October 27, 1923 



NA TURE 



6^1 



held by ,a past president of the Royal Society of 

 Canada in the person of the late Dr. W. E. Saunders. 

 It is thus evident that in the fields of literary, historical 

 and scientific research in Canada, the right men were 

 found to represent that portion of the British Empire 

 at the Imperial Conference. 



On Tuesday next, October 30, occurs the centenary 

 of the death of Dr. Edmund Cartwright, the inventor 

 of the power loom and other textile machinery. 

 Born in 1743, a few years after Arkwright, his life 

 coincided with the great Industrial Revolution, to 

 which he made notable contributions. Of a good 

 Nottinghamshire family, he was educated at Wake- 

 field Grammar School and at University College, 

 Oxford, and took holy orders. He was given the 

 perpetual curacy of Brampton, near Wakefield, and 

 in 1779 he was appointed to the living of Goadby 

 Marwood, in Leicestershire ; it was there he made 

 his first loom. It was during a holiday visit to 

 Derbyshire in 1784 that his attention was directed 

 to the need of a mechanically worked loom, and 

 though he had had no previous experience of mechanics 

 or weaving, with the aid of the village carpenter and 

 smith, he made a rude form of loom which could be 

 worked by other agency than the hands and feet 

 of the weaver. He took out patents, at Doncaster 

 set up a factory, and there produced the earliest 

 samples of power woven goods. At the same time, 

 he turned his mind to the difficult problem of wool- 

 combing by machinery, and Iktc again made a certain 

 amount of advance. His projects, however, proved 

 financial failures, and in 1793 he sold his factory 

 and removed to Lon-ion. Among his other inventions 

 was an engine to be (lri\ en by steam or spirit vapour, 

 in \vhi( li he applied the practice of surface condensa- 

 tion, lie was also known for his experiments in 

 agncuh lire ant! fni ^ars \\()r]<c(l tdr llic; I )ukes 



of Bedford at W .<. Ihough t!ic 



came into use soiiu-wiiai .-^IowIn-, 1)\- th 



industry U(.tc acknowledge! !> 

 bv tlu' (iovernment of a sum 

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in l\cnt, and ; -pent tiic 



experimenting to the last. 



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gate in order to devise a disinfectant against the 

 disease, but happily recovered. Yellow fever claimed 

 Jesse Lazear, who allowed himself to be bitten by 

 mosquitoes that had fed on the blood of yellow fever 

 patients. The list of X-ray martyrs is unhappily a 

 long one — Hall-Edwards, Lyster, Clarence Dally, 

 Ironside Bruce, Radiguet, Kassabian, Vaillant, 

 Bergonie, and others. Kala-azar attacked Pirrie, 

 and other names might have been added to Mr. 

 Cooper's roll of honour. Thus trypanosomiasis 

 claimed TuUoch ; African tick fever, Dutton ; yellow 

 fever, Walter Myers; and typhoid fever, Louis 

 Jenner and Allan Macfadyen. " Such heroisms give 

 the answer to those who imagine Science to be a 

 rigid, emotionless thing, and its devotees to be hard 

 men, forgetful of humanity in their intellectual 

 absorption." 



The inaugural lecture of Prof. A. V. Hill in the 

 Anatomy Theatre of the Institute of Medical Sciences 

 at University College on October 16 was a bnlliuiit and 

 inspiring account of the present tendencies of physio- 

 logical science. Prof. Hill came to physiology from 

 physical science and is thus more favourably situated 

 in regard to his freedom of suggestion and criticism 

 than man\- biologists of a more resirictr.l training. 

 As present tendencies, he instanced the unparalleled 

 advance in biochemistry during the past few j'^ears. 

 It is now difficult to define precisely where physiology 

 ends and biochemistry begins. Day by day the 

 analysis of the whole mechanism of the li\ ing organ- 

 ism becomes more refined and elaborate, i'rof. Hill 

 cited the brilliant work of Hartridge and Roughton, 

 which has recently brought the stndv of the time- 

 course of the reactions of luemoglobm with gas^vs. 

 occupying onlv a lew hundredths of a second, under 

 direct experinu-ntal ohsrrvation. The development 

 of furtlu'r antl tiiu^r ph\-sical mell tKsis is 



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