NA TURK 



425 



CONTENTS. p^^^ 



The Ministry of Health 425 



Time lived and Time represented. By Prof. H. 



Wildon Carr 426 



Projective Geometry. By F. P. W. . • . 428 



The Distribution of Mental Products. By F. G. D. 429 

 Mming and Mineral Deposits. By Prof. Henry Louis 430 



Our Bookshelf 432 



Letters to the Editor : — 



Recoil of Electrons from .Scattered X-Rays. — Prof. 



Arthur H. Compton ; C. T. R. Wilson, F.R.S. 435 

 Long-range Particles from Radium-active Deposit. — 



L. F. Bates and J. Stanley Rogers . . 435 

 The Intermediary Hosts of the Human Trematodes, 

 Schistosoma hamatohiiim and Schistosoma mansoni in 

 Nyasaland Protectorate.— Dr. J. B. Christopher- 

 son, C.B.E 436 



The One- Host Life-Cycle of Hy/neuolepis fra/erna, 



-Stiles, of the Mouse.— Prof. W. N. F. Woodland 436 

 Polar Climate and Vegetation. — L. C. W. Bonacina 436 

 Series Spectra in Oxygen and Sulphur. — Dr. J. J. 



Hopfield 437 



Continental Drift and the Stressing of Africa. — Dr. 



John W. Evans, F.R.S 438 



Stereoisomerism among Derivatives of Diphenyl.— 



Dr. E. E Turner 439 



The Liesegang Phenomenon — an Historical Note. — 



J. R. L Hepburn 439 



Urease as a Product of Bacterium radicicola. — Prof. 



M. W. Beijerinck 439 



The Study of Man. By Prof. G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S. 440 

 Some Bearings of Zoology on Human Welfare. By 



Prof. J H. Ashworth, F.R.S 444 



The Theory of the Affine Field. By Prof. Alberc 



Einstein, For. Mem. R.S. . • . • . 448 



Further Determinations of the Constitution of the 

 Elements by the Method of Accelerated Anode 

 Rays. By Dr. F. W. Aston, F.R.S. . . -449 



Obituary : — 



Sir Henry Hubert Hayden, F.R.S. By Sir T. H. 

 Holland, K.C.S.I., K.CI.E, F.R.S. . . 450 

 Current Topics and Events ..... 452 



Our Astronomical Column 454 



Research Items 455 



Scientific Exhibition at British Association Meeting. 



By M. A. Giblett 457 



Terrestrial Magnetism in France. By Dr. C. Chree, 



F.R.S 458 



University and Educational Intelligence . . . 459 

 Societies and Academies ...••• 460 

 Official Publications Received . . . • « 460 



Editorial and Publishing Offices : 



MACMILLAN dr CO., LTD., 



ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON, W.C.I 



Advertisements and business letters should be 



addressed to the Publishers. 



Editorial communications to the Editor. 



Telegraphic Address: PHUSIS. LONDON. 

 Telephone Number : GERRARD 8830. 



NO. 2812, VOL. I 12] 



The Ministry of Health. 



TRUE versatility is a very wonderful thing, a fit 

 object for the admiration of crowds. History, 

 which is life, offers few examples of true versatility, 

 but what history omits Shakespeare supplies and 

 modern governments assume. Thus the Henry of 

 poetry : 



Never was such a sudden scholar made. . . . Turn 

 him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it 

 he will unloose. Familiar as his garter. 



In modern governments, too, abstrusest specialisms 

 must be presumed to grow " like the summer grass, 

 fastest by night." Although Sir William Joynson-Hicks 

 had already held three governmental positions within a 

 year, it may not have been the poetical parallel that 

 has just led to his appointment as Minister of Health ; 

 it may have been the old, outworn, Platonic view of 

 the abilities, or absence of them, essential to a states- 

 man; or even mere political exigency. Of one thing 

 we are sure, that the development of a young but 

 vitally important Ministry has been delayed, we hope 

 only temporarily, by the appointment. H a surgeon 

 should ever be offered the woolsack, there is not a 

 lawyer but would deem his previous courses to have 

 been very vain indeed ; but to bestow the title of 

 Minister of Health upon a layman evokes singularly 

 little comment. We must be richer than we imagine 

 we are in political genius if the solution of such problems 

 as the inception of an administration of state medicine 

 can be taken up, in a social organisation of such magni- 

 tude and complexity as our own, at the rate of four a 

 year. But there is, to the public view, an appearance of 

 difference between the legal and the medical cases, which 

 must be examined and understood before we can proceed 

 intelligently towards an improved condition of afifairs. 



This aspect of the matter has never been analysed 

 more shrewdly than by Sir Lenthal Cheatle, who, so 

 long ago as last January, set forth to defend the 

 Ministry of Health from the Ministers in the Nineteenth 

 Century and After. In his balanced and moderate ex- 

 position there is not a loophole left for political control 

 of the office, because the sole reason for political control 

 is objection to medical control, and of such objection 

 nothing survives Sir Lenthal Cheatle's examination. 

 He realises that Dr. Addison's appointment — a purely 

 political appointment, by the way — did not prove, in 

 the opinion of many people, to be a good one. There 

 have been lawyers who have held the Lord Chancellor- 

 ship and failed in it, lawyers who have held the Premier- 

 ship and come to grief, lawyers who have held the Irish 

 Secretaryship and brought grief to others : luit it is still 

 considered right and proper to appoint a lawyer 

 Solicitor-General, although of Solicitors-General some 



