134 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



edge," which was devoted principally to the 

 popularization of science, and to which he 

 was himself a voluminous contributor, writ- 

 ing on all sorts of subjects, from " Ameri- 

 canisms " and " Whist " to the purposes for 

 which the Pyi-amids were built. He also 

 wrote under a variety of signatures ; in his 

 own name, in astronomy; as " Edward Clodd," 

 on dreams and evolution ; as " Thomas Fos- 

 ter," on morals and other abstruse subjects ; 

 as " Mephisto," on chess ; and as the editor 

 of several departments. In his earlier life 

 he accomplished something in original re- 

 search, at which he would have gladly con- 

 tinued, but financial embarrassments com- 

 pelled him to do that which would bring 

 money at once — and hence the proHfic fruits 

 of his pen. In 1884 Mr. Proctor married, 

 as his second wife, Mrs. Robert C. Mallery, 

 of St. Joseph, Mo., where he lived till he re- 

 moved to Florida in 1886. He had erected 

 at Oak Lawn an observatory, where he was 

 accustomed to spend much of his time, reviv- 

 ing the original work of his earlier days, and 

 had been engaged in later years upon a book 

 which he had intended to make the crowning 

 work of his life and his most solid title to 

 fame, " The Old and New Astronomy." It was 

 to be published in twelve monthly parts, by 

 Longmans, Green, and Longmans, London and 

 New York. We are not informed whether 

 the manuscript of this work has been com- 

 pleted ; but we understand that the sixth 

 part is now ready for delivery. One of the 

 last articles he wrote was that in " Harper's 

 Weekly " for September 22d, on the " Moon 

 a Dead World (but not like our Earth)," in 

 which he held that the differences in the 

 character of the lunar and terrestrial sur- 

 faces are owing to differences in the extent 

 to which denudation has worked on the re- 

 spective bodies. He also left several manu- 

 scripts in the hands of one of the newspaper 

 " syndicates." 



The Teaching of Physics in Schools,— 



The Committee of the American Association 

 on the Teaching of Physics expresses the 

 opinion in its report that the teaching may 

 begin with profit in the " grammar-school," 

 but decidedly opposes any general recom- 

 mendation that it must begin there or in the 

 primary school. " Here, perhaps more than 

 anywhere else, nearly everything depends 



upon the teacher." When taught in the gram- 

 mar-school and by a competent teacher, it 

 should be done mainly by and through illus- 

 trative experiments, which may be of the 

 simplest character, involving and exhibiting 

 some of the fundamental principles of the 

 science ; and these should generally be made 

 by the teacher, the pupils being encouraged 

 to repeat, vary, and extend. The course of 

 study in the high-schools should be in har- 

 mony with the fact that the large majority 

 of the young people who are educated in the 

 public schools receive their final scholastic 

 training there. It is important that the 

 student should be made acquainted, if only 

 to a limited extent, with the methods of 

 physical investigation, and that he should be 

 able himself to plan and carry out an attack 

 upon some of the simpler problems of the 

 science. In a high-school course of four 

 years of three terms each, the study should 

 not begin before the third year, and should 

 be continued, with three hours a week of 

 class-teaching, for one year — text-book work 

 with illustrative experiments by the instruct- 

 or during the first two terms, and simple 

 laboratory exercises in the third term. A 

 course like this should be required as pre- 

 liminary to admission to all courses in col- 

 lege. 



Ancient Egyptian Medicine. — The an- 

 cient Egyptians had abundant opportunities 

 in performing the preparatory processes for 

 embalming to become acquainted with the 

 structure and some of the functions of man's 

 physical system. Hence medicine flourished 

 among them from an early date. Medical 

 colleges existed in the priestly schools of 

 Memphis, Heliopolis, Sais, and Thebes. Two 

 nearly complete medical treatises of very 

 great antiquity are still extant, and frag- 

 ments of others. The Ebers papyrus, which 

 is written in hieratic characters resembling 

 those of the earlier writings of the eighteenth 

 dynasty (b. c. about 1550), begins, after the 

 conventional prefatory adjuration, with a 

 section on hygienic measures and simple 

 remedies. This is followed by a section on 

 the parasite Bilharzia hcematobia, which is 

 still common in the Nile Valley. Other dis- 

 eases are then treated of, including those of 

 the eye, which have always been among the 

 most serious afflictions of Egyptian life. 



