December 2, 1915] 



NATURE 



385 



past thirty years, has meant a money saving^ greater 

 in amount than all the expenditures ever made by the 

 universities, research institutes and individuals in sup- 

 port of medical investigation. This reckoning does 

 not include the saving of the lives of women and 

 children, nor take into account the economic values 

 of the lives of the men, women, and children saved. 

 I'he reckoning likewise omits the vastly greater factor 

 of human happiness which proceeds from healthful and 

 t-omplete family life. 



We have referred at considerable length to progress 

 m medical science and have said that this progress 

 followed naturally from Pasteur's investigation of 

 fermentation as a problem in pure chemistry. We do 

 not intend to detract in any sense or to any extent 

 from the glory of Pasteur's work, from the glory 

 of Lister's, Koch's, Roux's, Behring's, Ross's, Ehr- 

 lich's, and Flexner's services, when we record the 

 pimple fact that the structures which they erected and 

 which mankind is finding of incalculable value were 

 built upon the broad and firm foundations which the 

 f-arlier investigators in biology and chemistry had 

 made ready. 



The development of the other subjects which have 

 become so vital in modern life have essentially 

 paralleled that of biology, chemistry, and medicine. 



It is so well known as to be a trite subject that elec- 

 tricity was studied a full century, following Volta and 

 Galvani, before it was seriously applied to the arts. 

 Tt is not so well known that the immense value of 

 electricity in current life, as applied by the electrical 

 fngineers, is due chiefly to the work of two men : 

 Faraday, in the Royal Institution of London, who, 

 "Studying electricity as a pure science and with no 

 apparent thought for its possible applications, dis- 

 covered the principles of magneto-electric currents, 

 upon which all modern dynamos and transformers, 

 electric lighting, telephoning and telegraphing, and 

 the transmission of power depend ; and Maxwell, of 

 Cambridge Universitv. who wrought Faraday's results 

 into a foundation of complete and rigorous theory upon 

 which future electrical engineers might build. 



The X-rays and radium are the products of research 

 in pure science, and quite regardless of so-called 

 utility ; yet what is to-day more useful than the X-rays, 

 and what promises greater usefulness than radium 

 and its related radio-active substances? 



Pure science studies in the broad fields which we 

 may call botany and chemistry have made scientific 

 agriculture possible. We cannot exaggerate the im- 

 portance of science in farming for the future of the 

 human race. 



A few months ago the people of the Pacific coast 

 acquired the power of telephoning directly to Atlantic 

 coast points. Newspaper accounts made much of the 

 fact as a great advance, and so it was ; but the news- 

 papers left Hamlet out of the play. Improvements in 

 the insulating system, to reduce losses of current along 

 the line, were involved ; but Bell at New York and 

 Watson in San Francisco inaugurated the long-distance 

 conversations by using the same transmitters and 

 receivers which these same gentlemen had used in the 

 beginning of telephoning, in 1S76, over the line two 

 iniles long between Boston and Cambridge. The great 

 improvements in the thirtv-nine intervening vears lie 

 elsewhere in the svstem. Tt is possible for San Fran- 

 cisco to talk with New York and Boston, and at quite 

 reasonable expense, because Prof. Pupin, of Columbia 

 ITniversity, as a result of systematic studv, construc- 

 tion, and test, discovered that by placing his invention, 

 the so-called "loading coils," at certain appropriate 

 intervals in an electric line, thus making what elec- 

 tricians call a suitable balance between inductance, 

 electrostatic capacity, and resistance, the current could 



NO. 2405, VOL. 96] 



be compelled to go through to its distant destination 

 with little loss of strength. Pupin 's loading coils are 

 inserted at frequent intervals in the San Francisco-New 

 York line. It might be possible to construct a line 

 without the Pupin coils which would let us talk 

 directly with New York, but the installation expenses 

 for very large copper wires and other costly items 

 would be so high as to impose prohibitive tolls. The 

 happy result has been reached because the telephone 

 company combined an exceedingly liberal and far- 

 seeing policy with the latest discoveries in electricity 

 as a pure and applied science; and all concerned are 

 entitled to receive the grateful thanks of the Pacific 

 and Atlantic peoples. 



Wireless telegraphy has been a priceless servant to 

 those whose friends go down to the sea in ships. It 

 has averted many frightful disasters in the past decade. 

 This branch of electricity was made possible by the 

 researches of the lamented Hertz and others who 

 studied the properties of electrical waves as we study 

 the light-waves from the nebulae — from the point of 

 view of pure knowledge. 



While the foundations of the sciences have, for the 

 most part, been laid under the auspices of the univer- 

 sities and the special research institutions, it is ysually 

 the combination of men of science and successful men 

 of affairs which makes the sciences useful to the people 

 in general, and therefore great factors in the advance- 

 ment of civilisation. To mention only one subject, 

 electricity; we cannot compute the world's indebted- 

 ness to the pioneers, Volta and Galvani, or to the 

 great developers of the subject, Faraday and Maxwell ; 

 but it is a fact that electricity did relatively little for 

 mankind in general before the year 1865. The world 

 is unable to compute its indebtedness to Edison, Bell, 

 Marconi, and other great inventors and business men 

 combined, who have brought electricity to everybody's 

 house and office, to every factory, to every village, to 

 every ship as an obedient and ever-ready servant. 

 That these gentlemen have made commercial successes 

 of their ventures seems to have caused certain persons 

 to lose interest in them as men of science. I have no 

 sympathy with that point of view. Only those who 

 have tried it can know how much courage is required 

 to risk everything in a new venture, how many hours 

 of day and night are given to thought of the subject 

 from all possible angles, how unceasing must be 

 the maintenance of discipline in great business organisa- 

 tions. Not only is financial success doubly earned, and 

 most desirable as an incentive to the succeeding genera- 

 tions, but financial success is absolutely synonymous 

 with making the subject useful to mankind. It is a 

 fortunate fact that there are Stephensons and Fultons, 

 Edisons and Marconis, as well as Newtons and 

 Laplaces, Darwins and Helmholtzes. The latter have 

 laid the foundations broad and deep, but the former 

 have erected superstructures upon these foundations 

 which the civilised world is using every minute with 

 great advantage. And, further, these structures, 

 which are visible in the daily life of the people, are 

 the incentives which lead to the provision of splendid 

 opportunities for the extension of the foundations. 

 The value of science as a factor in advancing the race 

 depends at least as much upon the applied as upon 

 the theoretical side. There can be no durable structure 

 without the foundation, but the foundation alone, 

 possessing wonderful potentiality, is largely a latent 

 force. History confirms the view that real progress 

 in civilisation is most rapid when applied knowledge 

 is not too far behind theoretical knowledge. 



The human race needs above everything else the 

 conviction that the principles of science rule every- 

 where, and that the problems of personal and national 

 life are not solved so long as any important forces are 



