NATURE 



[March ;, 191 8 



OVR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. 



Encke's Comet and Others. — Encke's comet was 

 observed by Mr. R. Jonckheere at Greenwich Observa- 

 tory on March i. It appeared as a large diffused 

 nebulosity of magnitude 8^, without visible nucleus 

 or tail. The position accorded well with the ephemeris 

 lately given in Nature. The brightness is now increas- 

 ing, but the comet is drawing too near the sun for 

 convenient observation. 



A very interesting object, in appearance resembling 

 a minor planet, but with an orbit of a cometary char- 

 acter, has been discovered by Prof. Wolf at Heidel- 

 berg. The following positions have been received : — 



G.M.T. 1918 Appt. R.A. Appt. N. Decl. Place 



d. h. m. h. m. s. „ , „ 



Jan. 3 9 40-0 5 16 30 12 29 o Heidelberg. 



Feb. 5 8 37-5 6 56 9-47 34 19 19 



II 18 28-1 7 17 4322 35 55 21 Lick Obs. 



The magnitude was 11 on January 3; 11-5 on Febru- 

 ary 3. The distance from the earth was about twenty- 

 three million miles. The orbit appears to be a highly 

 eccentric ellipse, with perihelion slightly outside the 

 earth's orbit. The object will be below the 12th magni- 

 tude in March, so will only be dbservaible by photo- 

 graphy. Prof. Wolf announced a satellite of the 14th 

 magnitude at a distance of 340", moving through 13° 

 per hour. It is impossible that the object could be 

 massive enough to control a satellite at that dis:tance, 

 with such rapid motion, so it was probably a faint 

 minor planet that happened to pass in the same line 

 of sight. 



Mr. Knut Landmark, of Upsala Observatory, has 

 deduced the following definitive orbit of the comet of 

 1802 (Pons) (Arkiv for Matematik, Astronotni och 

 Fysik, Bd. 12; No. 13). It was under observation from 

 August 25 to October 6 last. 



T 1802 Sept. 9-8619 Paris M.T. 



z 

 log ^ 0'039ii62 



A list is given of other comets with somewhat simi- 

 lar elements, including comet 1909 I. In no case, how- 

 ever, is identity probable. 



Nebulosity about Nova Persei (1901). — Photographs 

 taken with the 60-in. reflector at Mt. Wilson have 

 shown very clearly the nebulosity surrounding Nova 

 Persei, which was discovered by Barnard in December, 

 1916 (Journ. R.A.S. Canada, vol. xii., p. 25). The 

 strongest condensations are south preceding the nova, 

 and give a fan-shaped appearance to the nebulosity on 

 that side, somewhat resembling that which accom- 

 panied the original outburst. A negative taken, by 

 Mr. Ritchey on December 16, 1917, shows, in addition, 

 a sharplv defined continuous ring of nebulositv about 

 16" in diameter, with the nova at its centre. " If this 

 ring be the result of the sudden increase in brightness 

 of the nova (ij magnitudes) reported by Belopolsky in 

 August last year, it may be analogous to the expanding 

 rings observed in 1901-2, but on a much smaller scale. 



The Egyptian Government Almanac. — Owing to 

 shortage of paper, the Egyptian almanac for 19 18 has 

 been issued in the form of a pamphlet, which is to be 

 regarded as a supplement to the 19 17 edition. The 

 two pages assigned to each month give the Julian, 

 Arabic, Coptic, and Jewish dates ; fasts, festivals, and 

 remarkable days ; the times of rising and setting of the 

 sun and moon at Cairo : and particulars of the phases 

 of the moon and the visibility of the planets. The pub- 

 lication will doubtless be a "great convenience to those 

 for whom it is intended. 



NO. 



1 lotjz oept. 9 0U19 1 y 

 « 21° ?2' 7"") 



51 310° 14' i8"[i8o2-o 

 / 56° 59' 3o"J 



v'O. 2523, VOL. lOl] 



SIR ALFRED KEOGH AND THE ARMY 



MEDICAL SERVICES. 

 T^HE reception held at the Imperial College of 

 -*■ Science and Technology on February 27, to wel- 

 come Sir Alfred Keogh back to the college of which 

 he is rector, was entirely a domestic function. But 

 the occasion made it, as Lord Crewe, who presided, 

 said, a red-letter day in the history of the college. For 

 three and a half years Sir Alfred Keogh, in response 

 to Lord Kitchener's request, has refilled his former 

 post of Director-General, and succeeded in getting this 

 all-important Department into such working order that 

 he is able to hand it over with safety to another ; and 

 the Imperial Col'ege has its rector back again. At 

 this reception speeches were made by Lord Crewe, by 

 Mr. Acland, and by Prof. Farmer, but by far the most 

 important address was that made by the rector himself. 

 One passage of .this is of supreme importance, not 

 only as embodying the result of his long and wonder- 

 ful ex,perience, but also as indicating the principles 

 which have guided him in the work of the great De- 

 partment over which he presided with such distinc- 

 tion and with such notable advantage to his country ; 

 it is, moreover, a writing on the wall for the admoni- 

 tion and guidance not only of the Army Medical De- 

 partment, but also of all other departments! The 

 rector said :— 



" I hold, and always have held, that in this country, 

 and perhaps in this country alone, administration has 

 been absolutely divorced from science, that the adminis- 

 trator, as a rule, is ignorant of any particular branch 

 of science, that he has had, as a rule, no scientific 

 training, and neither thinks nor acts scientifically. I 

 attribute many of our national shortcomings to this, 

 fact. If I have accomplished those things which you 

 say I have in my official service, it has been because 

 I have, from the first, both in matters of science and 

 of administration, lelied entirely upon scientific men, 

 and have refused to take into my counsels other classes 

 of administrators. To have done so would have been 

 to have given the lie to the principles I have held 

 for so many years." 



It is devoutly to be hoped that these piercing words 

 will not fall entirely upon stony ground, but that they 

 will sink deeply into the nation's mind. Sir Alfred 

 Keogh is, likfc all really great men, an artist, and is 

 therefore possessed of imagination — one of the rarest of 

 gifts; and, although in these words of his he modestlx 

 speaks of relying upon men of science, he has in him 

 that scientific spirit which can guide and control the 

 imagination or creative spirit. It is this union of 

 imagination with the scientific spirit, coupled with his 

 belief in the value of science, which has been the 

 secret of Sir Alfred Keogh 's notable success in the 

 creation and direction of the Army Medical Services; 

 for the R.A.M.C. of to-day is a "new creation. The 

 idea of bringing science to bear practically on such 

 an unpromising thing as the military medicine and 

 surgery of fifty years ago was a very bold conception, 

 the value of which is now apparent to the lay mind 

 through the publication of the numbers of cases of 

 disease in this campaign as compared with anv that 

 have gone before. 



It is worth while at the present moment to recall a 

 few of the advances made by Sir Alfred Keogh ; the 

 real, detailed history of the steps will have to be 

 written later. During the South African \\:n- he was 

 placed upon the Committee for the Reorganisation of 

 the Army Medical Service, which was created by Mr. 

 Brodrick, and he afterwards became Deputv-Director- 

 General and later Director-General. One of his early 

 feats, of a more or less ethical kind, was the adjust- 

 ment of the proper relations between the doctor of the 

 regiment and its commanding officer, which altered the 



