146 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



plant calculate that while they got the bromine out of that volume 

 of sea water they missed about $96,379,460 worth of mineral wealth. 

 Included in it was $29,300 worth of silver and $42,000 worth of gold. 



While gold and silver appeal to our imaginations, a far greater 

 amount of wealth was in that sea water in the form of sodium 

 chloride, epsom salts, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, alumi- 

 num, magnesium, strontium carbonate, iron, copper, and iodine. 



From the physical laboratory may come techniques in the future 

 which will extend the ability of man to mine the ocean. And it 

 Lukes little imagination to perceive how profoundly this will change 

 the trend of civilization. 



I have alluded to the new studies at Harvard upon photosynthesis. 

 Perhaps some day, as Dr. Slosson once suggested, we may know as 

 much chemistry as a tree. Perhaps we should say as much physics 

 as a tree. When that day comes, artificial photosynthesis will be 

 possible, and perhaps we will solve the farm problem by abolishing 

 the farm and the cycle of the soil and by manufacturing our food in 

 factories run by sunlight. 



We may^ also expect great changes in the future from the appli- 

 cation of physics to biology and medicine. Recentlj', as some of you 

 know, I undertook to survey the field of medicine in my book. 

 Medical Magic. I devoted the last chapter of the book to a glance 

 at the future and in it I wrote : "Of one thing we can be certain : that 

 every advance in chemistry and physics, every new step in the 

 understanding of the behavior of the molecule, the atom, and the 

 electron, will have its influence upon medical progress. Already the 

 medical laboratories of the world are making use of all the knowledge 

 that physics and chemistry has to offer" (7). 



IV 



An example of the application of the technique of physics to 

 biology is the development of the so-called brain-wave machine in 

 which vacuum-tube amplifiers are used to amplify the electrical 

 currents generated in the brain. A new concept of brain activity 

 and a new understanding of the nerve cell, its functions, and its 

 behavior, are coming from these studies. 



In the study of the potent drugs of life, the hormones, the vita- 

 mins, the enzymes, and the other important chemical factors, the 

 constant attempt is to isolate them in pure crystalline form so that 

 they may be studied with all the resources of the modern chemical 

 and physical laboratory. 



Biologists have always associated activity with life, and for many 

 decades now they have known that a vast amount of action goes on 

 within the living organism. They have been aware of the beating 



