V. SCIENCE AND THE WAR 



AMONGST various important matters now 

 brought to a sharper focus in the public 

 eye, few, if any, require more careful 

 attention than that which is concerned with 

 science, its value, its position, its teachings, and 

 how it should be taught. No one who has 

 followed the domestic difficulties due to our 

 neglect of the warnings of scientific men can fail 

 to see how we have had to suffer because of the 

 lax conduct of those responsible for these things 

 in the past. 



Within the first few weeks after the war broke 

 out to take one example every medical man 

 was the recipient of a document telling him of 

 the expected shortage in a number of important 

 drugs and suggesting the substitutes which he 

 might employ. It was a timely warning ; but it 

 need never have been issued if we had not allowed 

 the manufacture of drugs, and especially those 

 of the so-called " synthetic " group, to drift 

 almost entirely into the hands of the Badische 

 Aniline Fabrik, and kindred firms in Germany. 

 This difficulty, now partly overcome, is one which 

 never would have arisen but for the deaf ear 

 turned to the warnings of the scientific chemists, 



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