778 
of London prevented spoliation and wholesale destruc- 
tion, so that the Charity as it exists to-day still retains 
some of its original archaic characteristics. A succession 
of great surgeons—Vicary, Gale, Clowes, and Woodall— 
held office in the hospital under the later Tudor 
sovereigns. They were men who had gained their ex- 
perience in the foreign wars and had served so far afield 
as Poland and Russia. Rough, practical surgeons, they 
concerned themselves with the sick and hurt and in an 
abortive attempt to raise their own professional status. 
Of science they knew nothing. It was slightly better, 
perhaps, on the medical side. Dr. Timothy Bright did 
some service when he invented his system of shorthand, 
but the discoveries of William Gilbert in magnetism 
seem to have been entirely unknown to them, although 
as members of the same profession and of the same 
college, living together in a small town, they must have 
been constantly in association with him. The governors 
of the hospital would indeed have done themselves 
great honour had they chosen him as their first physician 
under the new foundation instead of electing one who 
was afterwards hanged, drawn, and quartered for con- 
spiring to poison Elizabeth. 
The real scientific history of the hospital begins with 
William Harvey, appointed physician in 1609, who 
announced his discovery of the circulation of the blood 
in the Lumleian lectures at the College of Physicians 
in 1616. The discovery revolutionised the practice of 
medicine and made possible an experimental physiology. 
The very simplicity of the proofs were a stumbling- 
block to his contemporaries, but the teaching was 
eagerly accepted by the younger generation, those 
founders of the Royal Society who formed so wonderful 
a band at Oxford and in London just after the 
Restoration. 
When Harvey died, the mantle of science in the 
hospital fell sometimes on the medical and sometimes 
on the surgical side of the house. Percivall Pott began 
to teach surgery systematically, and his lectures were 
NATURE 

[JUNE 9, 1923 
attended by John Hunter, the founder of scientific 
surgery in England. The pupils of Pott followed each 
other in a long succession as surgeons to the hospital 
and quasi cursores handed on the Hunterian teaching 
to our own day. Earle and Abernethy, Lawrence, 
Savory, and Butlin bridged the interval between the 
death of Hunter and the dawn of Lister. But, as in 
the time of Harvey, the older teaching had become so 
ingrained in the school that it was found difficult to 
accept the doctrine of the germ theory of disease and 
the revelations of antiseptic surgery. It was not untila 
new generation came into its own that men like C. B. 
Lockwood entered whole-heartedly into the promised 
land of Listerism, and Klein, Kanthack, and Andrewes 
advanced the great science of bacteriology. 
Until 1836 the teaching of chemistry was in the 
hands of the physicians to the hospital, but from that 
time onwards it became specialised and the school was 
fortunate in obtaining a regular succession of first-rate 
teachers; Brand, Stenhouse, Frankland, Abel, Odling, 
Russell, and Chattaway followed each other, the 
students were well taught, and some opportunities were 
afforded for original work. In like manner, Sir Lauder 
Brunton, before he became physician to the hospital, 
was a pioneer in experimental pharmacology, and in 
that branch of knowledge which has since developed 
into bio-chemistry. Between 1882 and 1912 Steavenson 
and Lewis Jones by their work at the hospital raised 
medical electricity from a scientific empiricism to its 
position as a recognised branch of medicine. Lewis 
Jones, indeed, in his all too short life fairly earned 
the title of ‘‘ the Father of Medical Electricity.” 
A great hospital leads to advances in many depart- 
ments of science. New problems are constantly pre- 
sented ; the permutations and combinations arising in 
the complex structure of the human body are endless 
and the chemist and physicist are often able to give 
material help in placing medicine upon a firm basis 
of fact. ; 
The Complete Gasification of Coal. 
By Dr. J. S. G. THomas. 
rm is well known that the percentage thermal efficiency 
of gas production from coal can be increased by 
gasifying the coke resulting from the high temperature 
carbonising process, and various processes and plants 
for effecting this conversion have long been available. 
Shortage of fuel supplies during the years of the War, 
and afterwards, resulted in the Board of Trade issuing 
instructions to gas companies to “stretch” their 
supplies of gas. The “stretching ”’ process intended 
was to consist of a reduction of calorific power of the 
gas supply, accomplished by dilution of straight coal 
gas with either blue or carburetted water gas. The 
attention of the industry in all countries was, at the 
time, naturally directed towards increasing the efficiency 
of production of water gas and its efficient utilisation 
admixed with coal gas in a towns’ gas supply. In 
England considerable work on these lines was done 
by George Helps, the “ big noise ” of Nuneaton. 
Much publicity has recently been given to a plant 
designed by C. B. Tully, and operated at Bedford, for 
the complete gasification of coal. Altogether, since 
NO. 2797, VOL. T11] 

1919, about two hundred such plants have been erected 
in this country, the largest being installed at Halifax, 
which is capable of producing about 7ooo therms per 
day. ‘The installation at Bedford comprises two sets, 
each capable of producing about 2500 therms per twenty- 
four hours. The average percentage composition of the 
gas is approximately CO,, 5; Np, 5; Og, 075 ; CO, 36; 
Hy, 45; CHy, 8; C,H,,, 0:5, and the calorific power 
is about 350 B.Th.U. per cubic foot. Bedford is 
supplied with a mixture of straight coal gas with about 
51 per cent. of this gas, the resulting calorific power 
being about 460 B.Th.U. per cubic foot. Manu- 
facturing costs in the case of the Tully plant are stated 
to amount to about 2°74d. per therm and the capital 
manufacturing charges to about o’o8d. per therm. The 
desirability or otherwise of the manufacture and 
distribution of this gas in any definite case must be 
determined by a variety of factors, among others by 
the size of the undertaking, local conditions as regards 
supplies of raw coal, characteristics of the demand for 
gas, storage capacity, and size of the distributing 
eee 
ee ee eee 
