Licence: In copyright
Credit: Dr. Walter Robert Hadwen's works. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![Then follows a dreary repetition of all this balder- dash under the heading of Bovine and Human Tuberculosis Compared, and by the time this is concluded, three-fourths of the official report has been written up. Science and Caution. Brief accounts follow of specific cases where scrap- ings from lupus, mesenteric glands, knee joints, &c, were passed into different animals, and then from animal to animal, and explanations are vouchsafed as to why some cases differed from the other in virulence, about which the man-in-the-street could give a satisfactory and decided answer in five minutes for nothing, although it takes a scientist more than six years at the price of £48,000 to say : On account of the far-reaching bearings of the conclusion we are unwilling to make any statement at all premature. That manifests a certain amount of wisdom at all events. The man-in-the-street would have said : The more disease material is pumped into an animal's body, and the less that animal is able to resist it, the worse will be the result, and vice versa. We reach the last page. The fatal dogmatism and ready acceptance of popular theories by men who reason only from laboratory experiments, and who practically disregard clinical data, is seen in paragraph 64 :— It is well-known [sic] that in the case of many diseases caused, like tuberculosis, by a micro-organism, immunity against the disease may he secured by introducing into the body the micro-organism causing the disease. . . . Hence, if the baeillus of human tuberculosis can be used to confer immunity against bovine tuberculosis, or vice verm, we are supplied with a further proof [«ic] of the identity of the two diseases. This is how scientific men argue ! One begins to feel ashamed of the very name of science, when one finds that any theory, however shallow, however proofless, if only advertised with sufficient audacity, finds ready acceptance in the highest ranks ; such](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21361691_0253.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
