414 



NATURE 



[June 3, 1920 



the refuse of the engineering- shops, vcon borings, 

 was no longer forthcoming during this strike, 

 with the consequence that the manufacture of 

 aniline was seriously retarded. 



How the lack of special plant prevents the 

 supply of certain dyes is well illustrated in the 

 case of rhodamine. The intermediate products 

 required for this are diethyl-m-aminophenol and 

 phthalic anhydride. The former is prepared from 

 diethylaniline, for which, unlike dimethylaniline, 

 enamelled autoclaves are required, and the latter 

 requires special plant for the oxidation of naph- 

 thalene by means of a mercury catalyst. Although 

 indigotin is no longer prepared by the Badische 

 process from phthalic anhydride, the importance 

 of this intermediate is still great, and as the 

 English rights of the new process of the American 

 Bureau of Chemistry, oxidation in the vapour 

 phase in the presence of a catalyst, have already 

 been purchased, it may be expected that this pro- 

 duct will soon be manufactured here at a compara- 

 tively very low cost. It will readily be understood 

 that, in view of the necessity of installing two 

 special plants for the intermediates required, 

 manufacturers both in England and in America 

 have not succeeded in placing anything but insig- 

 nificant amounts on the market. 



With regard to the provision of other inter- 

 mediate products there is still much to do, and 

 at the present time the demands for such element- 

 ary materials as aniline and )8-naphthol greatly 

 exceed the supply. The latter is required for the 

 manufacture of such important intermediates as 

 ■y acid and J acid, and when it is considered 

 that j8-naphthol was not made in England at the 

 outbreak of war, it will be realised that it is neces- 

 sarily a slow operation to produce these acids, 

 involving as it does three distinct plants. 



It must not, however, be concluded that British 

 manufacturers have confined themselves to the 

 dyes which are made with least trouble. The 

 Solway Dyes Co., in particular, was first in the 

 field with a range of important vat dyes, and this 

 firm, as well as the British Dyestuffs Corporation 

 and others, has placed a useful series of fast dyes 

 on the market. The erection of a large works in 

 Trafford Park, Manchester, by the British Ali- 

 zarine Co. must lead to a greatly increased output 

 of alizarine dyes, and there is little doubt that 

 slow but steady progress is being made. The time 

 should not be far distant when British manu- 

 facturers will not only supply all requirements for 

 the home market, but also make their products 

 known all over the world. 

 NO. 2640, VOL. 105] 



Poetry and Medicine. 



Philosophies. By Sir Ronald Ross. Pp. viii-l-56. 



(London: John Murray, 1911.) Price 2S. net. 

 Psychologies. 69 pp. (Same author and pub- 

 lisher, 1919.) Price 25, 6d. net. 

 THESE slender volumes, by Sir Ronald Ross, 

 deserve to be read with sympathetic interest 

 for more reasons than one — not least because they 

 reflect the mind, and throw light on the spirit 

 which has guided the work, of a man whose 

 services to medical science are great indeed. In 

 the long history of medicine and of poetry we can 

 call to mind many a physician who has been also 

 a poet. No great physician has ever likewise 

 been that rare and wonderful thing, a great poet, 

 for the toilsome life of the one is not to be com- 

 bined with the fine freedom, the careless rapture 

 of the other. But there is a certain excellence 

 which, though it fall far short of supreme per- 

 fection, is still a very fine and splendid thing, and 

 to such excellence I think Sir Ronald Ross has 

 certainly attained. 



The poet-physicians whose names first cross our 

 minds are men attached by but a slender link, a 

 titular claim, to the profession of medicine ; never- 

 theless, the profession is proud to have had 

 enrolled among its brotherhood Dr. Oliver Gold- 

 smith and the great apothecary whom a foolish 

 critic bade "go back to his gallipots." In Gold- 

 smith's footsteps follows Crabbe, bringing us his 

 "Village" and his " Parish Register," bidding us, 

 in lines scarcely less finished and less memorable 

 than Goldsmith's own, "Behold the Cot, where 

 thrives th' industrious swain. Source of his pride, 

 his pleasure and his gain . . . " ; or, moving 

 quickly to sadder themes, "When the sad tenant 

 weeps from door to door. And begs a poor pro- 

 tection from the poor." A little shred of Keats' 

 great mantle (and more perhaps of Shelley's) fell 

 upon that fine poet, and not unlearned physician, 

 Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the friend of Blumenbach 

 and Schoenlien and Frey — Beddoes of "The 

 Bride's Tragedy." "Death is more a jest than 

 life ; you see Contempt grows quick from 

 familiarity. I owe this wisdom to Anatomy " — so 

 he wrote from Gottingen while he was a student 

 of medicine there ; and the same contemptuous 

 familiarity lasted him to the end, when he used 

 his physiological knowledge of a new and terrible, 

 drug — curare — to "creep into his worm-hole," to 

 introduce him to that grim pageantry of Death 

 which his verse had described with a fearful 

 reality. "The power of the man," said Browning, 

 "was incontestable and immense"; and in his 

 happy hours he had written very lovely and most 



