M. PASTEUR PLAYING WITH EDGED TOOLS.
NOTHING even in the tragi-comedy of French politics, seems to us so startling as M. Pasteur's deliberate proposal to export the seeds of the disease called chicken- cholera to New South Wales for the extirpation of the plague of rabbits, except the attitude of almost awe-struck admiration with which this proposal is accepted by French journalism. To kill the rabbits simply, whether by shooting or by the much crueller method of strewing mineral poison for them, seems to be insufficient for the purpose of checking their multiplica- tion ; so M. Pasteur calmly proposes "de communiquer any lapins une maladie pouvant devenir epideMique." He would therefore send to the Antipodes the microbe of chicken-cholera, and advises the colonists to water the grass outside some of the burrows with broth containing these microbes, and so intro- duce an epidemic which would spread far and wide among the rabbits, and kill more millions of them than either the gun, or poisons which only affect the poor creatures which happen to take the poison, can reach. The secretions of the rabbits affected would, he says, poison the grass which forms the food for the healthy rabbits, and so the plague would spraad, and the nuisance of the rabbits be diminished or removed. This seems tons a proposal worthy of the mere physiologist who has never been a physician, or learnt to regard the art of healing as at all more sacred in its functions than the corresponding art of infecting and destroying. The deliberate counsel to spread a fatal disease, and to spread it very widely, is one of the most presumptuous in the annals of modern society, though we most add that it is one for which the practices of vivisection, and the energetic moral support which has been given to those practices, have certainly prepared the way. To talk of such a proposal as playing with edged tools, is the weakest of all similes, though it is the only popular simile of which we can avail ourselves. Edged tools only draw blood,—a little or a great deal, as the case may be,—and at worst can only kill him who plays with them. But when such a creature as man comes to play with plague, or rather not to play with it, but to handle it with the deliberate design of letting it loose to do its deadly work, to talk of this as playing with edged tools, is like comparing the ravages of the tornado to the blast of the bellows. If science had it in its power to create a tornado at will, it is not unlikely that the men of science would some day propose,—of course, in the interests of some tribe of men,—to employ it to sweep away some obstacle which they found inconvenient to them, though when they had roused the demon, they would probably bitterly reproach themselves with having awakened a power which they had so little under command. So it will probably be with the colonists of Australia and New Zealand, if they are ill-advised enough to take M. Pasteur's advice. They will very likely succeed in exterminating the rabbits, but what they will exterminate at the same time, nobody knows. Birds of prey are pretty sure to be affected by chicken-cholera, as it is in origin a plague of birds. And what may result from an epidemic amongst all birds, whether living on carrion or on the vegetation poisoned, as M. Pasteur hopes that it will be poisoned by their secretions, no human foresight can tell. It is hardly likely that there should not be some consequence which would be most mischievous to man, and it might wall be that some new form of disease, not at all analogous to chicken-cholera, might thus be communicated to man himself. If it were so, the retribution would be severe indeed which this rash dissemination of plague would have brought with it.
The truth is that no one knows what changes are likely to take place in either animal or vegetable life when it is propa- gated under quite new conditions. Not many years ago, the
Ouse was choked up with a new water-plant which had been rashly acclimatised here from the Antipodes. Also, rabbits have, as we now see, multiplied in the Antipodes at a rate which has become quite a nuisance to oar Colonies in the Pacific. Now, the new extension which transplantation gives to animal and vege- table life, it may well give also to the microbes which produce animal and vegetable disease. Man is a very limited creature to be dealing with these terrible agencies of destruction at his own pleasure. And, unfortunately, the habit of wielding these mighty instruments is a very attractive one, and grows upon those who contract it. We do not know where this kind of thing will stop. If M. Pasteur exports a microbe which communicates a plague to rabbits and birds, some future imitator of M. Pasteur may export a microbe which will communicate a plague to human beings. We should not be surprised to- morrow to hear that a colonist, inspired with ungodly hatred of the miserable French convict, who infest Australia after their escape from New Caledonia, had exported a microbe to New Caledonia which would communicate an epidemic likely to carry off the convicts there by thousands. The new ideas all point to daring of this godless description. Indeed, we hardly see where this habit of wielding disease as a power, which is growing upon the French and German physiologists, and which does not even spare our own more sober physiologists at home, is to end. Just listen to the admiring remarks of the .1apubliqus Franfaise on M. Pasteur's mad, and, we should almost have been inclined to say, diabolical proposal :—" M. Pasteur a adressri bier an Tenips nue lettre fort interessante, qui montre bien quelle est la prodigieuse activit6 d'esprit clu grand savant, sans cesse preoccupe de rendre t l'humanitsi un nouveau service." We do not deny that M. Pasteur is really desirous of rendering to humanity a new service, but we feel quite sure that one at least of his "new services" has been a very great blow to the moral life of humanity, while it has, we believe, rendered no sort of true service to the physical life of man. We refer, of course, to his inoculation for hydrophobia. Bat this new proposal of his to acclimatise in the Antipodes a plague of which we cannot in the least measure the consequences or the scope, in the hope of diminishing an existing plague of which at least we have the means of attenuating the force, surpasses far the rashness of his previous proposal ; and we are quite sure that if his counsel is accepted in the meek spirit in which the RePublique Francai,e, for instance, accepts it, it will not be the last that we shall hear of the deliberate attempt to spread new diseases. That "remedy," as M. Pasteur mildly calls it, will one day be applied to the human world, when it will produce effects of gigantic magnitude, both in the horror it will cause and in the bitterness of feeling which will add to that horror a new anguish. No one can prevent any physiologist from introducing a deadly microbe when he will, and where he will. It can be prevented only by fostering in all men the utmost indig- nation at the very notion of playing in this way with deadly diseases. But physiologists have for some time past been doing all in their power to reduce instead of to increase this natural indignation ; and we see now what that course of action has come to. Will it bring about the turn of the tide ? We trust it may. H. Pasteur has so accustomed himself to these dangerous tricks of science, that he hardly knows what spirit he is of. But our English physicians are, we hope, at last taking alarm, and are likely to help us in stemming the tide of eagerness for this rash and presumptuous handling of agencies with which man has no competence to deal.
Previous page
