The new bacteriological theory directly contradicts this important law of sanitary experience, and in opposition to it authoritatively announces that contagious or infectious disease can never be produced without the antecedent microbe. It was in defence of this untenable theory that the distinguished professor claimed the ‘right of science to dictate.’ The great mistake, therefore, made by the Hygienic Congress was the neglect of mind as an indispensable and prominent factor in Health, and the exaltation of bacteriology, with the theories based upon it, into the chief point of interest and importance. The modern exaggeration of bacteriology, with its theory of inoculation, must be steadily opposed by all who realize the power and growing influence of spiritual life. The injurious results of this exaggeration may be summarized as follows: _The Practical Dangers arising from erroneous Scientific Method._--1. It diverts invaluable intellectual activity into methods of comparatively futile investigation. These investigations lead very widely to the exercise of fraud and cruelty upon the lower animals, and tend to reckless experiment on the poor. They waste much time and spread the contagion of intellectual error amongst the students of all our medical schools, where the false practices of experimentation are increasingly carried on. They also pervert the moral sense of the great army of assistants, caretakers, porters, nurses, and others connected with our medical institutions, who become aware of the cruel practices which so largely accompany this method of research. 2. This perversion of medical activity misleads our Parliamentary representatives, who are bewildered by pseudo-science authoritatively announcing itself as Truth, and permits a rapid increase of officialism to crush opposition and force the dicta of superficial ‘science’ upon the protesting conscience of intelligent people. It also misleads the community by fallacious articles in popular magazines, in which facts, theories, statistics, and assertions, often incorrect, are given with an imposing air of science, in relation to which the ordinary reader is quite unable to discriminate the true from the false. 3. The diversion of medical activity from the true path of Preventive Medicine not only hinders the progress of sanitation, but is producing an increasing revolt of common-sense and popular feeling against what are erroneously supposed to be the necessary methods of medicine and the practice of dispensary and hospital. This growing feeling in the community increases the dread with which the poor generally regard the hospital, and it also seriously diminishes the pecuniary support which the well-to-do would otherwise gladly extend to their sick and suffering fellow-creatures. * * * * *