?94 



NATURE 



[July ?6, iqcmd 



The London Mathematical Society. 



A FEW months sinc6 it was announced in your columns that the 

 Society had directed an index to the first thirty volumes of the 

 Proceedings, and a complete list of members, to be drawn up by 

 the secretaries. These have now been issued to members : the 

 general public can have them from the publisher (F. Hodgson, 

 86 Farringdon Street) at the respective prices, is. 6d. and 6d. A 

 free distribution of looo copies of the first part of the index, which 

 comprises an arrangement of the papers in alphabetical order of 

 authors' names, has been commenced, and upwards of 500 copies 

 have been sent out. In the course of the existence of the Society 

 some 440 persons have been recorded on the roll. This is not a 

 great number, and some younger societies have shown greater 

 vitality. Perhaps this issue may lead to the Society becoming 

 more widely known. R. Tucker. 



London Mathematical Society, July 23. 



The Consultative Committee and Technical 

 Education. 



The Council of the Association of Technical Institutions has 

 had under consideration the " Draft Order in Council " consti- 

 tuting the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education. 



It welcomes the appointment of the Vice-President of the 

 Association, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, M.P., as a member of the 

 Consultative Committee, and as a representative of agricultural 

 education and of technical education in rural districts. But it 

 views with astonishment and regret the fact that technical 

 education in the great towns of the United Kingdom is wholly 

 unrepresented, although there are upon the Consultative Com- 

 mittee two representatives of elementary education in the persons 

 of the Dean of Manchester and Mr. Ernest Ciray, M.P. , three 

 heads of secondary schools, viz. Mrs. Bryant, Dr. Gow and 

 the Hon. and Rev. Edward Lyttelton, as well as a large number 

 of persons intimately acquainted with literary education. 



It seems to the Council a matter of the greatest national 

 importance that there should be upon the body which is to 

 advise the Board of Education an adequate number of persons 

 who are well acquainted with the applications of scientific 

 knowledge to industries and commerce, and with the best 

 methods of giving such technical training in this country as 

 shall enable us to meet successfully foreign competition. 



In view, therefore, of the very serious damage which may be 

 done to technical education, and thereby to the trade and com- 

 merce of the country, if the Committee to which the Board of 

 Education will look for advice is composed of persons without 

 adequate knowledge of the matters to which I have referred, I 

 venture to ask you to allow me, through your columns, to draw 

 the attention of Members of Parliament, manufacturers, and 

 merchants to this subject, in the hope that th-ey may take steps 

 to secure that the constitution of the Consultative Committee 

 may be modified in such a way that due provision may be made 

 for the presence of persons possessing special knowledge of 

 trade, manufactures, and technical education. 



Merchant Venturers' Technical J. Wertheimer. 



College, Bristol, July 21. (Hon. Sec.) 



THE CENTENARY OF THE RO YAL COLLEGE 



OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND. 

 'T^ HE Royal College of Surgeons of England celebrates 

 -* its centenary on July 25-27. The actual month of 

 course in which George IH. founded the College by Royal 

 Charter was March, 1800, but in the spring of 1900 it 

 would have been impossible adequately to marshal the 

 forces of English surgery. Sir William MacCormac and 

 Mr. Frederick Treves, to name no others, were, if we 

 remember rightly, still in South Africa. The belated 

 birthday of the College is to be fitly commemorated by 

 a grand degree-giving, at which a number of representa- 

 tive European and American surgeons will receive the 

 newly-created distinction of Hon. F.R.C.S. H.R.H. 

 the Prince of Wales has already been presented 

 with the diploma of Honorary Fellowship, a depu- 

 tation from the College having waited on him on 

 July 24. The form of words used in the Royal diploma is 

 the same as that employed in all cases. " Know all men 

 by these presents, that we, the Royal College of Surgeons 

 of England, do hereby admit his Royal Highness Albert 



NO, 1604. "VOL. 62] 



Edwiard, Prince of Wales, an Honorary Fellow of the 

 College." 



Besides the degree-giving there will be a conversazione, 

 a grand banquet, a Presidential address of welcome, 

 which will deal at length with the history of the surgeon's 

 art, and a reception at the Mansion House. But all such 

 august ceremonial should be regarded neither as an end 

 in itself, nor as specially typical of the progress of surgical 

 education. 



The centenary of the Royal College of Surgeons marks, 

 in fact, not so much the hundred and first birthday of a 

 noble institution as the audit-day of English surgery. 

 It is as such that it should be regarded by all thoughtful 

 men. How stands the surgical art of to-day in com- 

 parison to that of the opening years of the century ? 

 The question requires no long answer : it is not neces- 

 sary to deal ait length with the profound revolution, 

 wrought since the days of Hunter, in surgery, whether 

 intra-cranial, intra-thoracic, or abdominal. It suffices to 

 mention only aneesthesia and antisepsis. In the year 

 1800 these two great agencies for good were unknown — 

 the surgeon had to arm himself for his task after the 

 manner of a skilled slaughterer, and Death, as often as 

 not, stalked at his elbow through the hospital wards or 

 to the rich man's bedside. 



At the beginning of the century, too, science was 

 everywhere in its infancy. The surgeons, though they 

 had ceased to rank with manicurists and barbers, were 

 often little better than bone-setters. They dreaded 

 operations — considered them a confession of weakness, 

 and this through a general ignorance of how safely to 

 operate. Medical etiquette, in those old days, was an 

 aflfair of various interpretation : quackery preyed unre- 

 proved on the general ignorance. To-day surgery has 

 become, as far as may be, scientific. The modern 

 medical man is trained as a man of science ; he is in 

 England also subject to perhaps the severest code of 

 honour known to history." The scientific spirit has so 

 far permeated the public mind that even modern 

 quackery is compelled to pose in the garb of research 

 based on the inductive method. Graham, Buzaglo, and 

 the inventor of the " metallic tractors " appealed in the 

 year 1800 to just such confused instincts as possess the 

 affrighted victims of the savage medicine-men described 

 by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. To-day the clever 

 impostor takes in vain the sacred name of science, or if 

 he make his appeal to the religious instinct, he is careful 

 to do so aliTiost as philosophically as a Brahmin or a 

 Buddhist. 



The progress of social relations is spoken of by jurists 

 as one from status to contract ; the progress of the 

 medical sciences might as fitly be described as from 

 fetich to reason. 



In this progress the Royal College of Surgeons has 

 been no unimportant factor. The very conservatism ot 

 that great society has been a source of strength. In 

 countries where leading institutions are less tenacious of 

 privilege, less rigidly decorous, the interests they protect 

 tend incessantly todegenerate for lack of ideals, of ethics, 

 and of breeding. ' The names of countries, especially 

 young ones, will occur to the philosophic, where the 

 medical profession suffers contmuously from the un- 

 academic spirit of its academies. Yet there can be no 

 doubt ^that the conservatism of the College was at one 

 time excessive. 



This will be at once apparent to the readers of Sir 

 William MacCormac's centennial address on the 

 " History of Surgery and Surgeons." As a succedaneuip 

 to his text, sixty-one carefully prepared biographies of his 

 predecessors in office have been published. Of these 

 presidents certain of the earlier ones constitute an 

 object-lesson in oligarchy and the art and craft of office- 

 holding. Charles Hawkins, first Master of the College 

 in 1800, had for years— since 1790— been Master of the 



