NOTES 



639 



young lady by the skirt of her dress in order to rescue a duck the head of which 

 had been caught in a sluice-gate. I can tell a similar tale. About 1891 a cat 

 was good enough to keep three small kittens in a bathroom on the ground floor 

 of my house in Bangalore in India. One morning when my wife and I were sitting 

 in the veranda, the cat came out to us crying terribly. When we jumped up to 

 see what was the matter, it led us into the bathroom, and there we saw that the 

 kittens in their basket were writhing under a swarm of enormous black ants which 

 literally covered them. I rescued them with difficulty, being obliged to pull off 

 the ants with my surgical forceps— and one of the kittens died shortly afterwards. 

 The behaviour of the cat here was precisely what the behaviour of a human being 

 would have been under the circumstances. 



It flatters our vanity to think that we are the only creatures who possess mind ; 



but probably the elements of mind — that is, memory, imagination, and judgment 



exist all through animal life even down to unicellular organisms — though I will not 

 pretend that the mind of an infusorian equals that of a politician or of a headmaster. 

 The sooner we disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are gods by nature (which 

 is not true), and try to become gods by science and art (which may be possible 

 though not by politics and grammar), the better for humanity. 



R. R. 



How to Pay One's Debts 



We were glad to see that India has given some recognition to Sir Leonard 

 Rogers, F.R.S., for his life-long work, chiefly in connection with the treatment of 

 various wide-spread and formerly fatal tropical diseases such as kala-azar and 

 dysentery, by presenting a bust of him to the School of Tropical Medicine in 

 Calcutta last November. But we suppose that even India feels, somewhat 

 uncomfortably, that this reward may not possibly be quite sufficient ; and that 

 excellent Calcutta paper, Capital, wonders why a Nobel Prize " has not long since 

 been awarded" to him, and suggests that somebody in authority, such as "the 

 Viceroy and the Governor of Bengal," should bring his claims before the Nobel 

 Committee. The name of Sir Leonard Rogers has been before the said Com- 

 mittee for some years ; but we fear that the representations of the Viceroy and 

 the Governor of Bengal would not carry as much weight with the Nobel Com- 

 mittee as Capital thinks. The Committee might conceivably even hold that a rich 

 Empire like India should pay its own professional benefactors rather than attempt 

 to saddle a small and comparatively poor nation like Sweden with the charge. 

 If a patient should give a fee to a doctor for his prescription, so should a country 

 pay him specially for discoveries which apply, not to an individual, but to the 

 whole community. Every year the Government of India spends large sums on 

 pensions and high salaries for politicians, civilians, and judges whose services are 

 small compared with those of Sir Leonard Rogers. If, instead of troubling Sweden, 

 the Viceroy and the Governor of Bengal were really to try to think out the matter 

 for themselves, they might do some good. Why is it that work such as that of 

 Rogers is not done much more frequently ? For the simple reason that it is the 

 form of medical work which, though of the highest value to the world, is the most 

 unprofitable or even ruinous to the man who undertakes it. Pathologists and 

 sanitarians are the most important, but the worst paid, of all members of the 

 medical profession ; and the more capable young men now fully recognise the fact 

 and " are not such fools " as to touch these subjects. We have urged this matter 

 over and over again ; and the public will do well, in its own interests, to look into 

 it more carefully. 



