JuLy 71, 1975)| 
NATURE 
489 

in Paris. Those of us who remember the war of 
1870-71 will remember what havoc it made of Pasteur’s 
work. The institute had not then been founded; the 
work was done in the laboratories in the rue d’Ulm. 
Pasteur’s young men went off to the war; Henri Ste. 
‘Claire Deville met his death there. When Pasteur 
died, in 1895, Roux was his successor, as head of the 
institute. History repeats itself; the Pasteurians have 
gone off to the war; and Chaillou has met his death 
there. On April 21 he had ‘‘demanded and obtained 
the perilous mission of disinfecting a battlefield near 
the enemy’s trenches.” At night, alone, he ‘recon- 
noitred the position”; he found work enough for 
twelve nights; the state of the battlefield must not be 
described here. On the night of April 24 he was 
within seven yards of the enemy’s trenches, and was 
killed. Strange, to think of this man of science, 
accustomed to work of the very utmost minuteness 
and microscopical accuracy, stumbling about, in the 
dark, with a tin of disinfecting powder, among the 
piles of unburied dead. Shells fell on him and _ his 
men: eleven were killed. Every day and every night 
precious lives, cultured and expert men, are flung away 
like this. We say that there will be a ‘‘shortage of 
doctors" when the war is over; but we scarcely stop 
to think of the tragedy in that off-hand phrase. The 
waste of the lives of the experts is terrible. Here was 
a man trained and disciplined in one of the most com- 
plex of all the sciences; and he is put to scavenging, 
to the very roughest and least skilled work, and he 
lays down his life for his friends over that. May his 
name live in the great institute where he worked more 
delicately for the good of mankind, 
By the death of Dr. G. C. M. Mathison, which took 
place at Alexandria on May 20, in consequence of 
wounds received in Gallipoli, the sciences of physiology 
and pathology have suffered a serious loss. The 
taking away of young and enthusiastic workers, of 
which this is by no means the only instance, is one 
of the saddest things in the war. Dr. Mathison’s 
chief scientific work was concerned with the analysis 
of the phenomena of asphyxia in its effects on the 
nervous system. He showed that the results both of 
deficient oxygen supply and also of increased accumu- 
lation of carbon dioxide are due to a common factor, 
namely, the rise of hydrogen-ion concentration in the 
blood. The various nerve centres were shown to be 
sensitive in different degrees to this agent; thus the 
bulbar centres are excited by one-fifth of the increase 
that the spinal centres require. In deprivation of 
oxygen without accumulation of carbon dioxide, it was 
shown that acids may be produced by disorganisation 
of the cells of the nerve centres themselves, a process 
which takes place suddenly and must be regarded as 
pathological. Deficiency of oxygen was found also to 
produce heart block by depression of conductivity in 
the auriculo-ventricular connection. In work done 
with the collaboration of Barcroft, Mathison showed 
that the rate at which oxyhemoglobin gives up its 
oxygen to the tissues is greatly increased by a rise 
in the concentration of hydrogen ions, and that rises 
of such an extent as to be of importance in tissue 
respiration may occur when the oxygen supply is 
deficient. The effect of potassium on the vascular 
NO. 2383, VOL. 95| 

system was also investigated and found to be of a 
dual nature. While it is depressant on the heart, it 
produces contraction of the arterioles, both by direct 
action upon the muscular fibres and by excitation of 
vaso-constrictor centres in the spinal cord and the 
bulb, 
Tue death of Lieut. R. B. Woosnam, killed in action 
at the Dardanelles on June 4, adds one more name 
to the steadily increasing list of workers in science 
who have given up their lives for their country in this 
great war. Lieut. Woosnam served with the 2nd 
Worcestershire Regiment in the South African war, 
and it was during that period that he first became 
known to the Natural History Museum by sending to 
that institution a number of small mammal and bird 
skins prepared so well that it was at once noticed 
that they were the work of a skilled collector and 
true naturalist. At the close of the war Woosnam 
offered his services to the museum as a collector, and 
on the offer being accepted he gave up soldiering 
for the time being. In his new capacity he carried 
out a difficult piece of zoological exploration through 
the Kalahari desert to Lage Ngami, and in October, 
1905, he was appointed leader of the important expedi- 
tion organised by the museum for the exploration of 
the Ruwenzori range in equatorial Africa. His®com- 
panions were Mr. R. E. Dent, a former brother officer 
in the Worcestershire Regiment, the Hon. Gerald 
Legge, Mr. Douglas Carruthers, and Mr. A. F. R. 
Wollaston. The expedition reached a height of 
16,794 ft., and Woosnam records that butterflies, 
moths, and diptera were seen on the snow up to 
16,000 ft., blown there by the almost constant wind. 
On the bare rocks above the snow-line a few worms, 
lichens, and mosses were seen. As a result of the 
undertaking the National Museum was enriched by a 
large number of species new to science, and a very 
valuable addition made to our knowledge of the fauna 
and flora of tropical Africa. In 1911 Woosnam was 
appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies 
game warden in British East Africa. He very quickly 
surmounted the difficulties of the position, and it 
speaks volumes for the fine nature of the man that 
though he carried out his duties in the strictest manner 
and confiscated with unsparing hand illegally obtained 
sporting trophies and other objects, there was no more 
popular official in the Protectorate. He was mainly 
instrumental in getting together the International 
Conference for the Protection of Wild Animals in 
Africa which met in London last year. It is no secret 
that he formulated stringent plans, which were 
virtually adopted, for the effective carrying out of the 
object of the conference. Now, alas! all this is at an 
end, and with it has passed away a man of sterling 
character, of a lovable disposition, modest and un- 
assuming almost to a fault, an unflinching adherent 
to duty. 
TuHE thirteenth annual session of the South African 
Association for the Advancement of Science will be 
held at Pretoria, from Monday, July 5, to Saturday. 
July 10, inclusive, under the presidency of Mr. R. T. A. 
Innes, Union Astronomer. The sections and their 
presidents will be as follows :—A—Astronomy, Mathe- 
