386 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



influences are or are not for the general advantage of society ; 

 but the one thing you cannot argue about is the command which 

 science has given us— which science is teaching to those who 

 are engaged in the technical work of industry. Nobody can 

 dispute that that, at all events, has covered an immense range 

 of progress, and that we are still moving rapidly in the right 

 direction. . . . Lord Rayleigh incidentally dropped a criticism — 

 I hardly like to call it a criticism — to express faint regret that 

 in the history of this institution a larger fraction of the labour 

 had been devoted to matter immediately connected with industry 

 than to the abstract or purely scientific investigations, on the 

 successes of which ultimately, and as years go on, the future of 

 industry depends. Now I think all of us must share that regret. 

 I have not sufficient acquaintance with the work of the institu- 

 tion to know how much of the time and labour of the staff have 

 been devoted to pure research, but believing as I do — it is, 

 indeed, one of my foremost articles of social faith — that it is to 

 the labours of the man of science, working for purely scientific 

 ends and without any thought of the application of his dis- 

 coveries to the practical needs of mankind, that mankind will be 

 most indebted as time goes on ; holding, as I say, that faith, I 

 should desire that as much advance should be made in pure 

 science in these buildings as money and space allow." 



The Seventeenth International Congress of Medicine (Philip Hamill, 

 M.A., M.D., D.Sc, M.R.C.P.) 



At the seventeenth International Congress held in London this year remarkable 

 progress in the knowledge and treatment of disease was recorded. The com- 

 munications dealing with the notable advances which have recently been made 

 in the more purely scientific domain of medicine are of especial interest and 

 significance in their bearing upon the future of practical medicine. It may be 

 useful, therefore, briefly to review some of the ..more important discoveries which 

 were considered and discussed at the Congress/ 



Chemiotherapy. — The address delivered by Prof. Ehrlich summarised in 

 masterly fashion the advances which have been made in this subject. Specific 

 chemiotherapy is a recent development of medicine, and rests upon a foundation 

 of extensive researches on parasitology. 



It has been found that if an animal be infected by a parasite the injection into 

 the circulation of certain substances which can be prepared synthetically will bring 

 about the death of the parasite whilst leaving the host unharmed — i.e. the drug is 

 " parasitotropic " rather than "organotropic." But the mode of action of such a 

 drug is more complicated than can be accounted for on the assumption that it acts 

 merely as a differential poison. If a particular parasite be exposed to the action 

 of the drug in vitro, it may escape death ; and if it be a motile organism, such as 



