150
��THE SCIENTIFia MONTHLY
��verses written on the day upon which he discovered the malarial parar site in the body of the mosquito :
��This day relenting God Hath placed within mj hand
A wondrous thing; and God Be praised. At his command.
Seeking His secret deeds With tears and toiling breath
I find th7 cunning seeds, O miUion-murdering Death.
��I know this little thing A myriad men will Bave.
O Death, where is thy sting. Thy victory, O Grave!
Before Thy feet I f aU,
Lord, who made high my fate; For in the mighty small
Is shown the mighty great.
��In his work as a sanitarian and eradicator of disease, Sir Bonald Boss has waged valiant and efficient warfare against the indifference and apathy of organized governments toward applied science, that medieval frame of mind so well described by Sir Clifford Allbutt:
We find, in ruling classes, and in social circles which put on aristocratical fashions, that ideas, and especiaUy scientific ideas, are held in sincere aver^n and in simulated contempt.
Time and again has Bonald Boss returned to the charge in his general assault on unscientific administration in regard to the prophylaxis of infectious disease. His utterances on this theme reveal him as a pub- licist of large-minded type. Nothing seems more characteristic of the man than his general view of the whole matter :
Probably few any longer accept the teaching of Hume, that the object of government is no other than "the distribution of justice." The function of an ideal civilized government might be described as the performance of aU acts for the good of the public which individual members of the public are by themselves unable to perform — ^that is, the organisation of public welfare. The individual can certainly add much by intelligence and virtue to his own welfare; but these qualities do not suffice to protect him altogether against those evils which can be combated only by concerted action, such as the depredations of disease and of external and internal human enemies; and where he is powerless, the government, and only the government, can help him. Now such concerted action is likely to be successful only when it is based on sufficient knowledge; and a scientific administration differs from an unscientific one just in this par- ticular, that it seeks the necessary knowledge, while the other acts blindly. In nothing is this more manifestly the case than in connection with that depart- ment of public administration which is charged with the protection of the public against disease — a department second to none in importance, because it concerns not only our sentiments and our pockets, but our health and our lives.«o
«o Boss, Nature, Lond., 1907, LXXVI., 153.
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