December 9, 1897J 



NATURE 



33 



The first occasion upon which Rontgen rays were applied to 

 surgical diagnosis was referred to by General Maurice in the 

 course of a few remarks made at the close of a lecture delivered 

 at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, by Mr.1,W. 

 Webster. The credit of having first used the rays to determine 

 whether a patient (who had severely injured his elbow) was suf- 

 fering from a fracture or a dislocation, has hitherto been given 

 to Mr. Howard Marsh. It appears, however, that Mr. Marsh 

 really only recommended the application of the rays to the case, 

 and that the actual photograph was taken by Mr. Webster, who 

 had been working for some time with Mr. T. Moore. The 

 photograph showed distinctly that the injury was due to a dis- 

 location, and was not a fracture at all. The diagnosis having 

 been established, the operation of putting the arm in its place 

 was performed by Captain Salvage, an army surgeon. Mr. 

 Howard Marsh described the case in the British Medical 

 Journal ; but, says General Maurice, "as he was simply dealing 

 with it as a scientific case, the names of Mr. W'ebster and Mr. 

 Moore were, according to professional etiquette, necessarily 

 omitted." The lecture from which we gather these facts appears 

 in the Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution (No. 5, 

 vol. xxiv., 1897). 



The Annual Report for 1896 of the State Board of Health of 

 Massachusetts has just been issued. The work of the now his- 

 toric series of experimental filters has been recorded as usual, 

 and there is but little to add to the deductions already published 

 in previous years regarding their respective efficiency in the puri- 

 fication of water. The presence of iron in public water supplies 

 has been engaging the attention of the Board, and experiments 

 have been started which, as far as they have gone, indicate that 

 this evil may be remedied by filtering water through a fine filter 

 of coke breeze, which is stated to practically remove all the iron. 

 Another important matter which has been investigated is the 

 purification of manufacturing refuse ; such factory-sewage may 

 contain several times as much organic matter as an equal volume 

 of domestic sewage, and is extremely difficult to deal with ; in 

 many cases the chemicals used in manufacturing processes being 

 such as would destroy nitrification if the sewage were applied to 

 an ordinary sewage filter. The dissemination of typhoid fever 

 through the use of polluted water in ponds in the vicinity of so- 

 called " picnic groves"- — places of summer resort brought within 

 easy reach of large cities by the extension of electric railways — 

 • has also been carefully inquired into, and the sanitary conditions 

 of a large number of such resorts and their water-supplies have 

 been investigated. Other matters dealt with in the Annual 

 Report are the production and use of diphtheria antitoxin ; an 

 experimental inquiry as to the diagnosis, genesis anddiffiision of 

 malaria ; examinations of sputum and other material suspected 

 of containing tubercle bacilli, &c. 



At the meeting of the Chemical and Metallurgical Society of 

 South Africa, held on October 16 last, some interesting data on 

 dry crushing and direct cyaniding of Rand ore were given by 

 Mr. Franklin White. Great things were expected of this 

 method of treatment by some metallurgists a year or two ago, 

 but its progress has been far from rapid, largely owing, no doubt, 

 to the comparatively low percentage of gold extracted by its 

 use. According to Mr. White, however, 917 tons of oxidised 

 ore from Botha's Reef, treated recently, yielded 6577 per cent, 

 of its gold, the tailings containing 2708 dwts. per ton. The 

 only preparation of the ore was to pass it through a Gates 

 crusher, after which nearly 20 per cent, remained on ^-mesh 

 screens. Experiments seem to show that if the material had 

 been passed through |-mesh screens, about 76 per cent, of the 

 gold would have been extracted in one operation. About 

 1000 tons of pyritic ore from the Village Main Reef were also 

 experimentally treated with evcellent results ; one charge giving 



NO. 1467, VOL. 57] 



a theoretical extraction of 89*25 per cent., as deduced from the 

 difference in the assays before and after treatment. The cheap- 

 ness and simplicity of the process is much in its favour. In 

 another paper read at the same meeting, Mr. Wilkinson esti- 

 mated the present total costs of twenty-nine Rand outcrop mining 

 companies as averaging only about 2bs. per ton for mining, 

 milling, development, &c. , or about 41. per ton less than in 

 1896, when the native wages were higher. A further reduction 

 in cost of 4^. or 5^-. per ton would be accompanied by an 

 enormous increase in the profits. The life of the gold field 

 is estimated at fifty years, and its average yield during that 

 period at about 18,000,000/. per annum. 



It is stated in Engineering that a company of consider- 

 able importance and with an influential board has just been 

 formed in Sweden for the purpose, principally, of exploiting, 

 through electric transmission, the vast unused power of the 

 famous Trollhattan waterfalls, situated at some distance from 

 Gothenburg, Sweden. The new company is to take over Dr. 

 de Laval's waterfalls and property at Trollhattan, a carbide 

 manufactory at Okan, with turbines and other installations, the 

 Edenas waterfall in Upper Lulea, and certain of De Laval's 

 patents and inventions. There are in both places considerable 

 areas of land, while the water-power at Trollhattan is estimated 

 at 220,000 horse-power, and that at Edenas at 100,000 horse- 

 power. There is consequently both power and space enough 

 for industrial installations on a large scale. It is intended to 

 build a tunnel at Trollhattan, which is to receive the water 

 above the falls in question (for there are others above it, already 

 partly utilised) just above the " King Oscar Bridge," through 

 which the tunnel will lead to a power station below the " Hell 

 Fall." It is proposed to take some 20,000 to 30,000 electric 

 horse-power through this tunnel. Of this power the company pro- 

 poses as soon as possible to make available 10,000 horse-power, 

 of which half has already been let to a well-known electrical 

 engineer for a period of fifteen years. Of the 3000 horse- 

 power (effective) at Okan, a portion is already being used for the 

 manufacture of carbides. 



A SURVEY of the conditions of artificial flight, and the ex- 

 periments which have been made in connection with it, is con- 

 tributed to the current number of Science Progress by Prof. 

 G. H. Bryan, F.R.S. It is pointed out that every one of the con- 

 ditions for successful flight has been fairly satisfactorily dealt with 

 by various experimenters ; and it only remains to embody them 

 all in a single machine. The directions in which the solution 

 of the problem should be sought are thus summarised by Prof. 

 Bryan: — " If any experimenter can so thoroughly master the 

 control of a machine sailing down-hill under gravity as to in- 

 crease the size of the machine and make it large enough to 

 carry a light motor, and if, further, this motor can be made of 

 sufficient horse-power, combined with lightness, to convert a 

 downward into a horizontal or upward motion, the problem 

 of flight will be solved. The first flights need not be long — 

 a hundred yards, rising, say, twenty or thirty feet above the 

 ground, will be sufficient ; all else will be simply a matter of 

 improving on the original model, and once success is assured 

 workers will not be wanting. Another promising direction for 

 success lies in an elaborate and exhaustive investigation of 

 balance and stability, such as would allow of the safe use of 

 motor-driven machines too large to be controlled by mere 

 athletic agility. This might partially be acquired by experi- 

 ments with models, gradually increasing in size till they were 

 capable of carrying a man and a motor. But if the future de- 

 velopment of artificial flight is not to continue a repetition of 

 the chapter of accidents by which naval architects gained their 

 theoretical knowledge, there is abundant work for mathema- 

 ticians in reducing the conditions of stability of aerial machines 



