Vol. XXIV. No. 6.] 
POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 
89 
Slje Popular Science I^ews. 
BOSTON, JUNE 
I, 1890. 
AUSTIN P. NICHOLS, S.B., . . 
WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D., 
Editor. 
. Associate Editor. 
It is with the deepest regret and a sense of 
personal loss that we announce to our readers 
the death of Dr. John Crowell, of Haver- 
hill, Mass., after a long and painful illness 
K resulting from heart trouble. Dr. Crowell 
V was an old and valued contributor to the 
W Science News, and was one of the inost 
respected members of the community, not 
only for his eminent skill and success in the 
practice of his profession, but for his artistic 
and literal}' attainments, on which subjects 
he was a critic whose opinions were deserv- 
edly valued. Dr. Crowell was sixt^-six years 
of age, and had practiced medicine in his 
native city of Haverhill for nearly forty years. 
By what name the present age is likely to 
be known to our remote posterity, it would be 
rash to predict, so enormous is the develop- 
ment in various departments of art and 
industry ; but, in comparison with preceding 
ages, it might, from our immediate point of 
view, be well designated as the '' Engineering 
Age." Certainly the recent and the prospec- 
tive achievements in this line throw far into 
the shade the most famous exploits of en- 
gineering in the past, even if we go no 
farther back than the middle of the present 
century. The Eiflel Tower doubled at one 
bound, as it were, the loftie.st structures that 
man had reared ; and most of them — like the 
Egyptian pyramids and the Strasburg spire 
— belonged to a period several centuries or 
many centuries distant, " in the dark back- 
ward and abysm of time." And now we are 
told that EitVel and Edison propose to build a 
tower 1 ,500 feet high for the coming World's 
Fair at Chicago ! The great bridges of our 
day are even more conspicuous illustrations 
of the audacity of modern engineers. The 
Brooklyn bridge, with its clear span of 
1,595 '"2 feet, was an amazing feat ; and. the 
Forth bridge, with its two cantilever spans of 
1,700 feet each, now just completed, is, in 
some respects, far more stupendous. But 
the appetite for triumphs like these appears 
to grow with what it feeds upon, and the 
engineer seeks new and greater worlds to 
conquer. Plans have just been made for a 
railroad bridge across the Hudson at New 
York witli a span of 3,850 feet, or more than 
half a mile; and it is quite probable that 
it will be built. Its extreme length, includ- 
ing anchorages, will be 6,500 feet, that of the 
Brooklyn bridge being 3,700 ; and the height 
of tlic towers supporting the cables is to be 
500 feet, the Brooklyn ones being 272. The 
dimensions of some portions and the amount 
of material required will be immensely 
greater. The cables, for instance, will be 48 
inches in diameter instead of 15 1-2, and the 
weight of iron and steel in the structure will 
be 60,000 tons instead of 6,750. The cost, 
exclusive of land damages, is estimated at 
sixteen millions of dollars, and the time 
required for construction at ten years. What 
bigger and bolder enterprises in bridge- 
making may be planned by the time this one 
is finished, who will venture to guess.'' It 
would seem that the possible limits of span 
are nearly reached here, and that the great 
bridges of the twentieth century can only be 
longer and costlier works of the same general 
character. Yet who knows .-^ 
The circulars of the various summer 
schools are flying through the land, thick as 
the leaves in Vallombrosa ; and the number 
and the scope of these institutions are still on 
the increase. Several of the colleges are fol- 
lowing the example of Harvard in providing 
for this vacation study ; and a new feature at 
Hanard — in addition to the schools for 
chemistry, physics, botany, geology, physical 
training, etc. — is the opening of summer 
courses in the Medical School. No less than 
thirty-eight distinct courses are described in 
the circular issued by the university authori- 
ties. They begin at various dates between 
June 3 and August iS, — most of them about 
July I, — and end between July 7 and October 
3. Tlie length of the courses is from four to 
eight weeks, with lectures or lessons from 
two to six times weekly. Certificates of 
attendance are to be given to students who 
desire them. Summer schools in theology, 
or at least in Hebrew and New Testament 
Greek, have been held for some years. 
Whether there is a summer school of law we 
have not heard. The attendance at the old 
and well established schools increases from 
year to year, notwithstanding the multiplica- 
tion of schools. At the Martha's Vineyard 
Summer Institute, for instance, the attend- 
ance last year was 350, the largest up to that 
time ; and the Harvard courses were never so 
successful as last summer. It is evident that 
these vacation schools meet a widespread 
want ; and we believe that, in the vast major- 
ity of cases, all that is sacrificed in playtime 
is gained b}- the teacher in the increased ease 
and comfort with which the work of the rest 
of the year can be done. 
In these wicked and scientific days, when 
adulteration and sophistication are alleged to 
be as rife as dangerous germs and microbes, 
when nature and art seem to conspire to 
poison our food and drink and our peace of 
mind, we have found a modicum of comfort 
in the conviction that the egg of the barnyard 
fowl was happily exempt from the intrusion 
of microscopical organisms, just as when 
boiled it was safe from the ordinary vicissi- 
tudes of bad or uncleanly cookery. Nature, 
it was assumed, had secured it against the 
attacks of her infinitude of infinitesimal 
mischief-makers; and no culinary slovenli- 
ness could mar it when boiled and served in 
the "original package." Its purity was as 
irreproachable as that of Caisar's wife, and 
one might eat it without fear or doubt any- 
where on earth. We hesitate even now to 
give up our faith in this forlorn hope of the 
tourist and the traveller ; but a foreign pro- 
fessor, presumably Russian, with the disa- 
greeable name of Podvisotzki, is reported to 
have "discovered in the gray or greenish- 
gray spots often to be found on the white of 
eggs the presence of colonies of various 
coccidii," and these, he thinks, may be the 
means of transmitting " psoropremia" to 
man. We will not explain what this disease 
is, lest some nervous reader who has break- 
fasted on eggs shoidd at once imagine that he 
(or she) has got it. Our professor with the 
polysyllabic, much-consonanted name coolly 
adds that "there will be nothing surprising 
shon.ld anyone discover, some of these days, 
the bacillus tuberculosis" in eggs. Heaven 
forbid ! It is a relief to be assured tliat 
thorough boiling is fatal to the dreadful 
coccidii. But the reputation of raw or 
imperfectly cooked eggs is hopelessly com- 
promised, if we may believe this Muscovite. 
Our temperance friends will recognize the 
possible point to be made against indulgence 
in egg-nog — at least until somebody proves 
that alcohol, like heat, does not agree with 
the malignant coccidii. 
A RECENT writer believes that he sees 
evidence of increasing progress in the adop- 
tion of the metric system in the industrial 
arts, both in Europe — in Spain, Austria, 
Turkey, England, and elsewhere — and on 
this side of the Atlantic, in Brazil and other 
South American countries. No doubt it is 
gradually commending itself to practical men, 
as it had already done to men of science ; 
but the advance is, nevertheless, exceedingly 
slow. Among medical practitioners in this 
country, we are inclined to think that very 
little progress has been made in recent years. 
We know of more than one physician who, 
five or six years ago, had prescription-blanks 
printed in the metrical form, and used them 
for a considerable time, but finally gave them 
up because they were not popular with the 
druggists, and sometimes led to mistakes and 
confusion. A committee of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
has recently issued an address to the profes- 
sions of medicine and pharmacy, and to the 
medical and pharmaceutical colleges of this 
country and Canada, urging the adoption of 
the metric system in the foithcoming edition 
of tlie United States Pharmacopeia ; but a 
leading medical journal remarks: "It may 
