Sunlight and health / by C.W. Saleeby.

  • Saleeby, C. W. (Caleb Williams), 1878-1940
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sunlight and health / by C.W. Saleeby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    54/202 (page 36)
    AFTER PASTEUR ARE we to conclude, in the second century after the birth of Pasteur, that he spoke the last word—even when he said, “It is in the power of man to make all parasitic diseases disappear from the earth ” ; or is there more to come, if we will go to meet it ? As ever, the enlarging sphere of the known finds itself, to use Herbert Spencer’s image, in contact with an enlarging surface of the unknown. There is “ no end to learning,” as Browning’s Grammarian knew. The colossal and epoch-making labours of Pasteur, revealing the new world of micro-biology and its relation to the lives of creatures visible to the naked eye, such as ourselves, were not final, but lead the way to new worlds to conquer—not outside but within ourselves. We return from bacteria and bacteriology, with precious conquests, to the proper study of mankind, which is man. The nineteenth century, principally through Pasteur, taught us the main truths about infection ; the twentieth will proceed to new triumphs and truths about nutrition. The last thing to be inferred from the foregoing is that we have done what we could and should with the work of Pasteur. We have not nearly completed it, in the realm of knowledge, and we have not nearly