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long.’”’ It was only of late years that the renascence came. The 
great discovery of vaccination to withstand the frightful scourge 
of small-pox, which carried off more than half-a-million of people 
annually, led to a further discovery of a general law, viz., that 
immunity against the diseases caused by a specific poison can be 
produced by inoculation of that poison in an attenuated state. 
Then, in later years, we have had the great discovery of anesthetics, 
which throw the patient into a deep sleep and render him uncon- 
scious of pain. Finally, the greatest improvement in surgery 
which the world has ever seen is the work of Joseph Lister. 
Following the footsteps of Pasteur, he discovered the cause of the 
blood poisoning which made every operation so hazardous, and 
so, by attacking the microbes, he has saved more lives than were 
destroyed in the wars of Napoleon. The lecture was not unmindful 
of preventive medicine and what it had done, and stated that 
England took the foremost place in all subjects of hygiene. 
Friday, May 4th. Sir Samuel Wilks, Bart. F.R.S., President, 
in the Chair. 
Dr. F. Womack, M.B., B.Sc., gave a lecture on “The 
Tone Qualities of Musical Instruments,” illustrated with 
experiments and lantern slides. The lecturer said that ordinary 
musical sounds are not simple, but consist of a series of super- 
posed vibrations, each one of which is simple and connot be further 
decomposed. «The principal vibration is called the “‘ fundamental ” 
and gives the pitch of the note. The other vibrations have fre- 
quencies, two, three, or more times that of the fundamental, and 
upon their relative intensity depends the quality of the sound 
as distinguished from pitch. The lecturer showed, by means of 
an experiment with a sonometer and a ’cello, that these higher 
vibrations, or partials, are actually sounding when the string is 
bowed. The sound of a tuning-fork is a simple vibration and 
has no harmonics or partials, and consequently no “ character.” 
Different instruments owe their differences of quality to different 
groupings of the upper partials, as the lecturer showed by a table. 
With organ flute pipes the upper partials are somewhat lacking, 
thus giving the mellow diapason quality. To give more character 
therefore stops, having a series of pipes sounding with each note, 
are added to organs. They are called mixtures. They add 
character to a combination of stops by supplying the lacking 
harmonics. Reed pipes—the oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and the 
reed pipes of an organ—have certain harmonics strongly enforced, 
which give their special “ nasal” quality. The lecturer illustrated 
