This is not the place to enter on the whole question of the germ theory of disease, but who does not see how wide is the field for investigation opened up by Pasteur and others? Already the application of the principle of vaccination has been successfully applied by Pasteur to a very fatal epidemic disease attacking fowls, and known by the name of "chicken cholera." By inoculating chickens with the cultivated variety of the particular "bacillus" he has afforded to them complete protection. The economic value of this to France may in some measure be estimated by the many millions of eggs which are exported from France to this country alone. How many other diseases, such as scarlatina and diphtheria, which now carry off annually thousands of children, may not ere long be extinguished by like means who shall say? "I venture," states Mr. Simon, in his address to the Health Section of the International Congress, "to say that in the records of human industry it would be impossible to point to work of more promise to the world than these various contributions to the knowledge of disease and of its cure and prevention, and they are contributions which, from the nature of the case, have come, and could only have come, from the performance of experiments on living animals."
Compulsory vaccination is, no doubt, a strong measure, and one which might, in this land of individual liberty, be expected to give rise both to question and opposition. It can only be justified by proving that it is to the interest of the individual as well as of the whole community that it should be enforced. Of its propriety and necessity we believe it needs only a calm and unprejudiced inquiry to be convinced. Most of the objections raised against it are either baseless or admit of being obviated. That some of the objections are of a character that command our respect may be admitted, but mere sentiment or prejudiced and ill-founded objections, must give place to sound arguments and well-established evidence. In this, as in many similar cases, opposition and discussion open up entrances for light by which the clouds of ignorance and darkness are sure to be dispelled. But even as this whole question of vaccination now stands, the responsibility of those who are persistently misrepresenting facts and misleading the public is great, nay, criminal, when we reflect how many lives are sacrificed by the neglect of precautionary means within the reach of all.