579 
Manchester must be prepared to put its hand in its well- 
lined pocket for an equal amount to keep pace with 
science, which is now so mobile and so expensive. Dr. 
Clifford Allbutt delivered an address at St. Thomas’s, 
which mostly consisted of a strictly logical defence of 
theory and abstract learning. Those who read carefully 
Dr. Allbutt’s address will find more in it even than this. 
The apostles of empiricism, to whom the almighty fact 
is alone of importance, are the worst enemies of what 
may collectively be termed medical research. Their 
bourgeois utilitarianism prevents them from appreciating 
or forwarding any branch of inquiry connected with the 
medical sciences which does not immediately result in 
something of use. Research to them is the quintessence 
of an abstractitude. 
This mental attitude of a part of the profession, which 
fortunately is getting less and less, finds its expression 
in the position adopted by the influential public and lay 
committees. It is somewhat anomalous—at any rate, it 
appears so—that astute financiers, practical men ac- 
customed to weigh the chances of ultimate dividends in 
the most complicated concerns, should so discount patho- 
logical and pharmacological research. It must be known 
to them that a large proportion of the drugs they take, ; 
and the curative remedies they employ, are made in 
Germany, and that thousands of pounds are spent 
annually on German products of this class which might 
perfectly well be produced at home. Those of them who 
wander so far from the Stock Exchange as St. Dunstan’s 
Hill will find there a whole colony of German firms 
which supply these articles. A public which will wait 
for years for dividends so far as concerns South African 
securities, which will fill up readily the gaps in a Cape 
to Cairo railway scheme, although this at present can 
only be done by a somewhat lively imagination, is in- 
clined to push and accelerate the scientific worker, and 
expect maximum results in minimum time. The success 
of the German manufacturer in products such as ther- 
apeutic sera and synthetic drugs is simply due to the 
fact that the German capitalist has waited for his divi- 
dends which he is now getting. Apart from the stand- 
point of mere commerce, it is somewhat galling to know 
that a crude product like coal-tar is at present exported 
from this country, and re-imported worked up in the 
shape of dye-stuffs and drugs. 
To work one must have a workshop ; a palace one 
does not need. ‘This forms another great difficulty with 
regard to medical research in London. The authorities 
at the London hospitals rightly regard the patients as 
having the first charge upon the space and accom- 
modation at their command. Space in London, especially 
so far as concerns the older foundations—such, for in- 
stance, as St. Bartholomew’s and Guy’s—is necessarily 
very valuable. This subject formed the keynote of some 
of the speeches at the old students’ annual dinner at St. 
Bartholomew’s. The Great Hall was full of old 
Bartholomew’s men, who, under the chairmanship of 
Dr. Lauder Brunton and the secretaryship of Mr. 
Bruce Clarke, met to inaugurate the new academic year. 
Dr, Lauder Brunton, in a short but effective speech, 
proudly stated that the hospital, so far as its essentially 
medical aspect went, left nothing to be desired ; quite so 
much, however, could not be said for the laboratory 
accommodation. Sir Norman Lockyer, whose opinion 
upon the subject of experimental technique ought certainly 
to be final, also deplored this want of laboratory space 
in so old and famous a medical school. Many difficulties 
special to medical research were discussed by Sir 
Norman, and research in this branch of knowledge was 
compared to research in the physical sciences. One of 
the difficulties was the question of time. The worker in 
the fields of the medical sciences must solve his problems 
often at once. He must be an opportunist. Stars and 
planets remained more or less the same, but this was not 
NO. 1563, VOL. 60] 
NATURE 
[OcroBER 12, 1899 
so with disease. Pressure from without, according to 
Hunter, causes hypertrophy or overgrowth, pressure from 
within atrophy or waste. If the pharmacological labor- 
atory at St. Bartholomew’s is not in a condition of healthy 
overgrowth, it is certainly not because pressure from 
without is wanting, for, according to Dr. Brunton, its 
confines have been narrowed down to some fourteen 
square feet. It was reassuring to be informed by the 
treasurer, Sir Trevor Lawrence, that arrangements were 
on foot which would ensure more ample accommodation 
to laboratory workers at Bartholomew’s. 
The London Hospital was fortunate in securing the 
presence of Dr. Haffkine, who made an excellent and 
humorous speech. The St. George’s students were 
addressed by Dr. Howship Dickinson upon “ Medicine 
Old and New.” Dr. Mitchell Bruce, at Charing Cross, 
took the “Outlook of Medicine” as the subject of his 
address. This was, he said, at the present time hopeful, 
since the scientific method was being pursued in every 
department of medicine. 
In laying stress upon the special difficulties of the 
time, one is perhaps rather apt to forget the causative 
origin of all the inaugural addresses, viz. the medical 
student himself. He comes in ample numbers, a sufficient 
testimony to the healthiness of the profession he aspires 
to join, from year to year, sometimes partially prepared 
by the universities, sometimes raw from school, to 
struggle with those life-long difficulties of the healing art, 
compared to which even examinations count as 
nothing. For five years, now, he must suffer many 
things of divers examiners, and finally emerge to 
meet the great problem of his life—the human indi- 
vidual, both healthy and diseased. Exact knowledge 
in the sense of physical exactitude will probably be 
denied to as yet many generations of medical students, 
even concerning the main problems of disease, and in 
spite of the progress that, thanks mostly to careful and 
continual laboratory work, often of an apparently abstract 
nature, has during the last century been made, our know- 
ledge even now serves often merely to illuminate our 
ignorance, and however optimistic our hopes for the 
future we are forced to admit that— 
A thousand things are hidden still, 
And not a hundred known. 
Ey aVicuele 
DARK LIGHTNING FLASHES. 
[° there such a phenomenon as dark lightning? This 
is a question that has often been raised, and as yet 
no satisfactory answer has been given. If dark flashes 
do really occur, then they should probably be both seen 
and photographed, and the former, one would think, would 
be the more simple way of recording them. A difficulty, 
however, here arises, for if we assume that both dark 
and bright flashes occur during a thunderstorm, then 
we must be careful not to mistake retina-fatigue dark 
flashes for actual dark flashes if they exist. Lord Kelvin 
(NATURE, vol. lx. p. 341) has lately pointed out how, 
during a recent storm, he was able to confirm the 
existence of these apparent dark flashes; and in a 
more recent number of this journal (vol. lx. p. 391) 
I published some observations corroborating the same 
view. It must be pointed out, however, that, although 
such observations indicate that the majority of dark 
flashes seen may be attributed to the cause of fatigue of 
the retina, it does not necessarily follow that dark flashes 
do not actually occur. Eye observations, therefore, do 
not help us as yet to give a satisfactory answer to this 
question. 
Let us turn now to photography, and see what evi- 
dence we can gather from photographs of flashes taken 
during thunderstorms. 
In dealing with this mode of recording flashes, we are 
