March 24, 1898] 



NATURE 



487 



of many surgical operations, do not inevitably lead to 

 the death of the sufferer by hannorrhage. The reply to 

 this is, that did the prevention of haemorrhage depend 

 solely on the efforts of the surgeon, there is little doubt 

 that even small wounds would prove inevitably fatal ; 

 but provision has been made by nature to meet the 

 emergency, and the bleeding is largely stopped by what 

 is known as the natural arrest of haemorrhage. 



It is not possible to describe this process in detail in 

 the present paper, but the main elements involved are 

 the fact that blood on escaping from the vessels tends 

 to coagulate, and so forms a plug which prevents further 

 escape, and that the severed vessel retracts up its sheath 

 so that the plug is more efficiently supported, whilst the 

 diameter of the vessel is itself greatly reduced by the 

 contraction of the muscular elements in its walls. By 

 these means the blood flow is temporarily checked, and 

 as the wound gradually heals, secondary changes occur 

 in the cut vessels which lead to their permanent 

 occlusion. 



Fig. 2. — Injection of veins in chest. 



Another fact that is well illustrated in such skiagrams 

 is the extreme freedom of anastomosis between many of 

 the smaller vessels which arise at different points of the 

 chief arteries. It is this system of anastomosis which 

 permits surgeons to ligature the main artery of a limb 

 without running serious risk of mortification following 

 the operation ; as the blood, unable to pass by its 

 ordinary channels, dilates the smaller vessels which 

 bridge the occlusion, and thus establish an efficient 

 collateral circulation in the course of a brief period after 

 the ligature has been applied. H. J. Stiles. 



H. Rainy. 



SIR HENRY BESSEMER, F.R.S. 



THE death of Sir Henry Bessemer, announced last 

 week as we went to press, removes a leading re- 

 presentative of the world of applied science, and one 

 whose inventions.revolutionised a manufacturing process. 



NO. 1482, VOL. 57] 



Henry Bessemer was born in 1813 at Charlton, in 

 Herts, and was thus eighty-five years of age at the 

 time of his death. From his father, who was an artist 

 and a member of the French Academy of Sciences, he 

 seemed to have inherited certain artistic tendencies, for 

 at an early age he showed a fondness for modelling and 

 designing patterns. He soon, however, turned his at- 

 tention to other matters, and began the long series of 

 inventions which carried him on to fortune. His success 

 commenced with the invention of a means of manu- 

 facturing bronze powder or "gold" paint from Dutch 

 metal. This invention laid the foundation of his fortune, 

 and it was the profits of the manufacture of the bronze 

 powder which enabled him to carry on experiments in 

 the metallurgical process which bears his name. 



Bessemer's first experiments to improve the quality 

 of iron were made in 1855. He was not an iron manu- 

 facturer when he began his work, neither was he a 

 metallurgist. But he possessed the true instincts of an 

 investigator, for he was quick to observe and sound in 

 his deductions ; and the man who possesses and utilises 

 these qualities is a man of science, whether he has had 

 a systematic training in theoretical principles or not. 

 His own account of the observations and reasoning 

 which led to the idea of the Bessemer process is in- 

 teresting. While making experiments with iron in the 

 open-hearth furnace, the following incident occurred : — 



" Some pieces of pig iron in one side of the bath 

 attracted my attention by remaining unmelted despite 

 the great heat of the furnace, and 1 turned on a little 

 more air through the fire-bridge with the intention of 

 increasing the combustion ; on again opening the furnace 

 door after an interval of half an hour, these two pieces 

 of pig still remained unfused. I then took an iron bar 

 with the intention of pushing them into the bath, when 

 I discovered that they were merely thin shells of decar- 

 bonised iron, thus showing that atmospheric air alone 

 was capable of wholly decarbonising grey pig iron, and 

 converting it into malleable iron without puddling or 

 other manipulation. It was this which gave a new turn 

 to my thoughts, and after due consideration I became 

 convinced that if air could be brought into contact with 

 a sufficiently extensive surface of molten crude iron the 

 latter could rapidly be converted into malleable iron." 



On August 13, 1856, Bessemer read a paper at the 

 Cheltenham meeting of the British Associatoi, entitled 

 " The Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without 

 Fuel," this being the first account that appeared shadow- 

 ing forth the important manufacture since known as the 

 Bessemer process. The paper, however, was not printed 

 in the Association's Report for 1856, and the title, where 

 mentioned, it may be noted, is quoted without the word 

 "malleable." It was followed, in 1865, by a long com- 

 munication, read at the Birmingham meeting, " On the 

 Manufacture of Cast Steel ; its Progress and Employ- 

 ment as a Substitute for Wrought Iron." Sir W. (now 

 Lord) Armstrong, the President of the Section, in re- 

 ferring to it, remarked as follows :— " The paper from 

 Mr. Bessemer upon steel cannot fail to be highly valued 

 by the Section. The growing importance of this material, 

 and its rapidly extending sphere of usefulness, have 

 attracted attention in a special degree to the question of 

 economy in its production ; and certainly no one has 

 contributed so largely as Mr. Bessemer to our advance 

 in this direction." 



The first honorary recognition of the importance of 

 the Bessemer process in this country was made by the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers in 1859 by the award of 

 the Telford medal. In 1871-73 he was President of the 

 Iron and Steel Institute, and in 1872 he received the 

 Albert medal of the Society of Arts " for the eminent 

 services rendered by him to Arts, Manufacture, and 

 Commerce, in developing the manufacture of steel." 



In 1874 he was a member of a Committee appointed to 



