June 8, 1899] 
WALOURE 
125 
EETRERS LO THE HDIMOR: 
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Strawberry Cure for Gout. 
THE season of strawberries is at hand, but doctors are full of 
fads, and for the most part forbid them to the gouty. Let me 
put heart into those unfortunate persons to withstand a cruel 
medical tyranny by quoting the experience of the great Linnzeus. 
It will be found in the biographical notes, written by himself in 
excellent dog-latin, and published in the Life of him by Dr. H. 
Stoever, translated from German into English by Joseph Trapp, 
1794. Linnzus describes the goutiness of his constitution in 
P- 416 (cf. p. 415), and says that in 1750 he was attacked so 
severely by sciatica that he could hardly make his way home. 
The pain kept him awake during a whole week. He asked 
for opium, but a friend dissuaded it. Then his wife suggested, 
““Won’t you eat strawberries?” It was the season for them. 
Linnzeus, in the spirit of an experimental philosopher, replied, 
“* tentabo—I will make the trial.” He did so, and quickly fell 
into a sweet sleep that lasted two hours, and when he awoke 
the pain had sensibly diminished. He asked whether any 
strawberries were left: there were some, and he eat them all. 
Then he slept right away till morning. On the next day he 
devoured as many strawberries as he could, and on the sub- 
sequent morning the pain was wholly gone, and he was able to 
leave his bed. Gouty pains returned at the same date in the 
next year, but were again wholly driven off by the delicious 
fruit ; similarly in the third year. Linnzeus died soon after, so 
the experiment ceased. 
What lucrative schemes are suggested by this narrative. 
Why should gouty persons drink nasty waters, at stuffy foreign 
Spas, when strawberry gardens abound in England? Let 
enthusiastic young doctors throw heart and soul into the new 
system. Let a company be run to build a Curhaus in Kent, and 
let them offer me board and lodging gratis in return for my 
valuable hints. 
Distant Sounds. 
WHEN the Prince of Wales reviewed great squadrons at the 
Jubilee review, only one gentleman from Wimbledon, and 
myself, recorded hearing the salutes near London. I think it 
worth while, therefore, to note that what seemed to be the 
thumping sound of heavy guns was to be heard here to-day, 
from half-past five to a quarter to six p.m., Greenwich time ; and 
even fe/t in the chest. 
Some of your other correspondents may be able to tell where 
the guns—if guns—were fired. The importance of the subject 
seems to require no remark from me. 
I sit in a one-storied building, as far remote from street 
noises, perhaps, as is possible in London, except in one or two 
great private gardens, or in the parks. No road is within fifty 
feet of me; and I know all my neighbours’ noises, and have 
been used to the sound of old-fashioned guns up to 1894. 
W. F. SINCLAIR. 
102 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, S.W.,June 2. 
THE JUBILEE OF SIR GEORGE GABRIEL 
STOKES. ; 
Oia close of the present Easter term coincides with 
the end of the fiftieth year of the tenure by Sir 
George Gabriel Stokes of the Lucasian Professorship at 
Cambridge. Born in 1819, the same year as our Soy- 
ereign, he entered Pembroke College the year of Queen 
Victoria’s Accession. In 1841 he took his degree as 
Senior Wrangler, the earliest of the wonderful group of 
Cambridge mathematicians—Stokes, Cayley, Adams— 
who occupied that position in three successive years. It 
has been one of the most pleasing features of the recent 
jubilee that Mr. H. Cadman Jones, who was second to 
Stokes both in the Mathematical Tripos and in the con- 
test for the Smith’s Prize, has been able to come to 
Cambridge to offer his congratulations to his old friend 
and competitor. 
NO. 1545, VOL. 60] 
In the long history of the University several chairs 
have been held by the same professor for more than fifty 
years. Prof. R. Plumtre, of Queens’, was Regius Pro- 
fessor of Physic from 1741 to 1793; Thomas Martyn, of 
Sidney Sussex, was Professor of Botany from 1761 to 
1825 ; and Adam Sedgwick held the Woodwardian Chair 
of Geology from 1818 to 1873; but this is the first time 
in the history of the University that the occasion has been 
officially celebrated. 
In the course of his long life Sir George Stokes has 
been first Secretary and later President of the Royal 
Society. He presided over the British Association in 
1869. He represented the University in Parliament from 
1887 to the dissolution in 1891, and was created a baronet 
in 1889. He has received the Rumford and the Copley 
medal from the Royal Society, and is a D.C.L. of Oxford, 
a LL.D. of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Dublin, and a 
ScD. of Cambridge. Amongst the numerous honours 
which have been showered upon him from abroad, he is 
a Knight of the Prussian order “ Pour le Mérite,” a dis- 
tinction he shares with but four or five at most of his 
countrymen. 
This is not the place to enumerate or appreciate the 
vast volume of published work which Prof. Stokes has 
produced within the last fifty years. A quarter of a 
century ago one of his most distinguished pupils, Prof. 
Tait, attempted in these pages to give some account of 
the magnificent series of papers we owe to Sir George. 
The portrait which accompanied Prof. Tait’s article is 
still strikingly like the original ; it seems strange that five- 
and-twenty years should have left so little trace in those 
finely-moulded features. 
The celebration of the jubilee commenced with the 
delivery of the Rede Lecture by Prof. Cornu, of the Ecole 
Polytechnique of Paris. The subject of the lecture was 
“The Wave Theory of Light, its Influence on Modern 
Physics.” The endowment of this lecture was left to the 
University as long ago as 1524 by Sir Robert Rede, Lord 
Chief Justice in Henry VIII.’s reign, and this is the 
first time that it has been delivered by a foreigner. 
Prof. Cornu spoke in French, and both the brilliancy 
of his matter and the charm of his elocution made a deep 
impression on his audience. Prof. Cornu, in men- 
tioning the works of Newton, Young, Clerk Maxwell, 
Rayleigh, Kelvin and Stokes, paid a splendid tribute to 
those mathematical studies which have ever been the 
chief glory of Cambridge. 
Sir George Stokes’s College, Pembroke, entertained a 
distinguished company at dinner on Thursday evening. 
The delegates from the various Universities and learned 
Societies were present, and many of the former members 
of the Society assembled to do honour to their most 
distinguished graduate. As it was necessary for the 
company to adjourn at nine o'clock to the Fitzwilliam 
Museum, there were no speeches, but the health of Sir 
George was drunk amidst a scene of rare enthusiasm. 
The Fitzwilliam Museum is admirably adapted for the 
purposes of an evening reception. Lit up by electric 
light, the walls of its spacious galleries hung with pictures, 
and its floor covered with a crowd dressed in the robes 
of the various institutions that had sent delegates, it 
presented a most brilliant spectacle. The guests were 
received by the Vice-Chancellor, supported by his Esquire 
Bedells. During the course of the evening a bust of Sir 
George Stokes, executed by Mr. W. Hamo Thornycroft, 
was presented to Pembroke College, and a replica was 
at the same time given to the University. Lord Kelvin, 
on behalf of the subscribers, presented the busts, and in 
doing so he remarked that the assembly was taking part 
in the celebration of a great man and of natural philo- 
sophy in the University of Cambridge—natural philo- 
sophy in the broadest sense of the term, of which 
foundations had been laid by Sir George Stokes that 
would render the nineteenth century memorable in future 
