NOVEMBER 26, 1903] INVARTEOITREE, 81 
Volcanic Dust, the ‘‘New Bishop’s Ring,” and MEDICAL SCIENCE AND THE ANTI- 
Atmospheric Absorption. Vv VIVISECTIONISTS. 
Dr. Rorcn (vol. Ixviii. p. 623) may, from experience, 
know whether this phenomenon is more prominent in the 
United States than in Europe, and better than can be ascer- 
tained by simply collating reports of the sky appearances 
-as seen by different observers in the two continents, but he 
is mistaken in supposing that the phenomena in question 
have not been mentioned in European journals, as he will 
find a full description of the ‘‘ New Bishop’s Ring ”’ in your 
‘pages (the issue of December 25 last, p. 174), particularly 
.as observed at Sunderland. 
As stated there, there was at first a striking difference 
from the Krakatoa ‘“‘ Bishop’s Ring ’’ in dimensions, but 
while very variable in size, it was afterwards in general 
reduced to more nearly the size of the Krakatoa circle. 
Since the Krakatoa phenomena this circle has rarely 
been wholly absent about sunrise and sunset, though for 
some years was faint, so far as my experience goes, until 
July, t902. Whether it existed at all before the autumn of 
1883 I cannot say, as one’s attention was not directed to it 
until it became conspicuous. On its recrudescence last year 
it did not become visible at other times than sunrise or sun- 
‘set, so far as I noticed, until August 1, and it was not until 
some months later that it became conspicuous in the full 
day-time. I can reply to the inquiry of M. Forel in your 
issue of August 27, p. 396, that the circle is now plainly 
visible, not intermittently, but always, and not only about 
‘sunrise and sunset, but in the day-time; and not only at 
high altitudes, but at the sea-level also. But my experience 
so far agrees with M. Forel’s that I found in a visit to 
Switzerland last July and August that the higher one 
ascended the more conspicuous the circle became—up to a 
certain point at least; I did not ascend higher than 8100 
feet. 
In answer to Prof. Langley (p. 5) I may say that I have 
not noticed a single night this year or last winter when 
the atmosphere appeared to be normally clear, stars at a 
low altitude having never been clearly seen here. I had 
also an impression as to the want of clearness during my 
visit to Switzerland, but I have not yet made calculations 
‘on the observations I made for absorption. During the day- 
time this want of clearness has not been at all observable, 
ithe sky outside of ‘‘ Bishop’s Ring ”’ having been very 
frequently of a beautiful blue. I note that Prof. Langley 
makes the abnormal absorption increase towards the violet 
end of the spectrum. ‘This seems at first sight rather con- 
trary to the circumstance that I have occasionally noticed 
an unusual paleness of the sun when a few degrees off the 
horizon; indeed, it has sometimes appeared of a slightly 
greenish yellow, but possibly the relative clearness shown 
by Prof. Langley’s table at « 0-60 may have some connection 
with this. 
I am surprised that Prof. Langley does not attribute this 
condition of the atmosphere to the volcanic dust. This 
would seem to me much the most probable explanation. 
T. W. BackuHouse. 
West Hendon House, Sunderland, November 23. 
Action of Radium on Bacteria. 
CoNTINUING the experiments of one of us on the action 
of radium bromide on plants, we have experimented on 
various bacteria. We find that, in the case of Bacillus 
pyocyaneus, B. typhosus, B. prodigiosus, and B. anthracis 
in agar culture medium the 6 radiations from radium 
bromide exercise a marked inhibitory action on growth. 
Exposure for four days at a distance of 4-5 mm. to 5 mgr. 
of radium bromide does not appear sufficient to kill the 
bacteria, but is adequate to arrest their growth and to 
maintain a patch on an agar plate, inoculated with any 
of these organisms, sterile. A broth tube, however, 
inoculated from this patch has in most cases developed the 
organisms, showing that while the growth is inhibited in | 
the patch all the organisms there are not killed. 
Henry H. Drxon. | 
J. T. Wienam. 
19. 
Trinity College, Dublin, November 
NO. 1778, VOL. 69 | 
HE vindication of law and common sense exhibited 
by the substantial damages awarded to Dr. 
Bayliss after a trial occupying the Lord Chief Justice 
and a special jury for four days must afford the greatest 
satisfaction to everyone who is aware of the long 
course of systematic persecution which has pursued all 
those who devote themselves to the scientific side of 
medicine, and culminated in an attack by Mr. 
Coleridge on Dr. Bayliss and Prof. Starling, and on 
University College w here they work. 
There are many points of interest in this particular 
battle between a heavily subsidised society and its 
victim, to some few of which we may briefly refer 
—but of greater interest in reality are those aspects 
of this case which illustrate the immemorial conflict 
between knowledge and ignorance. 
It is amazing that in the twentieth century, when it is 
at length recognised, even in this country, still lagging 
far behind its Continental rivals, that throughout the 
whole field of education practical instruction is of para- 
mount importance, we should see one scientific witness 
after another pressed to explain why it should be 
necessary for a proper comprehension of the functions 
of living bodies to see the parts of those bodies in 
motion. The most intricate machine in the world is 
simplicity itself compared to any living body, but 
who could be trusted to repair a watch, a motor car, 
Or a marine engine who had never seen their 
mechanism in action? Who would trust his life to a 
pilot who had never been to sea, to a physician who had 
never studied by the bedside, or to a surgeon who had 
never witnessed an operation? Would anyone try to 
teach a child the scent of a violet out of a book? Yet 
in this case, so happily and justly decided against Mr. 
Coleridge and his Society, an eminent counsel has 
asked again and again why students need concern 
themselves with any more practical physiology (the 
foundation cf all the knowledge they can acquire) than 
they can learn from the pages of a book, while to sup- 
port such a plea pseudo-scientific witnesses living and 
dead were quoted as deliberately asserting that prac- 
tical instruction is wholly superfluous. 
No single error has done more to hinder the progress 
of medicine in the past than the common attempt to 
deduce function from structure without direct experi- 
mental verification. Yet in the face of the clearest 
lessons this fallacious method is continually urged upon 
us as if its utility was self-evident; of this illustrations 
could be cited almost without limit. The error of 
Erasistratus that the arteries did not contain blood, 
apparently supported by anatomical observation, 
blocked the road to knowledge for 500 years, and was 
only dispelled at last by Galen’s simple experiment of 
tying an artery in two places in a living animal and 
opening the vessel between the ligatures. A late 
obstetric surgeon, whose mischievous prejudices were 
received with such faith and quoted with such 
reverence by the anti-vivisectionists, so little under- 
stood the information and arguments of the early 
anatomists that he imagined they had never seen blood 
flow from an artery, and would have been convinced 
of their error if they had done so. Another of his 
** professional convictions ’’ was that the circulation of 
the blood could easily have been discovered by anyone 
with a syringe and a dead body, though he must have 
known that the syringe and the dead body had been 
in the hands of anatomists from the time of the 
Pharaohs at least, and that Malpighi, who discovered 
the capillary circulation by direct observation of the 
living frog, had previously been entirely misled by 
attempts to inject the blood vessels in dead animals. 
| Hees ey discovered the circulation of the blood by con- 
