May 5, 1923] 
Dr. ARTHUR LATHAM. 
Tue medical profession has lost a somewhat striking 
_ personality by the death of Dr. Arthur Latham at the 
relatively early age of fifty-six. The son of a former 
Regius professor of medicine at Cambridge, who still 
survives, Dr. Latham was brought up in a cultured and 
scientific atmosphere, while his Oxford degree implied 
the double advantages of the two older English Univer- 
‘sities. He was elected assistant physician to St. 
-George’s Hospital in 1898, and there soon showed his 
ability in teaching and his always masterful and 
dominating personality. A man of precise logical 
thought and of great determination, he could ill 
tolerate indefiniteness of view and indecision, and it 
is not surprising therefore that he had enemies as well 
as cordial friends. 
Whatever Dr. Latham undertook, he made himself 
thoroughly acquainted with, and it was fortunate that 
the award to him of a prize for an essay on a tuber- 
culosis sanatorium early determined the chief trend 
of his work. Although sanatoria for consumptives 
have not achieved all that was expected of them, 
this has been largely owing to their misuse under 
the pressure of the administration of the National 
(Health) Insurance Act, patients being sent in large 
numbers to sanatoria, for whom treatment in hospitals 
was indicated. Dr. Latham contributed other papers 
and small books on tuberculosis ; he was a member of 
_ the Departmental Committee on Tuberculosis, which 
laid down the lines on which the state anti-tuberculosis 



PROF. DE SITTER, who is to give a lecture at the 
Imperial College of Science and Technology on May 7, 
on “‘ Problems of Fundamental Astronomy,”’ and will 
lecture also at Manchester on May 9, and at Edinburgh 
on May 18, was a pupil of Kapteyn’s, who was invited 
by Gill in 1896 to work for a time at the Cape. He 
made determinations of the parallaxes of several 
southern stars with the heliometer. For his thesis 
for doctor of science at Groningen he presented a 
“Discussion of the Heliometer Observations of 
Jupiter’s Satellites.” He has continued these re- 
Searches and developed a new method for treating 
the mutual perturbations of the satellites, and is 
still engaged discussing photographs taken at the 
Cape and Greenwich for the determination of the 
necessary constants. After his return to Groningen 
Prof. de Sitter participated in a number of Kapteyn’s 
investigations dealing with the dimensions and struc- 
ture of the stellar universe. British men of science 
owe a debt to Prof. de Sitter for giving during the 
War, before Einstein’s work reached England, three 
papers in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astro- 
nomical Society which presented to English readers 
an account of the generalised theory of relativity. 
Prof. de Sitter has made important contributions to 
this subject and has examined the various cases 
where any astronomical verifications may be obtained. 
In an article in the April Quarterly Review, Lord 
Ernle writes on “ Victorian Memoirs and Memories.” 
His account of Huxley runs as follows: ‘‘ Mrs. 
NO. 2792, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
611 

measures were to be carried out ; and in many other 
ways helped to bring the anti-tuberculosis crusade to 
its present advanced condition. 
Of Dr. Latham’s value as a medical politician, of 
the important work which he did to secure the firm 
beginning of the Royal Society of Medicine, this is not 
the place to write; but the memory of his clear and 
incisive speaking, arising out of logical thinking, of 
his pertinacious advocacy of great causes, and of his 
success in advancing the interests of preventive 
medicine, will not soon die. 

WE regret to announce the following deaths : 
Prof. Gustav Kohler, director of the Mining 
Academy, Clausthal, for the years 1887-1914, and 
a had taught there since 1880, at the age of eighty- 
our. 
Sir Shirley Murphy, vice-president of the Royal 
Sanitary Institute and other scientific societies, and 
for twenty-two years Medical Officer of Health for 
London, on April 27, aged seventy-four. 
Dr. Alfred Scholl, a director of the Agricultural Ex- 
perimental Station, Miinster, and deputy-editor of 
the Zeitschrift fiir Untersuchung der Nahrungs- und 
Genussmittel, on February 12, at the age of forty-six. 
Mr. H. J. Seaman, for many years genera! director 
of the Atlas Portland Cement Co., New York, who 
was responsible, with Hurry, for introducing the use 
of coal dust in rotary tube furnaces for the burning 
of clinker, on February 9. 
Current Topics and Events. 
Asquith, who describes a meeting with Huxley at 
Jowett’s, and remarks that he had about him little 
of the juste milieu, does not appear to have been 
favourably impressed. But Huxley was not always 
the gladiator. To me he was irresistibly attractive, 
because I fancied that I had caught a glimpse of his 
true outlook on life. When I think of his destructive 
criticism, I see again the arabesque with which he 
had adorned the side of the first page of his article 
on ‘Lux Mundi.” Up the margin ran a vine-clad 
trellis : on the top crowed the cock of theology, and 
towards him crept the fox of science. I remember 
also discussing with him one of his numerous con- 
troversies—I think the Gadarene swine. With the 
impertinence of comparative youth, I expressed 
surprise at the quantity of vinegar and mustard 
which he mixed with the discussion of questions 
that to many people were matters of life or death. 
“My dear young man,’ he answered, ‘ you are not 
old enough to remember when men like Lyell and 
Murchison were not considered fit to lick the dust 
off the boots of a curate. I should like to get my 
heel into their mouths and scr-r-unch it round.’ A 
wistful smile lit up his plain rugged face, as he 
added: ‘And they never seem to reflect what a 
miserable position mine is standing on a point of 
Nothing in an abyss of Nothing.’ The world saw 
much of the first mood, little of the latter.” 
THE council of the Zoological Society of London 
presented an eminently satisfactory report for the 
