November 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



^ 



ILLUSTRATEg^MAGAZINE 

 ^ SC}ENCE,UTEMTURE,& ART^ 



LONDON: NOVEMBER \, \i 



TO OUR READERS. 



HE representatives of the late Mr. R. A. 

 Proctor, acting for the benefit of his widow 

 and children, have agreed for the sale of 

 Knowledge to Me.ssrs. W. H. Allen & Co., 

 publishers, of Waterloo Place, who have 

 ah-eady received promises from many of Mr. 

 Proctot's scientiGc friends to contribute to its pages. The 

 original idea of Mr. Proctor with respect to this publication 

 will be kept in view by the Editors, who will endeavour 

 to make it a magazine of science, plainly worded and 

 exactly described. 



The ablest exponents of science will be invited to con- 

 tribute articles and letters to its pages, and more space 

 than hitherto will be devoted to Physics and Physical 

 Geography, and to Natural History, including Botany. The 

 space devoted to Astronomy must be somewhat curtailed, 

 but it will probably still remain the leading feature of the 

 magazine. 



The Editors will use their discretion in repressing in 

 the papers accepted for publication Anglicised Latin when, 

 as is usually the case, the same idea can be as accurately 

 expressed in ordinary words. Reviews of new scientific 

 books and papers read before scientific societies will be 

 given in a popular form, with illustrations, and scientific 

 news will as far as possible be translated into the language 

 of ordinary life. 



The publishers have purchased from Mr. Proctor's repre- 

 sentatives a great number of unpublished articles by Mr. 

 Proctor, which will Ije produced from time to time, but 

 papers referring to politics and religion will be avoided as 

 not coming within the field of Knowledge as originally 

 mapped out. 



The columns for clioss and whist (regarded as scientific 

 games) will be continued, and a correspondence section will 

 be opened for full and free discussion on matters likely to 

 be of interest to general readera. 



Those who approve of the plan above sketched out and 

 wish to see 



Knowledc;e grow from more to more, 

 can help us by making the magazine known to their friends, 

 and introducing it to clubs and institutes where it is not 

 already subscribed for. 



MR. PROCTOR'S LAST ARTICLE. 



EADERS of Knowledge will be interested 

 in seeing the last article written by Mr. 

 Proctor only a few days before he started 

 for New York, where death overtook him. 

 The article was vsritten on the broad bal- 

 cony of his house in Florida, close to the 

 room where his wife was lying ill with fever, which at 

 first was suspected to be yellow fever. During the anxious 

 period of doubt he had given himself to reading all the 

 medical literature at hand referring to yellow fever and 

 plagues, and he gave the benefit of his information to the 

 readei-s of the New York Weehlij Tribune, from which we 

 reprint the greater portion of his article. It will be seen 

 from the reports which we give in anothei column that the 

 loss of Mr. Proctor's valuable life was probably not due to 

 yellow fever, but to the panic produced by the yellow fever 

 scare, which caused the doctoi-s attending him and the 

 New York hotel proprietor to insist on his removal on a 

 rainy and windy night when he was suffering from 

 Malarial Fever. 



PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 



1:LL0W fever, though not in reality a 

 more destructive disease, even in the places 

 where it is apt to prevail, than some others 

 which are more familiar, is more suggestive 

 of the idea of pestilence than any existent 

 disease, and more strikingly recalls, when 

 it appears in a fully develoijed form, as ten 

 yeai-s ago in New Orleans and Memphis, 

 the horrors of the ancient plagua"!. There is something in 

 the insidious nature of its approach, its fell action in the 

 worst cases, and the despair which seizes even from the 

 beginning the larger number of its victims, which re- 

 minds us of what we have read re.-^pcrting the plagues of 

 Athens, of Florence, of London, in tiio days of old. I am 

 told by those wlio witnessed the fiight from Jacksonville, 

 Florida, a short time since, when first the appeamnce of 

 yellow fever in that town had boon announced, that the 

 behaviour of many of the refugees indicated absolutely panic 

 terror, thoiigli, a.'^ it turned out, not one among the whole 

 number had l)oen infected by the disejise, so that the risk 

 individually run by that panic-stricken crowd while in the 

 town from which they were flying must have been small. 



It may bo interesting to recall a few of the features of 

 the groiit plagues and pestilences of history —if for no other 

 retison, for this : that men may see how light even the worst 

 infections of the kind during this century have been by 

 comparison. 



The account given by Thucydidc* of the plague of Athens, 



