ABSTRACT
The advance of Medicine has found both its roots and its fruit in the social life of the people, which in its turn has been dependent upon a healthy and virile race. Much of the rising tide of health in the Western world is due to simple, personal and social factors. Every physician is an immunisator, and protection may thus be afforded for the individual and the community against smallpox, typhoid, cholera, plague, diphtheria, anthrax and rabies. It is possible to practise autogenous immunity for many conditions by means of a vaccine prepared from the patient himself. The work of Louis Pasteur from 1857 to 1885 completely altered the whole outlook of science in regard to the causation of infective processes. The chapter considers some of the results, some of the gains and losses.
