THE LATE SIR CLIFFORD ALLBUTT [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The doyen of medical science has gone to his rest, ripe in years and laden with honours. His life's work might
not be spectacular or meteoric, nor was it marked by sen- sational discoveries, but it has a long series of successful achievements reaching heights to which few indeed arc privileged to attain, the fruits of a sincere constancy of purpose, a profound mental activity and a broad outlook. Succeeding generations will give him a high place among the immortals. He will be remembered by ma ny, and none more so than by members of the veterinary profession, for
his untiring efforts to bring about a closer relationship in human, animal and plant pathology. On this question as far back as the early 'eighties his voice was as one crying in the wilderness, heard but unheeded. lie was, however, never thwarted or discouraged in his purpose, and he lived to see his wishes fulfilled. Some three years ago he wrote the
following to the writer :-
" We are filled then with hope that at last comparative pathology is entering upon it long delayed inheritance. The Royal Society of Medicine is strengthening itself by calling animal and plant patholo- gists into its counsels. And a no less helpful and hopeful movement is to be seen, in the arrangements made by Professor Muir and his colleagues for Comparative Pathology at the coining meeting of the British llediekil Association at Glasgow this Summer. Further, if one-hundredth part of the colossal losses of cattle owners by foot- and-mouth disease during the last twelve months had been bestowed On a University Department of Comparative Pathology—a chair of Comparative Pathology at Cambridge has since been established— the nature of the disease and the ways of its propagation and preven- tion would probably by this time have been revealed, but such researches must not be ad hoc, they must be a part of a larger and often apparently alien, but continuous, series of Investigation. The light on the corner must be a part of a general illumination."
We are all the poorer for his passing, but his works and his name shall live.--I am, Sir, &c., W. M. Scow, F.R.C.V.S.
Fri«rn House, Bridgwater.
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