December i6, 1915] 



NATURE 



433 



\ by the torpedo. But this was a very different matter 

 !— agonising suffocation to those who could not escape; 

 I many for days gasped out their lives in a slow process 

 jof strangulation, others had a lingering illness with 

 ["urgent dyspnoea, cough, and inflammation of the 

 lungs. The worst types of cases were, I am told, 

 [appalling to witness — some who reached England 

 (rwere bad enough. 



It is not a little remarkable that the aspect of the 

 war which caught the popular fancy and from which 

 I so much was expected has proved comparatively harm- 

 less from a killing point of view. "The rain of 

 ghastly dew" of Tennyson's vision, which the Wright 

 rothers and Zeppelin have made possible, is more 

 [destructive of property than of life. But the mastery 

 [of the ajr is one of the greatest of the conquests ot 

 :ience. How Leonardo da Vinci would have re- 

 jiced, in this day predicted so confidently by him, to 

 »e flocks of wonderful bird-men as much at home in 

 le air as eagles ! The development of aircraft and 

 iir-guns has added a new arm to the Service, but 

 (battles of the airy navies grappling with each other 

 )r attacked by shells from land leave few wounded, 

 id the total killed so far is small. An enormous 

 ilue for observation and the shock of righteous in- 

 lignation roused all over the world by the Zeppelin 

 mrders of women and children have been, so far, the 

 lief assets of the air. 



Enough of this. Let us turn to the other side of 

 picture ; let us see what science has done in a 

 lission of salvation amid the horrors of war. Through 

 bitter experiences of the Napoleonic wars, of the 

 Jrimea, of the American Civil War, and more par- 

 icularly of the recent campaigns, there has been 

 solved a wonderful machinery, replete with science, 

 )r the transport and care of the sick and wounded. 

 There must be suffering — that is war — but let us be 

 lankful for its reduction to a minimum, through the 

 Ipplication in every direction of mechanical and other 

 -saving devices. 

 If the foes of our own household, the "anti's," 

 ^ould spend a few days at a hospital for infectious 

 liseases, see the modern methods, and learn a few 

 elementary facts about immunity, they could not but 

 Jbe impressed with the applications of scientific hor- 

 ticulture to disease, and be lost in admiration of a 

 [technique of extraordinary simplicity and accuracy. 

 The second great victory of science in war is the 

 )revention of disease. Apollo, the " far darter," is a 

 rreater foe to man than Mars. "War slays its 

 lousands, Peace its ten thousands." In the Punjab 

 lone, in twelve years, plague has killed two and a 

 ilf millions of our fellow-citizens. This year two 

 reventable diseases will destroy more people in this 

 md than the Germans. The tubercle bacillus alone 

 rill kill more in Leeds in iqi5 than the city will lose 

 )f its men in battle. Pestilence has always dogged 

 the footsteps of war, and the saying is true — 

 " Disease, not battle, digs the soldier's grave." Bacilli 

 and bullets have been as David and Saul, and at the 

 breath of fever whole armies have melted away, even 

 before they have reached the field. The fates of cam- 

 paigns have been decided by mosquitoes and flies. 

 The death of a soldier from disease merits the re- 

 proach of Armstrong : — 



Her bravest sons keen for the fieht have dy'd 

 The death of cowacds and of common men — 

 Sunk void of wounds and fall'n without renown. 



This reproach science has wiped away. Forty years 

 ago we did not know the cause of any of the great 

 Infections. Patient study in many lands has unlocked 

 their secrets. Of all the great camp diseases — plague, 

 cholera, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid fever, typhus, 

 and dysentery — we know the mode of transmission, 



NO. 2407, VOL. 96] 



and of all but yellow fever the germs. Man has now 

 control of the most malign of nature's forces in a way 

 never dreamt of by our fathers. A study of her laws, 

 an observation of her facts — often of very simple facts 

 — has iput us in possession of life-saving powers 

 nothing short of miraculous. The old experimental 

 method, combined with the new chemistry applied to 

 disease, has opened a glorious chapter in man's his- 

 tory. Half a century has done more than a hundred 

 centuries to solve the problem of the first importance 

 in his progress. 



Lastly, in the treatment of wounds science has made 

 great advances. The recognition by Lister of the rela- 

 tion of germs to suppuration, an outcome of Pasteur's 

 work, has done away with sepsis in civil life. High 

 explosives, shell, and shrapnel make wounds that are 

 at once infected by the clothing and dirt, and are 

 almost impossible to sterilise by any means at our 

 command, but with free drainage, promotion of 

 natural lavage from the tissues by Wright's method, 

 and the use • of antiseptics when indicated, even the 

 most formidable injuries do well. The terrible lacera- 

 tion of soft parts and bones adds enormously to the 

 difficulty of treatment. The X-ray has proved a boon 

 for which surgery cannot be too grateful to Rontgen 

 and to the scores of diligent workers who have given 

 us a technique of remarkable accuracy. Other elec- 

 trical means for detecting foreign bodies have also 

 given good results. 



Of the germs blown into wounds from the soil and 

 clothing and skin the pus-formers are the most nume- 

 rous and most important. Two others have proved 

 serious foes in this war, the germ that causes gas 

 gangrene and the tetanus bacillus. 1 am told that 

 methods of treatment of wounds infected by the former 

 are giving increasingly good results. The soil upon 

 which the fighting has occurred in France and 

 Flanders is rich in the spores of the tetanus bacillus ; 

 the disease caused by it was at first very common and 

 terribly fatal among the wounded. For centuries it 

 has been one of the most dreaded of human maladies, 

 and justly so, as it is second to none in fatality and 

 in the painful severity of the symptoms. No single 

 aspect of preventive medicine has been more gratify- 

 ing in this war than the practical stamping out of 

 the disease by preventive inoculation. In the first six 

 months of this year only thirty-six of those who were 

 inoculated within twenty-four hours of being wounded 

 suffered from tetanus. 



And what shall be our final judgment — for or against 

 science? War is more terrible, more devastating, 

 more brutal in its butchery, and the organisation of 

 the forces of nature has enabled man to wage it on a 

 titanic scale. More men will be engaged and more 

 will be killed and wounded in a couple of years than 

 in the wars of the previous century. To humanity in 

 the gross science seems a monster, but on the other 

 side is a great credit balance — the enormous number 

 spared the misery of sickness, the unspeakable tor- 

 tures saved by anaesthesia, the more prompt care of 

 the wounded, the better surgical technique, the 

 lessened time in convalescence, the whole organisation 

 of nursing; the wounded soldier would throw his 

 sword into the scale for science — and he is right. 



NOTES. 



The Romanes Lecture on "Science and the Great 

 War," delivered by Prof. E. B. Poulton at Oxford on 

 December 7, and published by the Clarendon Press, 

 was a scathing indictment of the ineptitude of the 

 lawyer-politicians who possess a dominating influence 

 on national affairs, and a plea for a fuller use of 



