178 



NA TURE 



[June 22, 1893 



•often distinguished chemists employed in all the factories 

 at all connected with the chemical trade. 



Firms with 40 workmen sometimes employ as many as 

 5 or 6 chemists, and the three great colour firms re- 

 ferred to above employ together 178. In the words of 

 Dr. Witt : " In chemical research the chemical industry 

 of Germany possesses a never-failing helpmeet, and such 

 is the intimacy between chemical research and chemical 

 manufacture, that the periods of most rapid development 

 of the one have always been epochs of prosperity with the 

 other." And again : " It may be asserted that not only 

 is the strength and productive power of German chemical 

 industry based upon the intimate connection between 

 science and practice above described, but that in that 

 intimacy lies the surest safeguard that German industry 

 will long continue to hold the prominent position which, 

 with such strenuous e.xertion, it has ultimately achieved. 

 When the question is asked why the chemical industry 

 of other lands, still more favoured perhaps by nature, 

 has in the end been surpassed by the German, the answer 

 is that Germany has had the good fortune to call her 

 own a number of the greatest intellects in the domain of 

 pure scientific research, who have quickened the pace of 

 theoretical chemistry. But, as before stated, it is the 

 latter which constitutes the vital element of chemical 

 manufacture. Only the country which, at any period, 

 shall assume the leadership in pure scientific chemical 

 investigation, will also be in a position to wrest from 

 German chemical industry the palm to which it is at pre- 

 sent entitled." 



We do not shut our eyes to the fact that nations, like 

 individuals, must work out their own character and 

 destiny, nor do we for a moment inculcate a slavish copy- 

 ing of the German model. We have in this country a 

 great deal of science and a great deal of industry, and 

 many attempts have been made to bring about an effective 

 cooperation of these two cardinal elements of productive 

 energy. We cordially recognise that particular industries 

 and individual firms have, by private entrrprise, developed 

 themselves upon a thoroughly scientific basis, and we 

 also welcome the fact that substantial additions have 

 been made in recent years to the laboratories and insti- 

 tutions where a scientific training can be obtained. At 

 the same time we cannot escape from the admission that, 

 in the friendly struggle for industrial supremacy, Germany 

 has not only made astonishing progress both in the de- 

 velopment of industries of long standing, and in the 

 inception of new ones of enormous fruitfulness, but that 

 she has been the first as a nation to solve the great 

 problem of the cooperation of science and manufacture. 

 We leave it to more competent hands to point out the 

 course which now lies before us. In our own humble 

 opinion the days of laisser /aire have gone never to 

 return, and the time has come when the Government of 

 the country, backed by the country, must take — as is the 

 case in Germany — a larger share than it has done 

 hitherto in the systematic organisation of our scientific 

 and industrial forces. A nobler and a more patriotic task 

 could hardly be attempted. 



A 



THE REDE LECTURE. 



T Cambridge, on June 14, the Rede lecture was 

 delivered by Prof. Michael Foster, Sec. R.S., his 

 subject being " Weariness." The lecture was illustrated 

 by e.xperiments, conducted by Dr. Shore, with the assist- 

 ance of Mr. Hardy. The following report of the lecture 

 is from the Times : — 



Prof Foster said that among the many shortcomings 

 which limited the power, and so the usefulness, of the 

 machine which we call the human body, two stood out 

 prominent among the rest : these were, on the one hand, 

 ■inertia or laziness, the unwillingness to stir, and, on the 



NO. 1234. VOL. 48] 



other hand, weariness, the getting tired. He proposed to 

 lay before his audience some account of such knowledge 

 as the physiologists of to-day possessed, and it was but 

 little, concerning the physical basis of this weariness, 

 which so greatly shortened the power of man. He began 

 with a simple yet illustrative case — the weariness which 

 comes from the much repetition of a simple movement, 

 a simple muscular act, as when a man lifts a weight 

 with his hand. Analysing the act physiologically, he 

 showed the changes which took place in the brain, 

 the nerve, and the muscle. Taking the muscle first, 

 he showed that weariness of muscle comes, in the 

 first place, from too rapid expenditure of capital ; 

 secondly, from the accumulation in the muscle of 

 the products of the muscle's own activity. There were 

 many reasons for thinking that this latter cause of weari- 

 ness was at least as potent as the former. The brute 

 force of ourfood was the measure of our muscular strength, 

 but the one could become the other only through the aid 

 of many other things which might be wholly empty of 

 energy, and the failure of these, no less than the absence 

 of the former, entailed at first premature weariness, after- 

 wards failure and death. The nerves and the brain 

 shared in even the simplest and rudest muscular work. 

 The nerves themselves, the mere bundles of fibres which 

 carried the nervous impulses from the brain to the 

 muscles, were never tired. Coming to the brain, the 

 lecturer showed by a simple experiment a case of fatigue, 

 demonstrating that the fatigue was in the brain and not 

 in the muscle ; a weariness of the particular part of the 

 nervous system which was called into play. 



By an illustration in colours he showed also how weari- 

 ness not only lessened work but bred error. The study 

 of the central nervous system had led, and was leading, 

 physiologists to the conclusion that the material 

 changes on which its activity depended were very 

 analogous to those taking place in a muscle, only, of 

 course, from a chemical point of view, not so massive. 

 And all they knew went to show that in the brain, as in 

 muscle, weariness was the result on the one hand of an 

 expenditure of capital disproportionate to the accumu- 

 lation, and on the other hand to a clogging of the 

 machinery with the products of activity. The simple 

 apparatus he had used might be successfully employed 

 to illustrate general conditions as affecting weariness. If, 

 taking always the same weight, they counted the number 

 of times the weight was lifted and measured the height 

 to which it was raised each time in succession before the 

 movement was stopped by weariness, they could ascertain 

 how much work had been done before the machine was 

 so stopped. Proceeding in this way some interesting 

 results as to what hastened or retarded fatigue had been 

 obtained. Practice and habit, it was needless to say, 

 were of prime influence. The depressing effects of a 

 damp, muggy day, or the exhilarating effects of a bright, 

 clear day, might in this way be measured in foot-pounds 

 of power lost or gained, as might also the lowering 

 influence of a cigar and the heightening effect of a glass 

 of beer. One point perhaps he might dwell upon, and that 

 was the influence of that part of the brain which was 

 more immediately concerned with what was spoken of as 

 mental work. An Italian professor determined, by means 

 of the apparatus of which they were speaking, the amount^ 

 of work which he could on a certain morning do before 

 he was stopped by weariness. He then set himself to 

 two hours' hard mental work, and the form of work he 

 chose was that of examining candidates for their degree. 

 The professor, as soon as the two hours' examination 

 was over, went back to his apparatus and found that his 

 power of bending his finger was enormously cut down. 

 The nervous system was a candle which could not profit- 

 ably be burnt at two ends at once. When the work done 

 involved the activity, simultaneous orsuccessive, of many 

 muscles of many parts of the nervous system, the several 



