
— 
Apri 28, 1923] 
NATURE 
577 

Ashby (1906), and Henry (1920)), and by two authors 
(Cobbett (1900) and Minnett (1920)) in horses. No 
_ proved diphtheria bacilli have ever been found occur- 
ring spontaneously in cats, dogs, or fowls. In 1920 
Simmons obtained, from two cats, bacilli resembling 
diphtheria bacilli in man, but differing in the funda- 
mental respect that they fermented cane sugar, which 
human diphtheria bacilli do not. 
The belief that cats are frequently capable of trans- 
mitting diphtheria arose in Great Britain largely out 
of work done by E. Klein for the Local Government 
Board in 1889 and 1890. He based his opinion on 
the existence of spontaneous diphtheria in cats on the 
fact that a very fatty condition was found in the 
_ kidneys, a lesion which he regarded as pathognomonic 
of the disease in this animal. Before Klein published 
this statement it was already well known (Gluge (1850), 
Handfield Jones (1853), and Beale (1869)) that all 
normal cats show this lesion—a fact confirmed by 
modern writers like Hansemann (1897), Fibiger (1901), 
and Mottram (1915-16). In an extensive inquiry in 
1919-20, Savage was unable to find, nor could any one 
produce, a cat infected with diphtheria bacilli. 
The doctrine of milk-borne diphtheria was also 
largely based on Klein’s work (1890). 
when cows are injected with cultures of diphtheria 

He alleged that | 

bacilli in the shoulder, these diphtheria bacilli appear in 
the milk and the animals suffer from an eruptive disease 
of the udders and teats. Dean and Todd (1902) traced 
a milk-borne epidemic of diphtheria to cows with scabs 
on the udders. They showed that the eruption was 
not due to diphtheria, and they regarded the diphtheria 
bacilli found in the udder as a superposed infection 
from the saliva of an infected milker. In 1920 Henry 
studied an epidemic of thirty-two cases. The disease 
was traced to milk. The dairy-maid was found to be 
suffering from cutaneous diphtheria, and from her the 
udder became affected, this in turn transferring the 
disease to the hands of the maid’s father. 
So far as is known, these are all the positive facts 
of the animal transmission of diphtheria to man. We 
may therefore assume that it is an event of exceeding 
rarity. With regard to birds there is no proved 
instance that these animals have ever transmitted the 
disease. So-called croup and diphtheritis in birds have 
nothing to do etiologically with human diphtheria. 
It is not necessary to assume an animal origin of an 
outbreak of diphtheria until all possible human sources 
in the immediate neighbourhood have been excluded. 
This can be done only by cultivations, and not by the 
pious opinions of mothers and medical men without 
experience in bacteriology. W. B. 
Obituary. 
Pror. E. MAJEWSKI. 
ees late Prof. Erazm Majewski, the Polish natural- 
ist, who died on November 15 last in Warsaw, 
was a scholar and pionéer worker of a type characteristic 
of the difficult and discouraging conditions in pre-War 
Poland—a country divided by three alien states, two 
of which forbade the use of the native language, even 
in the primary schools, excluded native teachers, and 
_ suppressed native culture. 
Born in 1858, in the provincial town of Lublin, Prof. 
Majewski studied science at the University of Warsaw. 
Tn order to devote himself to research, to which he 
had felt attracted from earliest youth, he had first to 
gain a financial independence, for at that time there 
were no endowments, no academic positions, no possi- 
bilities of scientific publication for a Pole who wanted 
to work in his own language and for his own country. 
Prof. Majewski took up and developed an important 
branch of chemical industry and thus obtained a living 
at first, and afterwards what, for Polish conditions, 
might be considered a small fortune. With this he 
could not only find leisure for his own research, which 
soon became very strenuous and extensive, but he also 
was able to finance research and help a number of 
younger students. 
*Prof. Majewski’s own activities were astoundingly 
multifarious : translations into Polish, popular exposi- 
tions, manuals, monographs, scientific novels, treatises, 
and last, not least, solid original contributions, partly 
based on research in the laboratory and in the field. 
The subjects of his work were commensurately exten- 
sive: chemistry, botany and geology; later on, 
ethnography, prehistory and archeology ; finally, in 
the last ten years of his life, economics, sociology, and 
history of civilisation. Perhaps the most lasting value 
NO. 2791, VOL. 111] 
will be retained by his archeological and prehistoric 
studies, through the impetus which he gave to excava- 
tion and collecting, through the foundation of an 
excellent periodical (Swiatowit), which he financed and 
edited himself, and through the formation of a large 
and valuable collection of Slavonic archeology, pre- 
sented in 1921 to the Scientific Society of Warsaw. 
All Prof. Majewski’s work reveals a man of genius 
in the marvellous grasp of each problem touched upon, 
in the original and independent point of view, in the 
amazing power of study and assimilation. It shows, 
of course, also the defects of its qualities: such 
enormous output over a wide range is bound to entail 
acertain degree of dilettantism, many hasty generalisa- 
tions, and a tendency to avoid all negative evidence. 
All the defects of the late Prof. Majewski’s work, how- 
ever, are due mainly to the unfavourable conditions 
under which he worked : absence of scientific organisa- 
tion, of co-operation and of division of work, all of 
which leads to the unlimited pegging out of claims over 
the vast territory of science by an enterprising and 
independent mind, to lack of self-criticism, to an easy 
lapsing into over-ambitious schemes. The qualities 
which he possessed, on the other hand, are native and 
intrinsic to his own mind, and entitle us to hope that 
his country, which can produce such people as he 
under the most discouraging conditions, will, when its 
political and economic foundations are once more 
secure and its scientific work organised, be able to 
contribute its due share to the progress of science. 
B. M. 
Dr. HARTWIG FRANZEN. 
On February 14 the death occurred at Karlsruhe, 
Baden, of Dr. Hartwig Franzen, extraordinary professor 
of organic chemistry at the Technical High School. 
