February 21, 1901] 



NATURE 



399 



has been in operation at Baldwin, Kansas, since July i, 

 1900, and the buildings for the primary or principal mag- 

 netic base station, situated at Cheltenham, Md., sixteen 

 miles south-east of Washington, have been completed 

 and the installation of the instruments is now taking 

 place. Special declination readings from 7 a.m. to 4 

 p.m. have been made at Gaithersburg, Md., since March 

 22, 1900, and at Sitka, Alaska, since October i, 1900. 

 The sites for the magnetic base stations at Sitka, Alaska, 

 and near Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, have been deter- 

 mined and preparations made for the erection of the 

 buildings. It will be the endeavour to have these mag- 

 netic observatories completed in time for co-operation 

 with the proposed Antarctic expeditions. 



Furthermore, special simultaneous observations have 

 also been made on special days at various times, the 

 purpose of these special observations being to determine 

 over how large an area the variations, as recorded at t'he 

 base stations, may be regarded as applying. 



Again, various special investigations both of an experi- 

 mental and a theoretical character have been undertaken, 

 and considerable attention has been paid to the thorough 

 training of observers and to the proper correlation of the 

 various magnetic instruments. During the autumn of 

 1899 a set of coast survey magnetic instruments was com- 

 pared with the standard instruments at the following 

 foreign observatories : Kew, England ; Potsdam, Ger- 

 many ; Pavlovsk, Russia ; and Pare St. Maur, France. 



The following publications have been issued, namely : 

 Appendix 9, giving a general report of the magnetic 

 survey of North Carolina ; and Appendix 10, on the 

 magnetic work of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 both appendices appearing in the Report of the Survey 

 for 1898-99. Good progress has also been made with 

 the new edition of the Coast Survey's magnetic declina- 

 tion tables and isogonic charts for the United States and 

 Alaska for 1900. 



MAX JOSEF VON PETTENKOFER. 



T T is with great regret that we record the death, in 

 -^ very sad circumstances, of the veteran German 

 hygienist. Prof Max von.Pettenkofer. He was born in 

 1818, and was, therefore, in his eighty-third year at the 

 time of his death. 



Pettenkofer's name was known throughout the civilised 

 world as that of the great professor of hygiene at Munich, 

 and he made the Munich school famous. Among 

 medical and hygienic circles in Europe he was personally 

 well known and respected for his fearless defence of 

 what he believed to be true and for the breadth of his 

 views. Sometimes during a discussion on some subject on 

 which he felt strongly, the burly form of the great German 

 hygienist would arise, and with a few vigorous sentences 

 he would scatter the arguments of his opponents like 

 chaff before the wind. A notable instance of this occurred 

 at the meeting of the International Congress of Hygiene 

 and Demography at Vienna in 1887 during the discus- 

 sion on quarantine ; the supporters of that antiquated 

 method of prevention had most of them aired their 

 views, when Pettenkofer got up and brusquely told them 

 that it was a question of cleanliness, that England had 

 spent many millions in improving the sanitary condition 

 of her towns and had now no fear of cholera, and that 

 what other countries should do was to follow England's 

 example, and then they would have no need for the 

 vexatious and, for the most part, useless restrictions of 

 quarantine. 



Pettenkofer published a great many valuable papers on 

 public health subjects ; the list of their titles fills nearly a 

 page and a half of the great " Index Catalogue of the 

 Library of the Surgeon- General's Office, United States 

 Army " ; and even that is not complete, as it does not 



NO. 1634, VOL. 63] 



include his remarkable paper on " Die Immunitat voi> 

 Lyon gegen Cholera." But he was too busy with teach- 

 ing the many pupils who flocked to him from all parts 

 of the world, and with investigating, to write large 

 treatises, two on cholera being the longest productions of 

 his pen ; this, indeed, was his favourite subject, and his 

 books and papers on it number about a score, the best 

 known of them probably being the one entitled " Bodei> 

 und Grundwasser in ihren Beziehungen zu Cholera und 

 Typhus," in which he propounds his well-known theory 

 that the spread of cholera and enteric fever depends upon 

 the movements of the subsoil water, their prevalence in- 

 creasing after a fall in the level of that water. This view 

 he stoutly maintained, undaunted even by the fact that 

 the City of Lyons (the invariable immunity of which 

 from epidemics of cholera, in spite of several introduc- 

 tions of the disease, he considered quite explicable on his 

 theory) was very subject to enteric fever, from which it 

 ought, on the same theory, to be immune. 



Whether, however, we regard his ground-water theory 

 as correct or not, we cannot but admire the practical 

 results of the measures taken under his advice to purify 

 the subsoil of Munich, which, from being a hotbed of 

 enteric fever, has become remarkably free from that 

 disease. 



He also wrote on sewerage arrangements, on the 

 hygiene of ships, and on "the relations of the air to 

 clothing, dwelling and soil," the last being a course of 

 popular lectures ; and he was co-editor of the Zeitschrift' 

 fur Biologic {Wnx\(A\t.x\) from 1865 to 1882. 



Pettenkofer was much interested in chemical work 

 connected with hygiene, and devised the method (ever 

 since known by his name) of determining the percentage 

 of carbonic acid in air, which has been adopted by all 

 observers until quite recently. 



Personally he was gentle and amiable, as a little 

 incident will suffice to show. In 1894 the present writer, 

 not finding him at the International Congress oF 

 Hygiene at Budapest, went to see him at his home at 

 Seeshaupt, on the Starnberger See, near Munich ; he 

 was crossing on one of the steamers, and, when about 

 half way towards the farther end of the lake, was sur- 

 prised to meet Pettenkofer on board. The latter had 

 gone some distance round the lake by rail and got on 

 the steamer at one of the stopping places, so as to come 

 part of the way to meet his guest for the day and escort 

 him to his house. 



Not having received the usual New Year's greetings 

 from him on a card bearing a photograph of one of the 

 fountains of the " Pettenkofer water supply" at Munich, 

 with a small profile medallion of the professor above it,, 

 the writer feared that he was not well, but was little 

 prepared for the terrible news which so soon followed. 



It was no doubt his retirement, even at that lovely 

 spot, and his forced inactivity, that preyed upon poor 

 Pettenkofer's mind, and not even the patent of hereditary 

 nobility granted him by the Emperor seems to have 

 solaced him, for we have just received the melancholy 

 and pathetic news that this grand old man, tortured by 

 an incurable disease and wearied by his inability to work, 

 any more for the benefit of his fellow-men, has put an 

 end to his sufferings by a pistol shot. W. H. C. 



THE ROYAL INDIAN ENGINEERING 

 COLLEGE, COOPERS HILL. 



LAST week we printed a report, taken from the daily- 

 papers, of the deputation to the Secretary of State 

 for India asking for an inquiry into the working of the 

 Royal Indian Engineering College. Lord Kelvin, who 

 headed the deputation, expressed disappointment at the 

 nature of Lord George Hamilton's reply, and if, in 

 criticising that reply, we should fall into error in con- 

 sequence of the inconsistencies in the reports of the 



