Aug. 3, 1876] 



NATURE 



291 



can ascertain no such comparison was instituted, and so, 

 for nearly half a centur>', a practice prevailed which 

 must have been constantly taking away the last chances 

 of human life, while a truly saving practice, — artificial respi- 

 ration, — remained without an improvement from the time 

 of John Hunter, in last century, to that of Marshall Hall, 

 who, in our own days, gave it new and prominent import- 

 ance. 



A dozen painless and carefully-conducted experiments 

 made on inferior animals which were exposed at any mo- 

 ment to be knocked on the head for food, to be killed 

 or mortally maimed with shot, or to be hunted to death 

 in the field or warren, would have taught, in 1803, that 

 the passage of a galvanic cm rent through the muscles of 

 a body recently dead confers on those muscles no new 

 energy ; that the current in its passage only excites tem- 

 porary contraction ; that the force of contraction resident in 

 the muscles themselves is but educed by the excitation, and 

 that to strike the life out of the muscles by the galvanic 

 shock without feeding the force, expended by contraction, 

 from the centre of the body is a fatal principle of practice. 

 The experiments unfortunately were not performed, and 

 the error, therefore, fatal as it was, continued without 

 question, until my own unexpected observations revealed 

 it in the light of an error and made it so self-evident that 

 the illustration through which it may best be explained, 

 admitted of being treated, by one who was wise after the 

 event, as a subject for jest. 



" Vidi ego, naufragium qui riserat, requore mergi." 

 I will not copy the comment of the poet : far more con- 

 genial to me were it to save the endangered life. . 



It is from experiences such as I have given above, and in 

 many instances, that the necessity for experimentation on 

 the lower animals forces itself on the minds of the members 

 of the medical profession, and especially on the minds of 

 those who are most earnest to remove fatal errors of practice 

 and to devise saving methods. If it were only kept steadily 

 in view that we medical men are always dealing with fatal 

 accidents and fatal diseases ; if it were only kept steadily 

 in view that we are always asking ourselves — Is this we 

 are doing for the best? Or, as new light dawns on 

 us : — May this we are doing be for the worst rather 

 than for the best, and may the old practices taught 

 to us have rested on a false foundation ? If these 

 things were thought of, then our position would be better 

 understood and our actions more correctly appreciated. 

 I believe those who are most severe upon us would be 

 most considerate under this discipline of reason if they 

 would give it trial, and that the very impulses of kindness, 

 I will even say of tenderness, that lead many to oppose 

 experimental inquiry would actually make them experi- 

 mentalists if they could once realise the highest re- 

 sponsibilities that devolve on the medical scholar. Nay, 

 I am not without hope that my jesting critic himself, if he 

 ever had to stand, as we physicians have to stand, over the 

 body of one of his fellow men, who, in the midst of health 

 had just passed into doubtful death : if this critic, I say, 

 had to stand there wondering what he should do to recal 

 the life, uncertain whether what he was about to do were 

 for the best or the worst ; he, I think, would lay aside 

 Gil Bias, would be humanely tempted, to risk the sacrifice 

 of the life of a lower for that of the higher animal, and 

 would transfer the rabbit he had provided for his dinner, 

 to the experiment room instead of the kitchen. 



Benjamin W. Richardson 

 {To be contimted.) 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN 

 Huth's "Moving Star" of 1801-2.— At the be- 

 ginning of the present century, when, although Bode 

 and some few others had been looking forward to such a 

 discovery, astronomers generally were startled by Piazzi's 

 accidental detection of the small planet Ceres, we read of 



observations of more than one so-called "moving star," 

 which, after progressing slowly for a short interval, finally 

 disappeared. The most singular 'narrative refers to an 

 object said to have been remarked by Hofrath Huth, at 

 Frankfort-on-the-Oder, on the night from December 

 2 to 3, 1 801, particulars of which were communi- 

 cated to Bode in several letters during the ensuing five 

 weeks. If the observations are bond fide, there is yet 

 a mystery attaching to the object to which they relate. 

 Huth was one of the three independent discoverers of the 

 periodical comet now known as Encke's, on October 20, 

 1805, Pons and Bouvard sharing with him an almost 

 simultaneous discovery, and he did other astronomical 

 work. Writing to Bode on December 5, he says : " In 

 the night from the 2nd to the 3rd of this month, I saw 

 with my 2|-feet Dollond, in a triangle with 6 and 8 Leonis 

 to the south-west, a star with faint reddish light, round, 

 and adrnitting of being magnified. I could not discern 

 any trace of it with the naked eye ; it had three small 

 stars in its neighbourhood." He writes again on the 15th, 

 that unfavourable weather had allowed of his observing 

 the object only on three occasions, which appear to be on 

 the early mornings of the 3rd, 13th and 14th, and he con- 

 cludes from his observations that it had a slow retrograde 

 motion to the south-west. From the 13th to the 14th, 

 by eye-estimate, it had retrograded 4' of arc, and from 

 the 3rd to the 13th at most 30'. He forwarded to Bode 

 at this time a diagram of the neighbouring telescopic 

 stars. On December 21 he writes again that he had 

 only succeeded in observing his moving star on one addi- 

 tional night, that of December 19-20, when he found it 

 " near four stars apparently situate to the westward, about 

 half a diameter of the full moon below a smaller one." 

 Its path appeared directed towards i Leonis and towards 

 the ecliptic. He adds : " Of the motion of this planet-like 

 star I can now no longer doubt, since I have observed a 

 difference of |° nearly, between its positions on the 3rd 

 and 20th." In a fourth letter, dated 1802, January 12, he 

 informs Bode that he had seen the star on two later 

 nights, those of the ist and 2nd of the same month from 

 iih. to I4h,, with many telescopic stars in its vicinity, of 

 which he enclosed a diagram, by eye-estimate only, with 

 the path of the object. 



He mentions that on January i the star was even 

 smaller than one of the sateUites of Jupiter, and on 

 the following night he had difficulty in perceiving it in 

 close proximity to a star towards which it was moving. 

 On the 5th he could discern only now and then, to the 

 right of the star, on the left of which it was situated on 

 the I St and 2nd of January, and at a very small distance 

 from it, a glimmer, but the star's former place on the left 

 was vacant. He concludes that the object must have 

 been receding from the earth, and might perhaps have 

 been more distinct and larger before December 3. 

 On the night of January 6 there was no trace of 

 it. He closes this final letter by saying that he would 

 have gladly learned that some other astronomer had 

 observed this star and confirmed its motion, and express- 

 ing his regret that Bode had not succeeded in finding it. 

 On the latter point Bode remarks that the weather during 

 December had been but very rarely favourable for obser- 

 vation, and in the few moments that the sky was clear he 

 had occupied himself with his "Seeker" and Dollond, 

 partly in giving attention to the neighbourhood of Huth's 

 star, and partly to the region in which Ceres was expected 

 to be recovered on her second appearance. He also 

 remarks on the imperfect manner in which the star's 

 positions had been communicated to him, but concludes 

 that " without doubt it was a distant comet," and its 

 great distance caused it to appear without nebulosity. 

 He supposes it on December 3 to have been in longi- 

 tude 156° 20', with latitude 10° 40' north, and on January 

 2 in 154° 20', with latitude 8° 50'. Huth's rough dia- 

 grams are reproduced in the Berliner Jahrbtich, 1805, 



