510 Biochemical Nezvs, Notes and Comment [Mar. 



bought for nearly $500,000. The cost of "manufacturing" i gram 

 of radium is very low (only $4,000), while the by-products are 

 very valuable, for nearly 6,000 pounds of uranium colors are ob- 

 tained in the process of separating i gram of radium. This 

 uranium is valued at $20,000. Thus the government has made a 

 very good bargain, and it may easily place large quantities of the 

 precious material at the disposal of clinical teachers for the benefit 

 of the diseased poor. (See page 348.) 



American Medicine gold medal. Editorial attention is given in 

 a current issue of American Medicine (p. 188) to the subject: 

 " Scientific research in the United States receives too little recog- 

 nition." A sympathetic discussion of this matter is followed by 

 editorial announcement that " the editors of American Medicine 

 have established the American Medicine Gold Medal for Con- 

 spicuous Contributions to the Progress of Medical Science. It is to 

 be donated each year to the American surgeon, physician or inves- 

 tigator who, in the opinion of three trustees to be announced in 

 our (their) May issue, has made the most noteworthy contribution 

 to medical science." 



Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry: German 

 committee of biological chemists. Professors Gottlieb of Heidel- 

 berg, Heffter of Berlin, Kossei of Heidelberg and Thierfelder of 

 Tübingen, are coöperating with the American officers of the Sec- 

 tion (8, d) of Physiological Chemistry and Pharmacology in fur- 

 thering the interests of biological chemistry and biological chemists 

 at the Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry to be 

 held in Washington and New York, September 4-13, 1912. 



Book review: Principles of Human Nutrition. A study in 

 practical dietetics. By Whitman H. Jordan. Cloth, xxi + 450 

 pp., index. $1.75 net. The Macmillan Company, New York. 



Professor Springer, of Minnesota, has aptly expressed the idea 

 that as a scientific subject comes within the sphere of common 

 knowledge and contributes directly to the comfort and well being 

 of the race, it becomes necessary for that topic to be moved down- 

 ward in the curriculum of our educational sytem. Facts and 

 principles discovered in the laboratory and applied in a practical 



