Chapter Five 

 JEKYLL AND HYDE 



DESPITE the world-wide sensation I knew this discovery- 

 would produce, had the matter rested with me nothing 

 would have been given to the press. I was hoping that I might be 

 able to publish the first reports about it in a scientific journal. 

 All the scientists I had known in my formative years had been 

 scornful of the press, and they decried those who appeared to 

 seek or who welcomed publicity. I had come to acquire the rather 

 quaint idea that it was scientifically 'improper' to give informa- 

 tion about scientific discoveries to the press, an attitude which in 

 its bareness is a type of scientific snobbery, and generally found 

 in the immature or in those who are unlikely ever to feature 

 greatly in that way. Most young scientists encounter this problem 

 and are worried by it, and its solution lies in the realisation that it 

 is fundamentally the man in the street who pays for scientific 

 research, and he is therefore entitled to know the results. The 

 majority of mankind have not the opportunity of doing scientific 

 work, but there is no question that almost everyone is deeply 

 interested in it and eager to know about it. Another type of 

 intellectual snobbery is the dictum that science has now passed 

 beyond the understanding of the ordinary man. That, however, 

 is very largely a matter of presentation. With the possible excep- 

 tion of higher mathematics, there is not a single branch of science 

 whose broad outlines the ordinary man cannot appreciate if it is 

 properly explained. 



The views I held about publicity at that time had to be pushed 

 aside, for when the Board of Trustees of the East London Museum 

 heard the full story from Miss Latimer, they were rightly eager to 

 exploit the whole affair to the best advantage of the Museum. The 

 publicity which this remarkable discovery would bring and the 

 interest it would arouse would be of the greatest benefit to any 

 institution, and I was in no position to refuse or to contest this 



