128 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The Journal of the British Science Guild publishes the report of the 

 Microscope Committee of the B.S.G. They give the specifications of three 

 types of microscope supposed to cost, one sometliing under ;/^io, the second 

 li^-l^o, and a more costly research worker's outfit at £2$-£-iS- The 

 Committee notes especially that : 



" It is only by specialising on a few models that the above prices can be 

 made profitable, and even then only by securing a very large output of high 

 and uniform quality. 



" All available information would seem to indicate that the day of the 

 small maker of either stands or lenses has passed. The high standard of 

 excellence now insisted upon, together with the low prices to which buyers 

 of microscopes have become accustomed as a direct result of foreign com- 

 petition, would seem to show that the successful manufacturers of the future 

 must be corporations of sufficient size to make it possible for them to utilise 

 scientific guidance to the full, and to avail themselves to the greatest possible 

 extent of special and labour-saving machinery for their work." 



Now, in the case of the second type of microscope price, £i$-£zo, there 

 are three objectives — 16 mm., 4 mm., and a 3 or 2 mm. oil immersion. The 

 writer lately found that second-hand medium size stands with only a 16 mm. 

 and a 4 mm. objective were selling at from £i-z-£x^. The latest American 

 instruments of Type 2 are now quoted at /15-/23, without an " oil " ; but 

 these still seem to be of better workmanship than those we produce here. 

 The Committee strike the right note when they declare that mass pro- 

 duction of a few types is the only hope for our manufacturers. 



Sir William Osier, Eart., M.D., F.R.S. 



In the death of Sir "William Osier, Medical Science has lost one of her 

 greatest sons, and the Oxford University School of Medicine, one who was 

 possibly the greatest of its heads. To all medical men Osier was familiar 

 through his book. Principles and Practice, and his editorship, with Dr. Mac- 

 Crae, of the well-known System of Medicine. 



William Osier was born at Bondhead, Ontario, the sixth son of the Rev. 

 Featherston Osier, a Cornish clergyman who had gone to Canada as a mis- 

 sionary ; young Osier began his medical studies at the University of Toronto, 

 and proceeded thence to McGill University, where he took the M.D. degree. 

 His first European experience was at University College, London, from 

 which he took the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians. After- 

 wards he studied in the hospitals of Berlin, Leipsic, and Vienna, returning 

 to his native Canada as Professor of the Institutes of Medicine at McGill. 

 In 1889 he became Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore. 

 America enjoyed the benefits of Osier's genius for fifteen years ; here he 

 wrote his Principles and Practice, and it was also at Baltimore that he first 

 introduced the unit system which is just now being adopted by several 

 London hospitals. 



In 1905 Prof. William Osier came to Oxford as Regius Professor of 

 Medicine, subsequently being made a Baronet. Had he been a brewer, or a 

 backstairs political jobber, one feels sure that he would have been made a 

 Baron. At Oxford Sir William Osier came as a fresh breeze ; the good 

 but often narrow-minded Dons could not understand how a man who used 

 the terms " to make things hum," or " to get busy," could really be intel- 

 lectual ! However, many of them soon learnt that he was their master 

 not only in his own subject, but in their own. Osier was a literary as well 

 as a scientific genius — he loved all books, and he seemed to know a great 

 deal about every subject. 



To the younger men in the scientific departments at Oxford, Sir William 

 was a well-known figure. At any odd moment he would appear and say. 



