November 25, 1915] 



NATURE 



349 



I Lies stood not far off — Sir John Franklin and 



ptain James Cook. He had one great advantage, 



. Balfour pointed out, over every other man whose 



mory is commemorated by statues. In most cases 



: .L' artist has to do his best from such pictures as 



irniain, or from the memory of friends and relatives, 



' t Captain Scott had a happier and far rarer destiny, 



his statue had been made by Lady Scott. 



IiiE New School of Tropical Medicine and Research 

 L;iboratories in Calcutta are, according to the Pioneer 

 Mail of September 8, now ready for occupation. They 

 will be associated with the Calcutta Medical College, 

 -o ihat a constant supply of tropical material will be 

 available for study, and this will be one of the main 

 objects to which research will be directed, viz., the 

 t lucidation of disease. Another subject to which study 

 will be devoted will be the pharmacology of Indian 

 drugs ; if we may include quinine in this category 

 this drug must take premier place in such researches, 

 'ihe number of research workers at present arranged 

 l(ir is eight — a number by far too small, one would 

 think, for the requirements of the many problems th^t 

 present themselves for investigation. Let us mention 

 < Illy malaria, dysentery, cholera, kala-azar, ankylosto- 

 miasis, filariases, beri-beri. Let us consider- any one 

 of these diseases in its etiological, pathological, and 

 ' rapeutic aspects, and the work before these eight 

 archers is immense. Further, teaching has to be 

 . .rried on, which it is to be hoped that the research 

 ^\orkers will not be called upon to undertake. How- 

 ever, great undertakings often have small beginnings, 

 and we are certain that important results will soon be 

 furthcoming as the result of this new development. 



TfiE Times of November 20 published a rather 

 llamboyant little article, headed "A Surgical Schism." 

 This article said: "Not for half a century at least 

 has the medical world been so sharply divided as it is 

 lay in regard to the question of the treatment of 

 Linds." Now, it is exactly half a century since 

 ler, at Glasgow, in 1865, fi^st ventured to treat 

 )mpound fracture by plugging the wound with a 

 \p of rag soaked in undiluted and impure German 

 asote. Pyaemia and septicaemia and erysipelas 

 ; !• ravaging the wards of the old Glasgow Infirmary, 

 and he, relying on Pasteur's work on the "germs of 

 jiitrefaction," and knowing that creasote was a good 

 "disinfectant," plugged a wound with it. That was 

 Uie beginning of everything, exactly half a century 

 ago. To-day, there are many methods, but they do 

 not all contradict or exclude each other. Nobody wants 

 to rob the soldier of his little tube of iodine, to be 

 ai)plied to a wound right away; nobody wants to rob 

 him of his little packet of antiseptic or aseptic stutt 

 a " first dressing." But to this handy and clean 

 ■ of " Listerism," many other methods have been 

 added; the use of citrates to promote the outward 

 flow of lymph, and the use of a vaccine against sepsis, 

 and the use of a vaccine against tetanus. The use of 

 drainage and drainage-tubes is centuries old, and 

 Lister did more than most men to establish the prin- 

 ciples of it. We must not imagine a sort of desperate 

 squabble among our military surgeons, some of them 

 throwing antiseptics to the dogs, and others flooding 

 NO. 2404, VOL. 96] 



a big wound with strong antiseptics, and then stitch- 

 ing it up without drainage and sitting on it. The 

 suggestion in the Times article that an acute con- 

 troversy is proceeding upon these matters is unfor- 

 tunate and misleading. 



Prof. Edouard Prillieux, member of the French 

 Academy of Sciences, died on October 8, at the age of 

 eighty-six, at his private residence at Mal^cl^che, near 

 Mondoubleau, Loir-et-Cher. To students of mycology 

 in this country his name has been familiar since the 

 publication in 1897 of his " Maladies des Plantes agri- 

 coles et des arbres fruitiers et forestiers caus^es par des 

 parasites v^gdtaux." This book is endeared to the 

 student by its clear style and the refreshing presence 

 of some hundreds of original drawings reproduced 

 faithfully by the engraver. Prof. Prillieux entered as 

 a student in 1850 the " Institut agronomique " at Ver- 

 sailles, and on leaving, his first botanical work was 

 the study of the "powdery mildew" of the vine — that 

 Oidiiim which was then devastating the Continental 

 vineyards. In his book we find a beautiful and faithful 

 drawing of the perithecial stage of this fungus, first 

 found in France in 1892. In 1874 he was appointed 

 professor of economic botany at the Central School of 

 Arts and Manufactures, and two years later, when the 

 " Institut agronomique" was reconstituted at Paris, he 

 was appointed there to the chair of botany. In 1883 

 Prof. Prillieux became "inspecteur general" in the 

 department of botany, and in 1888 was nominated 

 director of the Laboratory of Vegetable Pathology. In 

 1899 he succeeded to Naudin in the membership of the 

 Academy of Sciences. Prof. Prillieux made numerous 

 researches into the anatomy, morphology, and physio- 

 logy of plants, but it was as an investigator into the 

 diseases of plants that he became so well known, and 

 this entitled him to his place as one of the founders 

 in France of plant pathology. Articles from him on 

 this subject appeared frequently in the Annales des 

 Sci. nat. botaniquc, Comptes rendus, and Annal. de 

 riusi. Nat. agronomique. 



In the October number of Mind (New Series, No. 96) 

 Mr. C. D. Broad discusses, in an article which is in- 

 teresting and suggestive to physicists, mathematicians, 

 and psychologists, as well as to philosophers, 

 the question: "Is our Space Euclidean?" He shows 

 the necessity of distinguishing clearly what we mean 

 by space as distinct from matter, and argues that 

 points of space and their relations are timeless, and 

 that space must be considered as homogeneous. Nor 

 must we conceive space as something which we 

 analyse out of a complex presentation as we do when 

 we distinguish in a musical note pitch and loudness, 

 but, on the contrary, it is something we add to the 

 e.xperienced facts, although not in the Kantian sense 

 of an intuitive knowledge. He shows the inherent 

 weakness, for purposes of ultimate truth, of the 

 common psychological distinction between perceptual 

 and conceptual space, since in one sense all spaces are 

 both conceptual and perceptual. By our space we 

 mean a space so constructed as to enable us to deal 

 with the data of all senses and of all men. When 

 we ask "Is our Space Euclidean?" we mean, subject 

 to the conditions that space is to be changeless and 



