Touching us as human beings even still more closely than the foregoing
was the influence which chemistry had exerted on the science of
pathology, and in no direction had greater progress been made than in
the study of micro-organisms in relation to health and disease. In the
complicated chemical changes to which we gave the names of
fermentation and putrefaction, Pasteur had established the fundamental
principle that these processes were inseparately connected with the
life of certain low forms of organisms. Thus was founded the science
of bacteriology, which in Lister's hands had yielded such splendid
results in the treatment of surgical cases, and in those of Klebs,
Koch, and others, had been the means of detecting the cause of many
diseases both in man and animals, the latest and not the least
important of which was the remarkable series of successful researches
by Pasteur into the nature and mode of cure of that most dreadful of
maladies, hydrophobia. The value of his discovery was greater than
could be estimated by its present utility, for it showed that it might
be possible to avert other diseases besides hydrophobia by the
adoption of a somewhat similar method of investigation and of
treatment.
Here it might seem as if we had outstepped the boundaries of
chemistry, and had to do with phenomena purely vital. But recent
research indicated that this was not the case, and pointed to the
conclusion that the microscopist must again give way to the chemist,
and that it was by chemical rather than biological investigation that
the causes of diseases would be discovered, and the power of removing
them obtained. For we learned that the symptoms of infective diseases
were no more due to the microbes which constituted the infection than
alcoholic intoxication was produced by the yeast cell, but that these
symptoms were due to the presence of definite chemical compounds, the
result of the life of these microscopic organisms. So it was to the
action of these poisonous substances formed during the life of the
organism, rather than to that of the organism itself, that the special
characteristics of the disease were to be traced, for it had been
shown that the disease could be communicated by such poisons in the
entire absence of living organisms.
Had time permitted, he would have wished to have illustrated the
dependence of industrial success upon original investigation, and to
have pointed out the prodigious strides which chemical industry in
this country had made during the fifty years of her Majesty's reign.
As it was, he must be content to remark how much our modern life, both
in its artistic and useful aspects, owed to chemistry, and therefore
how essential a knowledge of the principles of the science was to all
who had the industrial progress of the country at heart. The country
was now beginning to see that if she was to maintain her commercial
and industrial supremacy, the education of her people from top to
bottom must be carried out on new lines. The question how this could
be most safely and surely accomplished was one of transcendent
national importance, and the statesman who solved this educational
problem would earn the gratitude of generations yet to come.
In welcoming the unprecedentedly large number of foreign men of
science who had on this occasion honored the British Association by
their presence, he hoped that that meeting might be the commencement
of an international scientific organization, the only means nowadays
existing of establishing that fraternity among nations from which
politics appeared to remove them further and further, by absorbing
human powers and human work, and directing them to purposes of
destruction. It would indeed be well if Great Britain, which had
hitherto taken the lead in so many things that are great and good,
should now direct her attention to the furthering of international
organizations of a scientific nature. A more appropriate occasion than
the present meeting could perhaps hardly be found for the inauguration
of such a movement. But whether this hope were realized or not, they
all united in that one great object, the search after truth for its
own sake, and they all, therefore, might join in re-echoing the words
of Lessing: "The worth of man lies not in the truth which he
possesses, or believes that he possesses, but in the honest endeavor
which he puts forth to secure that truth; for not by the possession of
truth, but by the search after it, are the faculties of man enlarged,
and in this alone consists his ever-growing perfection. Possession
fosters content, indolence, and pride. If God should hold in his right
hand all truth, and in his left hand the ever-active desire to seek
truth, though with the condition of perpetual error, I would humbly
ask for the contents of the left hand, saying, 'Father, give me this;
pure truth is only for thee.'"
At the close of his address a vote of thanks was passed to the
president, on the motion of the Mayor of Manchester, seconded by
Professor Asa Gray, of Harvard College. The president mentioned that
the number of members is already larger than at any previous annual
meeting, namely, 3,568, including eighty foreigners.
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