; a feeling of security and confidence prevailed; the summer of 1893 went by, and not a single case of Asiatic cholera appeared west of the Alleghenies. We are not sure that a single case appeared on the mainland of North America. And why not?

It was because the increasing knowledge of mankind, reinforced with philanthropy and courage, had drawn a line north and south across Western Europe, and had said, _Thus far and no farther_. Indeed, there were several lines drawn. The movement of cholera westward from the Orient began to be obstructed even before it reached Germany. It was obstructed in Italy. It was obstructed seriously on the meridian of the Rhine. It was obstructed almost finally at the meridian of London. It was completely and gloriously obstructed at the harbor of New York.

Civilization has never appeared to a better advantage than in the building of her defences against the westward invasion of cholera. There have been times within two decades of the present when in the countries east of the Red Sea 3000 people have died daily of the Asiatic plague. Egypt has been ravaged. The ports of the Mediterranean have been successfully invaded. Commerce, reckless of everything except her own interests, has taken the infection on shipboard, and sailed with it to foreign lands, as though it were a precious cargo! Importers, anxious for merchandise, have stood ready to receive the plague, and plant it without regard to consequences. But in the midst of all this, a new power has arisen in the world, and standing with face to the east, has drawn a sword, before the circle of which even the spectral shadow of cholera has quailed and gone back! Humanity might well break out in rhapsody and jubilee over this great victory.

Among the personal agencies by which cholera has been excluded from Europe and America, first and greatest is Dr. Robert Koch, of Berlin. He, more than any other one man, has contributed to the glorious exemption. Dr. Koch, now by the favor of his Emperor, Baron Koch, is one of those heroic spirits who go before the human race exploring the route, casting up a highway and gathering out the stones. Thus shall the feet of the oncoming millions be not bruised and their shouts of joy be not turned to lamentation.

Robert Koch was born at Klausthal, in the Hartz mountains, on the eleventh of December, 1843. He is a German of the Germans. In his youth he was a student of medicine at Göttingen, where at the age of twenty-three he took his first degree. He was by nature and from his boyhood a devotee of science. For about ten years he practiced his profession, but continued his studies with indefatigable zeal. The investigations of Pasteur had already filled Europe with applause when Koch, following on the same lines of scientific exploration, began to enlarge the borders of knowledge. He became a bacteriologist of the first rank. He began to investigate the causes and nature of contagion; but as late as 1876 his name was still unknown in the cyclopædias.

Koch was twenty-one years the junior of Pasteur; but his enthusiasm and genius now bore him rapidly to a fame as great as that of his predecessor. His first remarkable achievement was a demonstration of the cause and cure of splenic fever in cattle. He showed, just as Pasteur had done in similar cases, that the plague in question was due to the specific poison of a bacterium, and that the disease might be cured by inoculation against it. This he proceeded to do, and the demonstration and good work brought him to the attention of the old Emperor. Dr. Koch was made a member of the Imperial Board of Health in Berlin.

A greater discovery was already at the door. Dr. Koch began a careful investigation into the nature of consumption. His discovery of the germ of splenic fever, and that of chicken cholera, as well as the general results in this direction in other laboratories of Europe, led him to the conjecture that consumption also is a zymotic or bacterial disease. His inquiry into this subject began in 1879, and extended to March of 1882. On that day, in a paper before the Physiological Society of Berlin, he announced the discovery of the _tubercle bacillus_. He was able to demonstrate the existence of the germ of consumption, and to describe its methods of life, as well as the character of his ravages.

Here then at last was laid bare the true origin of the most fatal disease which has ever afflicted mankind. He who has not informed himself with respect to the almost universal prevalence of consumption among the nations of the earth, or taken note of the mortality from that dreaded enemy, by which nearly one-sixth of the human race sooner or later perishes, will not have realized the awful character of this enemy. To attack such a foe, to force him into a corner, even as Siegfried did the Grendel in his cavern, was an achievement of which the greatest of mankind might well be proud.

The discovery of the bacillus of consumption by no means assured the cure of the disease; but it foretokened the time when a cure would be found. This prophecy, though it has not yet been clearly fulfilled, is, in the closing years of the century, in process of fulfillment. The enemy does not readily yield; but such has been the gain in the contest that already within the last twenty years the mortality from consumption of the lungs has fallen off more than forty per cent! Much of this gain has been made by the reviving confidence of human beings that sooner or later tuberculosis would be destroyed. Hygiene has done its part; and other circumstances have conduced to the same result. Though neither Dr. Koch nor any other man living has been able as yet positively to meet and vanquish consumption in open battle, yet the goblin has in a measure been robbed of his terrors. He is no longer boastful and victorious over the human race.

After the discovery of the tubercle bacillus, the fame of Robert Koch became world-wide. In the following year he was made a privy councilor, and was placed in charge of an expedition organized by the German government to go into Egypt and India for the investigation of the causes of Asiatic cholera. The expedition was engaged in this work for nearly a year. Koch pursued his usual careful method of scientific experimentation. He exposed himself to the contagion of cholera, but his science and fine constitution stood him well in hand, and he returned unharmed.

It was in May of 1884 that he was able to announce the discovery of the _coma bacillus_, that is, the bacterium of cholera. Here, again he had the enemy at bay. For long ages the Asiatic plague had ravaged the countries of the East with little hindrance to its spread or fatality. The disease would appear as an epidemic at intervals and sweep all before it. The wave of death would roll on westward from country to country, until it would subside, as if by exhaustion, in the far west. Two or three times within the century cholera had been fatally scattered through American cities. It had spread westward along the rivers of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and into country districts, where villages and hamlets were decimated.

The discovery of Koch was a virtual proclamation that this ruin of mankind from the Asiatic plague should cease. The knowledge that the disease was due to a living bacterium, that without the germ and the spread of the germ the plague could not exist, was a virtual announcement that in the civilized countries it should _not_ any longer exist.

The discoverer was now set high in the estimation of mankind. Imperial Germany best of all countries rewards its benefactors. France is fascinated with adventure; Great Britain with slaughter; America with bare political battles; but Germany sees the true thing, and rewards it. Koch was immediately placed beyond want by his government, and titles and honors came without stint.

The Empire would fain have such a man at the seat of power. Dr. Koch was, in 1885, made a professor in the University of Berlin. The new chair of Hygiene was created for him, and he was made Director of the Hygienic Institute. It was in this capacity that armed with influence and authority and having the resources of the government virtually at his disposal, he directed in the great scientific work by which a bulwark against cholera was drawn almost literally across Europe, and was defended as if with the mounted soldiery of science and humanity. True enough, cholera managed to plant itself in Italy in 1886, and in Hamburg in 1892, and the plague was scattered into several German towns. But it came to Hamburg by water, not by land. It did there during the summer a dreadful work, but the battle was the Waterloo of the enemy. Not again while the present order continues will it be possible for the dreaded epidemic to get the mastery of a great German city.

It was to be anticipated that Dr. Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacillus would lead him on to the discovery of a cure for tuberculosis. Very naturally his thought on this subject was borne in the direction of inoculation. That method had been used by Pasteur and by himself in the case of other infectious diseases. Why should it not be employed in consumption? If the "domestication," so-called, of the virus of splenic fever and the use of the modified poison as an antiseptic preventive of the disease was successful, as it had been proved to be, why should this not be done with the attenuated virus of consumption?

The last five years of the ninth decade were spent by Dr. Koch in experimentation on this subject. He found that the tubercular poison might be treated in the same manner as the poison of other infectious diseases. He experimented with methods for domesticating the bacillus of consumption, and reached successful results. On the fourteenth of November, 1890, he published in a German medical magazine at Berlin a communication on a possible remedy for tuberculosis. He had prepared a sort of lymph suitable for hypodermic injection, and with this had experimented on a form of _external_ tuberculosis called lupus. This disease is a consumption of the skin and adjacent tissues. It is a malady almost as dreadful as consumption of the lungs, but is by no means frequent in its occurrence. It is found only at rare intervals by the medical practitioner.

Dr. Koch had demonstrated that lupus is a true tuberculosis--that the germ which produces it is the same bacillus which produces consumption of the lungs. He accordingly directed his effort to cases of lupus, treating the patients with hypodermic injections which he had prepared from the modified form of the tubercular poison. He was successful in the treatment, and was able to announce, to the joy of the world, that he had discovered a cure for lupus; and the announcement went so far as to express a belief in the salutary character of the remedy in the treatment of consumption of the lungs.

Dr. Koch, however, with the usual caution of the true men of science, did not announce his tuberculin, or lymph, as a cure for pulmonary consumption. He did not even declare that it was positively a remedy for the other forms of tuberculosis, but did announce his cure of cases of lupus by the agent which he had prepared. The world, after its manner, leaped at conclusions, and the newspapers of two continents, in their usual office of disseminating ignorance, trumpeted Koch's discovery as the end of tubercular consumption.

In January of 1891, Dr. Koch published to the world the composition of his remedy. It consists of a glycerine extract prepared by the cultivation of tubercle bacilli. The lymph contains, as it were, the poisonous matter resulting from the life and activity of the tubercle bacterium. The fluid is used by hypodermic injection, and when so administered produces both a general and local reaction. The system is powerfully affected. A sense of weariness comes on. The breathing is labored. Nausea ensues; and a fever supervenes which lasts for twelve or fifteen hours. It is now known that the action of the remedy is not directly against the tubercle bacilli, but rather against the affected tissue in which they exist. This tissue is destroyed and thrown off by the agency of the lymph; being destroyed, it is eliminated and cast out, carrying with it the bacteria on which the disease depends.

The results which have followed the administration of Koch's lymph for consumption of the lungs have not met the expectation of the public; but something has been accomplished. Ignorant enthusiasm has meanwhile subsided, and scientific men in both Europe and America are pressing the inquiry in a way which promises in due time the happiest results.

ACHIEVEMENTS IN SURGERY.

It will not do to disparage the work of the ancients. The old world, long since fallen below the horizon of the past, had races of men and individuals who might well be compared with the greatest of to-day. In a general way, the ancients were great as thinkers and weak as scientists. They were great in the fine arts and weak in the practical arts. This is true of the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, even of the Aztecs and the Peruvians.

The art work of these old peoples, whether in sculpture, painting or poetry, surpassed, if it did not eclipse, corresponding periods of modern times. In some of the practical arts the old races were proficient. In architecture, which combines the æsthetic and practical elements, the man of antiquity was at least the equal of the man of the present. In one particular art--a sort of humanitarian profession based on natural science and directed to the preservation of life--the ancients had a measure of proficiency. This art was surgery. The surgeon was even from the beginning, and he will no doubt be even to the end.

The great advance which has been made in surgical science and practice is shown in two ways: first, in a great increase of courage, by which the surgeon has been led on to the performance of operations that were hitherto considered rash, audacious or impossible; and secondly, by the immunity which the surgeon has gained in the treatment of wounds through the increased knowledge he possesses of putrefaction and the means of preventing it. It were hard to say whether the surgeon's increase of skill and courage in performing operations has equalled his increased skill in the after treatment of wounds.

These improvements have all proceeded from scientific investigation. They have come of the application of scientific methods to the treatment of surgical diseases. With the investigations of Pasteur and the development of the science of bacteriology, it was seen at a glance how large an influence such investigation must have in the work of the surgeon. The publication of Tyndall's "Essays on the Floating Matter of the Air in Relation to Putrefaction and Infection," in 1881, gave a great impulse to the new practice; but that practice had been already confirmed by the great and original work of Sir Joseph Lister, an English surgeon who as early as 1860 had introduced the antiseptic method of bandaging.

It is within the last forty years that the greatest marvels of modern surgery have been performed. It would seem that no part of the human body is now beyond the reach of surgical remedy. Almost every year has witnessed some new and daring invasion of the fortress of life with a view to saving it. Old opinions with respect to what parts of the human economy are really vital have been abolished; and a new concept of the relation of life to organism has prevailed.

Until recently it was supposed that the peritoneal cavity and the organs contained therein, such as the stomach, the liver, the bowels, etc., could not be entered by the surgeon without the certain result of death. To do so at the present time is the daily experience in almost every great hospital. The complexity of civilization has inflicted all manner of hurts on the human body, and the malignity of disease has spared no part. It was supposed that the cranial cavity could not be entered or repaired without producing fatal results. It was taken for granted that certain organs could not be touched, much less treated capitally, without destroying the subject's life. But one exploration has followed another and one successful adventure has been succeeded by another still more successful until the surgeon's work is at the present time performed within a sphere that was until recently supposed to be entirely beyond his reach.

As to the liver, that great organ is freely examined and is treated surgically with considerable freedom. This is true also of the stomach, which until recently was supposed to be entirely beyond the surgeon's touch. Within the last two decades sections of the stomach have been made and parts of the organ removed. Not a few cases are recorded in which subjects have fully recovered after the removal of a part of the stomach. Sections of the intestinal canal have also been made with entire success. Several inches of that organ have in some cases been entirely removed, with the result of recovery! The spleen has been many times removed; but it has been recently noted that a decline in health and probably death at a not distant date generally follow this operation.

The disease called appendicitis has either in our times become wonderfully frequent or else the improved methods of diagnosis have made us acquainted with what has long been one of the principal maladies of mankind. The _appendix vermiformis_ seems to be a useless remnant of anatomical structure transmitted to us from a lower animal condition. At least such is the interpretation which scientists generally give to this hurtful and dangerous tube-like blind channel in connection with the bowels. That it becomes easily inflamed and is the occasion of great loss of life can not be doubted. Its removal by surgical operation is now regarded as a simple process which even the unlearned surgeon, if he be careful and talented, may safely perform. The surgical treatment of appendicitis has become so common as to attract little or no notice from the profession. Even the country neighborhood no longer regards such a piece of surgery as sensational.

The use of surgical means in the cure, that is the removal, of tumors, both external and internal, has been greatly extended and perfected. The surgeon now carries a quick eye for the tumor and a quick remedy for it. In nearly all cases in which it has not become constitutional he effects a speedy cure with the knife. The cancerous part is cut away. It has been observed that as the recent mortality from consumption has decreased cancerous diseases have become more frequently fatal. Whether or not there be anything vicarious in the action of these two great maladies we know not; but statistics show that since the beginning of Pasteur's discoveries the one disease has diminished and the other increased in almost a corresponding ratio. Meanwhile, however, surgery has opposed itself not only to cancers but to all kinds of tumors, until danger from these sores has been greatly lessened. The removal of internal tumors such as the ovarian, is no longer, except in complicated and neglected cases, a matter of serious import. Such work is performed in almost every country town, and the amount of human life thus rescued from impending death is very great. The work of lithotomy is not any longer regarded with the dread which formerly attended it. In fact, every kind of disease and injury which in its own nature is subject to surgical remedy has been disarmed of its terror. The eye and the ear and all of the more delicate organs have become subject to repair and amendment to a degree that may well excite wonder and gratify philanthropy.

But it is not only in the actual processes of surgery that this great improvement in human art may be noted. The treatment of wounds with respect to their cure by preserving them from bacterial and other poisons has been so greatly improved that it is now regarded almost as a crime to permit suppuration and other horrible processes which were formerly supposed to be the necessary concomitants of healing. The hospital, whether military or civil, was formerly a scene that might well horrify and make sick a visitant. It was putrefaction everywhere. It was stench and poisonous effluvia. The conditions were such as to make sick if not destroy even those who were well. How then could the injured sufferers escape?

It is one of the crowning glories of our time that no such scene now exists in any civilized country. No such will ever exist again, unless science should lose its grip on the human mind and the civilized life subside into barbarism. The surgeon would now be held in ill-repute that should permit to any considerable degree the processes of putrefaction to take place in a wound of which he has had the care. The introduction of antiseptic and aseptic methods has made him a master in this respect. The skillful surgeon bids defiance to the microbes that hover in swarming millions ravenous for admission to every hurt done to the human body. To them a wound is a festival. To them a sore is a royal banquet to which through the invisible realm a proclamation goes forth, "Come ye! Come to the banquet which death is preparing out of life!" All this the modern surgeon disappoints with a smile and a wave of his hand. The invisible swarms of invading animalculæ are swept back. Not a single bacterium can any longer enter the most inviting wound while the surgeon stands ready with drawn sword to defend the portals of life.

Great Religious Movements.

DEFENCE ON NEW LINES.

In a period so intensely active and progressive as the nineteenth century has been, in politics, science and literature, it would have been surprising if the church had remained inert, wrapped like a mummy in the cerements of the past. At the beginning of the century, there were voices on all hands loudly proclaiming that it was dead; that it was antiquated and obsolete; that it had lost touch with the life of the time, that it was a relic of exploded superstition; and as a great writer said, had fallen into a godless mechanical condition, standing as the lifeless form of a church, a mere case of theories, like the carcass of a once swift camel, left withering in the thirst of the universal desert. That in certain circles there was ground for such reproach is sufficiently proved. Materialism had crept into its colleges, sapping away their spiritual life and driving young men either into Atheism or into the Roman Catholic Communion. Such activity as it had, was in the evangelical circles only The common people still listened eagerly to Wesley's successors and were intensely in earnest in the Christian life and work. It was at the top that the tree was dying, where the currents of the philosophy of Voltaire struck the branches, and where Hume's scorching radicalism blighted its leaves. In the universities, and the clubs, not in the workshops, was religion scorned and contemned.

There was soon, however, to be a quickening of the dry bones. The spirit of the time--the zeit-geist--began to move in the Church. It was the spirit of investigation, of scientific inquiry, of rigorous test. The older preachers and religious authorities still droned about the duty of defending the faith "once for all" delivered to the saints. In spite of their protests, the younger men would go down into the crypt of the Church, and examine the foundations of the building. They could not be kept back by authoritative assurances that the stones were sound, and were well and truly laid. The hysterical protests against the irreverence of examination fell on deaf ears. The answer was the simple insistance on investigation. The very reluctance to permit it was an indication that it would not bear investigation.

At the opening of the century, this idea, expressed in varying forms, was rapidly becoming prevalent. The citadel of the Church was assaulted, by some with ferocity, and by others with scorn and contempt. The defence was on the old lines of denunciation of the wickedness of the assailants, of vituperative epithets, and of the assumption of special and divine illumination. The issue of the conflict would not have been doubtful, had it been continued with these tactics. The Church would have been relegated to the limbo of superstition and the hide-bound pedantry of ecclesiasticism, if new defenders on new principles had not entered the lists. Reinforcement came from a band of philosophic thinkers of whom Wordsworth and Coleridge were the pioneers. The influence of both these men was underestimated at the time. They appeared weak and ineffective, but the ideas to which they gave expression, entered the minds of stronger men, who applied them with more vigorous force. The Church, Coleridge declared, as Carlyle interprets him, was not dead, but tragically, asleep only. It might be aroused and might again become useful, if only the right paths were opened. Coleridge could not open the paths, he could but vaguely show the depth and volume of the forces pent up in the Church; but he insisted that they were there, that eternal truth was in Christianity, and that out of it must come the light and life of the world. As his little band of hearers listened to him, they saw the first faint gleams of the light which was to illumine the world and make the darkness and degradation of the materialistic philosophy an impossibility to the devout mind. Thus he stood at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as Erasmus stood at the beginning of the sixteenth, perceiving and proclaiming the existence of truths which others were to apply to the needs of the time.

To ascertain precisely in what form the forces of Christianity existed and how they might be applied to nineteenth century life, became early in the nineteenth century the problem on which the best thought of the time was concentrated. Coleridge's unshaken conviction that it was solvable, inspired many with courage. Whately, Arnold, Schleiermacher, Bunsen, Ewald, Newman, Hare, Milman, Thirlwall and many others, approached it from different directions. The spirit of scientific investigation that was in the air was applied with reverent hands, but with unsparing resolve to ascertain the exact truth. The investigation was no longer confined to dogma; a proof text from the Bible was no longer sufficient to close a controversy. The Bible itself must be subjected to investigation. This was indeed going to the foundations. There was a wild outcry against rationalism and iconoclasm, but the search for truth and fact went on. As in a siege, the garrison must sometimes destroy with their own hands outworks which cannot be successfully defended, and may be made a vantage ground for the enemy, so the defenders of Christianity set themselves to the task of finding out how much of the current theology was credible and tenable, and how much might wisely be abandoned, to insure the safety of the remainder. The discoveries of Geology, Astronomy and of Biology could not be denied, yet their testimony was contrary to Christian doctrine. "The world was made in six natural days," said the old Christian preacher. "The world was thousands of years in the making," said the geologist. The preacher appealed to his Bible, the geologist appealed to the rocks. The issue was fairly joined, and in the early years of the century it seemed as if there was no alternative but that of believing the Bible and denying science, or believing science and giving up the Bible; it seemed impossible to believe both. When the scientific theologian ventured to suggest that the word "day," might mean age, or period, there was another outcry that the Bible was being surrendered to the enemy. But it was realized that the message of the Bible to the world was not scientific, and that its usefulness was not impaired by the suggested mode of understanding its record of creation; and gradually the surrender was accepted. It is true that to this day there are some who will not accept it, as there is at least one preacher who insists, on the authority of the Bible, that "the sun do move," but the number diminishes in every generation. A beginning was made in attaining the true view of the Bible which led further and has not yet reached its limits. Having admitted that the Bible was not given to teach science the Church has to decide whether it can admit the theory of evolution and whether its records of history are authoritative. These questions are so fundamental that the strife of Calvinism and Arminianism and the question of the double procession of the Holy Spirit, which seemed vital to our fathers have faded into relative insignificance.

EVANGELICAL ACTIVITY.

While these storms were agitating the upper air, and the thunderous echoes reverberated through the mountains, the work on the plain went rapidly forward. However the scholars and the theologians might decide the questions at issue between them, the working forces were profoundly convinced that the Gospel was the great need of the world, and they put out new energy and applied all the powers of the mind to devising new methods for its propagation. The increased facilities of travel, the improved means of communication and, above all, the power of the printing-press, were all seized and harnessed to service in the dissemination of the Gospel. No characteristic of this century is so prominent as this intense activity and aggressive energy. From every secular movement, the church has taken suggestions for its own advancement. Trade-unionism has suggested Christian Endeavor and the Evangelical Alliance; the public school system has developed the International Lesson system in the Sunday School; the political convention has taught the advantages of great religious conferences; the principles of military organization have been utilized in the Salvation Army. If in some circles religion seems to have been a fight over doctrines and theories, in others it has seemed a ceaseless, untiring struggle for converts. In no century since the first century of the Christian era has the zeal of propagation, with no element of proselytism in it, taken so strong a hold of the followers of Christ. To translate the Bible into every tongue, to carry the Gospel message to every people, and to evangelize the masses at home, prodigious efforts have been put forth, and enormous sums of money have been expended. Mental activity, uncompromising veracity, indefatigable energy, have characterized the Church through the century, and its closing years show no abatement in any of these characteristics. A brief sketch of some of the more prominent of these developments can render the fact only more, obvious.

BIBLE REVISION.

One of the most important events of the century to the English speaking world is the Revision of the Bible. Its full effect is not yet felt, as the book which was the product of the Revisers' labors is but slowly winning its way into use in the Church and the home. Like its predecessor, the Authorized Version now in general use, it has to encounter the prejudice which comes from long familiarity with the book in use and from the veneration for the phraseology in which the precious truths, are expressed. Yet from the beginning of the century the need of an improved translation was felt and several persons, undertook to supply it, but with very objectionable results. The principal bases of the need were serious. One was that many words and phrases have in the nineteenth century a meaning entirely different from the one they had in the early part of the seventeenth century when the Authorized Version was issued. One case in point is Mark vi. 22, in which Salome asks that the head of John the Baptist be given her "by and by in a charger." In 1611 the expression by and by meant immediately or forthwith, and was a correct translation, while with us it means a somewhat indefinite future and is therefore an incorrect translation. With the noun, too, the meaning has changed. Our idea of a charger is of a war-horse, not of a dish, which the original conveys. A second reason for the revision was that there were in the libraries in this century several manuscripts of the original, much older than those to which the translators of the Authorized Version had access when they undertook their work. A third reason was that a notable advance had been made in scholarship in the interval, and learned men were much better acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek idiom than were any of the scholars of the King James period. For these three, among other reasons, a revision was necessary, that the unlearned reader might have, as nearly as was possible, the exact equivalent in English of the words of the Bible writers. The project, after being widely discussed for several years, finally took shape in England in 1870, when the Convocation of Canterbury appointed two committees to undertake the work. The ablest scholars in Hebrew and Greek literature in the country were assigned to the committees, of which one was engaged on the Old, and the other on the New Testament. They were empowered to call to their aid similar committees in America, who might work simultaneously with them. Stringent instructions were given to them to avoid making changes where they were not clearly needed for the accuracy of translation, and to preserve the idiom of the Authorized Version. Only with these safeguards and with not a little reluctance, the commission was issued. One hundred and one scholars on both sides of the Atlantic took part in the work. The committees commenced their labors early in 1871. On May 17, 1881, the Revised New Testament was issued, and on May 21, 1885, the Revised Old Testament was in the hands of the public. All that scholarship, strenuous labor and exhaustive research could do to give a faithful translation had been done within the somewhat narrow and conservative limits under which the revisers were commissioned.

BIBLES BY THE MILLION.

With this improvement, there was at the same time a marked impetus in Bible circulation. The nineteenth century has been eminently a Bible-reading and a Bible-studying period. In no previous century have efforts on so gigantic a scale been made to put the Book in the hands of every one who could read it. The price was brought so low by the decrease in the cost of production, that the very poorest could possess a copy. The British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in 1804, and the American Bible Society, founded in 1816, have largely contributed to this result. Both societies were organized to issue the Bible without note or comment, and both have faithfully labored to promote its circulation. In spite of all that has been said against the Book and in spite of the fact that so large a number of persons must have been supplied, the circulation has increased from year to year. In the year ending March, 1896, the American Society alone issued 1,750,000 copies, and the British two and a half million. During its existence the American Society has sent out over sixty-one million copies and the British Society over one hundred and forty millions. The work of translation has kept pace with the demand. At the beginning of the century the Bible had been translated, in whole or in part, into thirty-eight languages. It is now translated into three hundred and eighty-one, and translators are engaged on nearly a hundred others. Nor must it be supposed that the supply was in excess of the demand. There is abundant evidence of the desire of the public to possess the Word of God. One fact alone is a conspicuous proof of this demand. In 1892 the proprietor of the _Christian Herald_ of New York offered an Oxford Teacher's Bible as a premium with his journal. The offer was accepted with such avidity that edition after edition was exhausted, and it has been renewed every year since with increased demand. Through this journal alone, by this means, over three hundred and two thousand copies have been put into the hands of the people during the past five years.