296 



NATURE 



[July 26, 1900 



on "The Structure and Habits of Extinct Vertebrate 

 Animals." He had prepared a course for 1856, when, 

 however, lectures were suspended. The Council, it 

 seems, had carped at the long duration of Owen's 

 catalogue-making, and Owen had addressed to them an 

 eloquent apologia for his seeming delays. Hence, per- 

 haps, Owen's retirement. In 1863 Thomas Henry Huxley 

 began to lecture, his first course dealing with "The 

 Structure and Development of the Vertebrate Skeleton." 

 His first lecture was devoted to the glyptodon with much- 

 broken carapace, now in the Museum. He continued to 

 deliver a long annual course till succeeded by Flower 

 in 1869. The late Sir William Flower's tenure of the 

 chair, which he shared with the great but somewhat 

 neglected William Kitchen Parker, brings us down to 

 comparatively recent times. 



It is as a lecturing body that the College should prove 

 most interesting to the world of Science at large. The 

 names of Owen and the greater Huxley link it with the 

 grand world of Cuvier and Darwin. We might write at 

 length of the beneficent work of the College in patho- 

 logical anatomy, or serum-therapeutics, a work all the 

 more praiseworthy because it has been sedulously and 

 quietly carried on in despite of the clamours of a stupid 

 section of the public. Of the College examinations it 

 would also be possible to say much. As recently, it 

 should be remembered, as i860 a doctor could qualify 

 without passing a written examination in medicine. Now, 

 of course, it is scarcely possible, in view of the examina- 

 tions of the Conjoint Board of the Colleges of Physicians 

 and Surgeons, lor any impudent dunderhead to launch 

 himself in practice, and to pocket the fees of a public 

 always a little in love with quackery and mystification. 

 Of the College as a guardian of medical ethics and eti- 

 quette, a volume might be written. A hundred years 

 ago the doctor was always satirised by all classes of 

 writers as unscrupulous. Now that charge is only occa- 

 sionally brought against him by the illiterate, who count 

 for nothing in the long run. That this immense change 

 has been effected is mainly due to the College. And 

 here it is only fair, just reference having been made to the 

 College Museum and Library, to mention the College 

 Office. A long line of secretaries, from Okey Belfour to 

 Mr. Trimmer and Mr. Cowell, have patiently and vigi- 

 lantly guarded the surgical point of honour. If ever a 

 black sheep has been driven out of the surgical flock it is 

 the College Office that has weighed his demerits and im- 

 peached him in the first instance. And this not without 

 deliberation, or, as it was once called, " prayer and fast- 

 ing." On the other hand, if ever a practitioner has been 

 wrongly accused of malpractice, or unprofessional conduct, 

 it is the College Office that has been at the root of his 

 rehabilitation. 



To resume and to conclude— and with the thermometer 

 at 87° it is as well to do so— the surgeon of 1900 is not 

 as his far-off brother of 1800, and the College, in no small 

 degree, has been responsible for the laudable and tre- 

 mendous transformation. Mere literary men in England 

 have no Academy at their head so drastic and salutary as 

 the College to which surgeons can look up. The doctor 

 in 1800 used occasionally to stipulate, when dealing with 

 workhouse authorities, that he should not be required to 

 treat fever cases. Fever, by the by, in the undrained 

 London of the years prior to Sir John Simon's reforms, 

 was a common cause of death among even the well-to-do. 

 Now, to quote the sestet of an unpublished sonnet, 



" To-day skill'd Science runs where bullets hail, 

 Or cholera's rife, for love of suffering man, — 

 At the laboratory-table seeks 

 Plague's grim bacillus, and, jf need be, can 

 Die as did MuUer. Nor shall heroes fail : 

 From Hunter on to Lister their fame speaks ! " 



Victor Plarr. 



NO 1604. VOL. 62] 



ELECTRICAL POWER DISTRIBUTION. 



T N a lecture on " Electricity as a Motive Power," 

 -*■ delivered to the working men of Sheffield, August 

 23, 1879, the following question was asked: "And why 

 not now? Why should not the mountain air that has 

 given you workmen of Hallamshire in past times your 

 sinew, your independence of character, blow over your 

 grindstone again ? Why should not division of labour 

 be carried to its end, and power be brought to you 

 instead of you to the power ? Let us hope then that in 

 the next century electricity may undo whatever harm 

 steam may have done during the present, and that the 

 future workmen of Sheffield, instead of breathing the 

 necessarily impure air of crowded factories, may find 

 himself again on the hill-side, but with electric energy 

 laid on at his command." 



The present year sees the dawn of the realisation 

 of this idea of twenty-one years ago. For soon it 

 will no longer be : " If," as I said on that occasion, 

 " a workman could have transmitted to him, just 

 at the time he might require it, a small amount of 

 energy at, say, one halfpenny per hour per horse- 

 power — which would be three or four times the actual 

 cost of production with a very large steam engine — and 

 if he could turn off the power like gas when he did not 

 want it, how many of the smaller workmen of Sheffield 

 would be glad to avail themselves of such a facility ? " 



To enable such a scheme to be carried out in this 

 country, four Electric Power Distribution Bills have 

 this year been brought before Parliament — one for the 

 county of Durham, one for Tyneside, one for Lancashire, 

 and one for South Wales. And in advocating their 

 second reading on March i, the President of the 

 Board of Trade expressed the opinion that "the question 

 which the House has to decide is a very important one, 

 perhaps one of the most important ones that have come 

 before the House by means of a private Bill for many 

 years." For he pointed out that " the electrical enter- 

 prise of this country is in an exceedingly backward 

 condition," and that :— " It may almost be said that there 

 are villages in North America which are in possession of 

 advantages in connection with electricity which some of 

 our largest towns do not possess." 



This opinion was shared by Sir James Kitson and the 

 Committee of the House over which he presided. For 

 from May 3 to well into this month, July, they sat de- 

 liberating as to whether, and under what conditions, per- 

 mission should be given for electric energy to be dis- 

 tributed over nearly 3000 square miles of Great Britain. 



A vast amount of evidence was taken regarding the 

 effect on British industry, on the cost of producing 

 manufactured products, and as to the growing up of new 

 factories, and even of new trades, that might come into 

 existence through a general distribution of electric 

 energy. Employer after employer came forward and 

 spoke of his individual need for electrical energy to work 

 scattered tools in his factory, to ventilate and pump his 

 mines, as well as to cut and haul his coal. 



" Cheap power is the panacea for the evil effects of 

 foreign competition" was urged again and again by the 

 long stream of manufacturers who occupied the witness 

 box for weeks. The advocates of this cheap power were 

 marshalled in groups like bands of warriors, and, from 

 the various classes of witnesses champions were selected 

 who bombarded the Committee with proofs of the para- 

 mount importance of their cause, and overwhelmed the 

 members when they struggled to grasp the arithmetic of 

 " load factors," and begged to know how many Board of 

 Trade units there might be in a horse-power. 



At first we recognised many provincial dialects among 

 the crowd in the Committee Room, but when it began 

 to be realised that the inquiry would occupy more weeks 

 than it was at first thought it would need days, the 



