246 



NA TURE 



[July 14, 1904 



occasionally illustrated by diagrams of the apparatus 

 employed. 



What benefit the student will be able to derive from 

 the technical chapters can only be decided by experi- 

 <>nce. The value of these is undoubtedly enhanced by 

 the supplementary album containing some 560 excel- 

 ient diagrams illustrating technical apparatus and 

 actual manufacturing processes. Amongst other 

 ■processes illustrated are the manufacture of liquid 

 ammonia, liquid carbonic acid, chlorine, ether, aniline, 

 hydrochloric, nitric, sulphuric, tartaric, citric, and 

 carbolic acids. A careful study of such diagrams 

 cannot but be of great service to all intending works 

 chemists. 



T/je Personality of the Physician. By Dr. Alfred T. 



Schofield. Pp. X + 317. (London: J. and A. 



Churchill, 1904.) Price 55. net. 

 As with all the writings of Dr. Schofield, this present 

 work shows indubitable signs of wide reading and 

 of careful thought. 



The underlying gist of the matter is that the most 

 potent factor in a physician's success is the personal 

 equation. Of course, by the word " success " Dr. 

 Schofield does not mean what is sometimes profanely 

 styled " scooping in the shekels "! Nor does he fall 

 into the verv common error of confusing personality 

 with prestige. The latter may, of course, be shared 

 with the physician, who aspires to occupy the most 

 lofty possible pinnacle of mora! excellence, by the 

 lowest and most unprincipled charlatan. 



Happily, the ethical standard, recognised by the 

 medical profession in this country, is of the highest 

 conceivable type. Nevertheless, any publication that 

 tends to raise, rather than to level down, that ideal is 

 very rightly welcomed alike by the profession, by the 

 Press, and by the people at large. 



Some medical men are more comforting than others, 

 and it is quite certain that pessimism more surely 

 empties the consultant's waiting-room than any other 

 quality. If the reviewer, who yields to no man in his 

 admiration of the noblest of all professions, might be 

 !for once pardoned for a little private grumble at some 

 ■of the physicians with whom he has come in contact, 

 it is because of the grudging manner in which certain 

 doctors, otherwise worthy and excellent men, deal out 

 with sparing hand a remedy — Tinctura Spei — which 

 costs them nothing, and yet is probably the mosi 

 valuable drug ever dispensed ! 



JRustless Coatings : Corrosion and Electrolysis of Iron 

 .and Steel. By M. P. Wood. Pp. x + 432. (New 

 York : John Wiley and Sons ; London : Chapman 

 and Hall, Ltd., 1904.) Price 175. net. 

 Mr. M. p. Wood may be a good " practical " man, 

 but he has neitlier literary ability nor a knowledge of 

 science sufficient to enable him to do justice to a sub- 

 ject whicli demands much more than rule-of-thumb 

 practice to deal with it adequately. His book is a 

 strange medley of so-called scientific statements strung 

 together without any real acquaintance with their 

 meaning. Its appearance of scientific erudition may 

 serve to deceive the vmwary, and we quite agree with 

 Mr. Wood that there is much in paint and in things 

 connected with paint that is calculated to deceive the 

 unwary. But then something depends upon the guide. 

 Mr. Wood's book is very prettily got up, and some 

 of the illustrations are in the highest style of process- 

 art. But like much of the subject-matter, many of 

 them are wholly irrelevant. Mr. Wood has evidently 

 had the ambition to make a book on a subject with 

 which as a practical man he has been more or less 

 intimately connected, but in this matter his ambition 

 has overleaped itself. 



NO. 181 I, VOL. 70] 



Ankaitf, Einrichtung und Pflege des Motorzweirades. 

 By Wolfgang Vogel. Pp. xiii-fi44. (Berlin: 

 Phonix-Verlag, 1904.) Price 2.65 marks. 

 .Anyone who possesses a motor bicycle or tricycle and 

 can read the German language will find in these pages 

 much valuable information in the form of practical 

 suggestions as to the buying, working, and mainten- 

 ance of these useful means of locomotion. The author 

 deals fully with every part of the machine, and illus- 

 trates the text with numerous drawings which should 

 very much assist the novice in understanding the 

 functions of the various parts of the machine. The 

 great improvement in design of motors, and tJie 

 g^rowing popularity of this form of transport, will no 

 doubt call for many small treatises on the subject, of 

 which the present one is an excellent example. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



Tlie Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 ninnuscripis intended for this or any other part of Nature 

 i\o notice is talien of anonymous communications.] 



Origin of Radium. 



Apropos of Mr. Strutt's letter in Nature of July 7, it 

 may be recalled that the Curies found that the artificially 

 prepared chalcolite (the uranium copper phosphate) con- 

 tained no radium, whereas the natural substance did. 



It appears to me that if this fact is considered along 

 with Mr. Soddy's result as to the failure of uranium 

 nitrate to generate radium, the prima facie interpre- 

 tation would be that the combined copper atom was in 

 some way concerned. Of course the alternative view is 

 still left that it takes a longer time than elapsed in .Mr. 

 Soddy's observations for radium to emerge from a succes- 

 sion of changes taking place in the uranium atom, and 

 that this atom is the sole parent. However, in the present 

 state of our knowledge it seems worth investigating if it 

 may not turn out that radium results from the convection 

 of ions from atoms of higher to atoms of lower atomic 

 weight, producing in radium an unstable or overcharged 

 atom. . 



On these grounds I have recently induced my friend Mr. 

 Emil Werner to prepare about half a kilo, of the uranium 

 mica or chalcolite with the view of testing at intervals 

 its yield of radium emanation, if any is, indeed, generated. 

 .■Xlong with this will be observed the pure uranium nitrate 

 as well as an impure uranium nitrate recrystallised with 

 small quantities of some of the heavy metals. My experi- 

 ments are on rather a small scale. It is desirable, I think, 

 that they should be repeated by some one commanding 

 larger resources. J. JoLV. 



Trinity College, Dublin. 



Electric Wave Recorder for Strutt's Radium 

 Electroscope. 



The periodical discharges of a Strutt's radium electro- 

 scope can be arranged to ring a bell or print a record of 

 every contact of the leaves ; each discharge from the outside 

 terminal, when the leaf strikes, is sufficient to act on a 

 coherer, if any part of the coherer circuit is connected by 

 wire, so that the discharge terminal of the vacuum tube 

 takes the place of the aerial, as used in wireless telegraphy ; 

 the experiment never fails, every discharge producing a 

 ring on the bell or a dot on the Morse tape as desired. 

 For the coherer I use two pieces of No. 16 German silver 

 wire, with nickel filings in the gap, at ordinary atmospheric 

 pressure. 



It is sometimes possible to get the coherer to respond by 

 induction without metallic contact with the terminal, but 

 this is rather beyond the sensibility of the apparatus 

 employed. 



I am greatly indebted to Dr. W. H. Martindale for the 

 loan of his Strutt's radium electroscope for use in these 



