NATURE 



[September 23, 1897 



If I were ill most assuredly I would not seek the assistance of 

 a chemist, or of a physiologist, and medicine is not to be learned 

 from the books of Claude Bernard or of Pasteur. Clinical 

 instruction is necessary, such as long observation of patients 

 alone can furnish. Prophylaxis, diagnosis, prognosis, thera- 

 peutics are not to be learned in scientific books. Something 

 else is necessary — observation, long, patient observation, the 

 old Hippocratic observation, without which there can be no 

 good physician. Young students must be guided in the 

 examination of patients by experienced practitioners, and no 

 one, I presume, would be guilty of the folly of proposing to 

 replace the clinical ward by the laboratory. 



But without laboratories the clinical department must remain 

 incapable of scientific advance, and this condition of stasis is 

 assuredly undesirable ; for in spite of all the progress which has 

 been made, much yet remains to be done. Are not tuberculosis I 

 and cancer, for example, the disgrace of medicine ? I appeal to \ 

 all medical men here present. Is there any one of you, gentle- | 

 men, who in the presence of such painful modes of death does 

 not feel himself humiliated to the bottom of his soul by his 

 powerlessness ? j 



Well, this feeling of our present powerlessness against dis- i 

 ease ought to stimulate us to work. The work to be done is 

 enormous, and we must none of us grow weary of our task. 

 We physiologists must seek new facts, we must seek and seek 

 again, seek always without being afraid of the boldest hypo- 

 thesis, and without putting any limit to our audacity, with- 

 out troubling our heads as to the practical consequences which 

 may flow from our discoveries, having only truth — divine truth 

 — for our object. As for you, gentlemen, it is your duty to 

 follow with the warmest interest both the general effect and the 

 detailed results of biological discoveries in order to attempt to 

 find some practical application for them. From this unceasing 

 collaboration progress will be born. But it is necessary that men 

 of science and physicians should both be animated with these 

 two governing sentiments— faith in science and love of man. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



The Athenceiim says that a proposal is being considered to 

 establish at Swansea, as a great manufacturing centre, a branch 

 University College in association with either Aberystwith or 

 Cardiff, as the Newcastle College is associated with Durham. 

 The suggestion is that scientific and technical courses might be 

 taken at Swansea in preparation for the Welsh University degree. 



A SPECIAL course of instruction in electro-chemistry will be 

 given during the coming session at the City and Guilds Central 

 Technical College. The course will include practical instruction 

 in electro-deposition, the use of the electric furnace, dynamos, 

 transformers and accumulators. A great part of the time of the 

 students attending this course will be devoted to electro-chemical 

 research and the study of electro-chemical action. Candidates 

 for admission will be required to submit evidence of having a 

 general knowledge of physics and chemistry and of having been 

 specially trained in one of these subjects. 



A LONG article and a leader in yesterday's Times calls attention 

 to the growth and present position of Higher-Grade Board 

 Schools, of which there are about sixty now in the country, most 

 of them containing over 500 scholars, while several have between 

 1000 and 2000. It is pointed out that schools of this kind are 

 an organic growth, and have not come into existence, like so 

 many technical classes, because a public body suddenly found 

 itself endowed with money which it did not understand how to 

 spend. Boys and girls are eligible for admission into the higher- 

 grade schools after passing Standard VI. The course of 

 instruction must include science, mathematics, drawing, manual 

 instruction, English subjects, and at least one modern language. 

 Science must be taught by means of laboratory instruction ; and 

 all subjects taught must be submitted to inspection. The course 

 prescribed extends over four years, and during the first two 

 years grants are not paid on individual successes in examina- 

 tions, but are paid as capitation grants, the amount of which 

 depends on the efficiency of the teaching, the school equipment, 

 and the average attendance. The Department of Science and Art 

 further insist that classes shall not be allowed to contain many 

 more than thirty students, and for practical work they fix the 

 absolute maximum at twenty-five. These rules have made it 

 possible to give in higher-grade schools a thoroughly satisfactory 

 general education, in place of the one-sided education that was 

 formerly given. From their very birth higher-grade schools have 



NO. 1456, VOL. 56] 



had to encounter bitter and determined opposition. Opposition 

 came in the first place from the ratepayers, but the main opposition 

 comes now from small endowed schools, which are beginning to 

 feel their competition, and from those persons who wish to 

 see secondary education placed under county councils, and find 

 that in large towns School Boards are already in the field. 

 So far as the actual competition is concerned, it is, perhaps, to 

 be regretted that a grammar school should be steadily emptied 

 of its students to swell the numbers of an already overfull 

 higher-grade school. When this happens there is, however, one 

 way to stop it. Let the grammar school bring itself to that 

 state of efficiency which has been forced upon the higher-grade 

 school by the hostile public criticism it has had to meet, and the 

 public inspection to which it has all along been submitted. This 

 is the advice given both in the article and the leader in the 

 Times. It is also pointed out that the fact that higher-grade 

 schools have, in some places, half-emptied local secondary 

 schools, so far as it is due to the better and more practical 

 character of their education, is an object-lesson in favour of that 

 organisation, and public inspection, of lower-grade secondary 

 schools which educationists have so long desired. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, September 13. — M. A. Chatin in the 

 chair. — On the permanent deformation of glass, and the dis- 

 placement of the zero point of thermometers, by M. L. 

 Marchis. An application of the theory of permanent deforma- 

 tions, due to M. Duhem, of which an account has previously 

 been given. — On the electrolytic separation of nickel and cobalt 

 from iron. Application to the estimation of nickel in steel, by 

 M. O. Ducru. The solution of the sulphates of the metals is 

 mixed with some sulphate of ammonium and excess of ammo- 

 nium hydrate, and then submitted to electrolysis. The whole of 

 the nickel, or cobalt, is deposited, together with a trace of iron. 

 The latter may be determined by solution of the deposit in 

 hydrochloric acid ; and precipitation with ammonium hydrate, 

 and a corresponding deduction made. Samples of steel are first 

 dissolved in nitrohydrochloric acid, and then evaporated with 

 excess of sulphuric acid. The test analyses given are very 

 satisfactory. — The functions of the thyroid gland, by M. E. de 

 Cyon. — On the respiration of Carcinus manas (Leach), by M. 

 Georges Bohn. The author has observed, in this species of 

 crab, the power of reversing the direction of the circulation of 

 water in the branchial chamber. 



CONTENTS. PAGE 



Experimental Embryology. By Prof. W. F, R. 



Weldon, F.R.S 489 



Effects of High Altitude upon Man. By F. P. W. 490 



Electro-Metallurgy 492 



Our Book Shelf:— 



Hoveyand Call : "The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky" 493 



Bailey: " The Survival of the Unlike " 493 



Linnell : " The Eye as an Aid in General Diagnosis" 493 



Wilson: " The Chlorination Process 494 



Letters to the Editor: — 



African Language. — Miss M. H. Kingsley .... 494 

 On Augury from Combat of Shell-fish. — Chas. A. 



Silberrad .... 494 



The Meudon Astrophysical Observatory. {Illus- 

 trated.) By Dr. William J. S. Lockyer 494 



Recent Work of the United States Geological 



Survey 496 



Notes 499 



Our Astronomical Column : — 



The Cause of the Proper Motions of Stars 504 



New Determination of the Solar Constant 504 



The Diameters of Jupiter and his Satellites ... 504 



Action of Jupiter and Saturn upon Encke's Comet . 504 

 Phase-Change of Light on Reflection at a Silver 

 Surface. {Illustrated.) By E. Edser and H. 



Stansfield 504 



Micro-structure of Alloys. {Illustrated.) 506 



Mechanics at the British Association 507 



The Work of Pasteur and the Modern Conception 



of Medicine. By Prof. Charles Richet 508 



University and Educational Intelligence 512 



Societies and Academies 512 



