Sir F. Treves, the great surgeon, delivered a most interest-
ing address at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institute on Tuesday. He believed that the popular conception of disease was wrong. We thought of it as something malign, evil in intent, evil in effect, whereas the phenomena of disease have a purpose, and that purpose is beneficent. They gener- ally arise from the natural processes of cure, and without them a common cold might become a fatal malady,—as, we may remark en passant, it very often does. "The catarrh, the persistent sneezing, were practical means of dislodging the bacteria from the windpipe." He would not deny that cancer was malignant, for we did not yet know what malignant disease was; ; but even cancer, he suspected, was an inopportune manifestation of a process which in the young was beneficial; and he hinted that a remedy might be sought in using "the active principle to be extracted from the thymus gland," which disappeared or wasted away after the period of greatest bodily activity was over,—that is, shortly after birth. The lecture was listened to with grave attention by the audience, though Lord Rosebery produced much laughter by suggest- ing smilingly that he had been listening to it with his ear close to an open door, and that, instead of remarking that he had caught a horrid cold, he should glory in the evidence that he was expelling the bacteria which had invaded his person. Evidently he had not caught cold, or he could not be so humorous. It is the exceptional ill-consequence of a cold in the head that it makes one stupid.
Bank Rate, 4 per cent. Consols (21 per cent.) were on Friday 881.
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