Of six dogs unprotected by vaccination, three succumbed to the bites of a dog in a furious state of madness. Of eight unvaccinated dogs, six succumbed to the intravenous inoculation of rabic matter. Of five unvaccinated dogs, all succumbed to inoculation, by trepanning, of the brain. Finally, of three-and-twenty vaccinated dogs, not one was attacked with the disease subsequent to inoculation with the most potent virus. Surely results such as those recorded in this book are calculated, not only to arouse public interest, but public hope and wonder. Never before, during the long period of its history, did a day like the present dawn upon the science and art of medicine. Indeed, previous to the discoveries of recent times, medicine was not a science, but a collection of empirical rules dependent for their interpretation and application upon the sagacity of the physician. How does England stand in relation to the great work now going on around her? She is, and must be, behindhand. Scientific chauvinism is not beautiful in my eyes. Still one can hardly see, without deprecation and protest, the English investigator handicapped in so great a race by short-sighted and mischievous legislation. A great scientific theory has never been accepted without opposition. The theory of gravitation, the theory of undulation, the theory of evolution, the dynamical theory of heat--all had to push their way through conflict to victory. And so it has been with the Germ Theory of communicable diseases. Some outlying members of the medical profession dispute it still. I am told they even dispute the communicability of cholera. Such must always be the course of things, as long as men are endowed with different degrees of insight. Where the mind of genius discerns the distant truth, which it pursues, the mind not so gifted often discerns nothing but the extravagance, which it avoids. Names, not yet forgotten, could be given to illustrate these two classes of minds. As representative of the first class, I would name a man whom I have often named before, who, basing himself in great part on the researches of Pasteur, fought, in England, the battle of the germ theory with persistent valour, but whose labours broke him down before he saw the triumph which he _fore_saw completed. Many of my medical friends will understand that I allude here to the late Dr. William Budd, of Bristol. The task expected of me is now accomplished, and the reader is here presented with a record, in which the verities of science are endowed with the interest of romance. JOHN TYNDALL. ROYAL INSTITUTION: _December 1884_ FOOTNOTES: [2] Art. 'Vitality,' _Fragments of Science_, 6th edit., vol. ii. p. 50.