XXVill Trans. Acad. Scr. of St. Louis. 
Dr. LeRoy McMaster presented a paper on ‘‘Radio- 
activity.’’ 
Mr. Frank Springer was elected to honorary mem- 
bership. 
The death of Mr. F. Louis Soldan was reported. 
Aprin 20, 1908. 
President Woodward in the chair; attendance 32. 
The President spoke at length of the bill now pending 
before Congress to establish a permanent national bison 
range near Wichita, Kansas. Upon motion the Secretary 
was instructed to write the Representatives of Missouri 
urging the importance of prompt action upon the bill. 
Dr. A. C. Eycleshymer read a paper on ‘‘ Growing Old, 
and the Attempts to Prevent it.’’ After giving a brief 
resumé of the common theories on how to live to an old 
age, Dr. Eycleshymer discussed what modern science has 
learned about the physiological changes which produce 
senile decay. He demonstrated that the disproportionate 
growth between the protoplasm and the nuclear cells of 
the body is responsible for the degeneration of tissue, 
resulting in old age and death. While nature itself is 
able to arrest this process, as for instance, when muscular 
tissue is wounded, science has not succeeded in accom- 
plishing this restoration. While eventually mental and 
physical pain will be eliminated, we will always be baffled 
in the end by death. 
In conclusion the speaker said that, after all, the great 
work of medical science lay not in overcoming old age, 
but in increasing the average age, in combating disease 
and staying the hand of death in this form. Here medical 
science had demonstrated its strength and given a fore- 
sight of its possibilities. From this standpoint Dr. 
EKycleshymer made an appeal for the establishment in 
St. Louis of an institution for the study of the causation 
and prevention of disease along the lines of the Rocke- 
feller Institute in New York, the McCormick Institute in 
Chicago, and the Phipps Institute in Philadelphia. 
