June 3, 1909] 



NA TURE 



415 



.chemical technologists. The omission of research from 

 our educational curricula means a loss to our industry of 

 a class of chemical technologist of which we are in need — 

 the man who has been trained in scientific habit of thought 

 by the most effective of all known methods. In advocating 

 the introduction of research into the advanced curriculum 

 it must be most clearly understood that we are not con- 

 templating the " research chemist " as defined in this 

 address. He comes under another category. We are 

 now considering only the higher education of the works 

 chemist and the importance of research in relation to his 

 advanced training. If it is admitted that some advanced 

 training supplementary to the preparatory course is 

 essential, and that, science is to form part of that advanced 

 training, the advanced laboratory work from the fourth 

 Tear onwards could be made to include e.vperimental 

 Investigation either in pure or applied chemistry. 



The Sphere of the Chemical Technologist. 



There appears to be a general opinion in favour of 

 technological training. The proposals come chiefly from 

 the university side, but that is immaterial. All attempts 

 to move in this direction hitherto have been more or less 

 paralysed by the teachers declaring for pure science and 

 by the manufacturers proclaiining that it is impossible to 

 leach chemical technology in the educational institutions. 

 It is beginning to be perceived that when the technical 

 .education of the works chemist is under consideration it 

 is really technological training that is meant. Chemical 

 technology means generalised chemical engineering — a 

 knowledge of the chemical, physical, and mechanical 

 principles underlying the construction and vi'orking of the 

 machinery and plant in general use in chemical industry. 

 Jt is a composite subject, part of which is pure engineer- 

 ing, such as power production and distribution, and part 

 of which is specialised engineering, such as the nature, 

 source, and properties of the materials used in the con- 

 si ruction of chemical plant. 



There is practically no technical school in this country 

 which provides a complete and coordinated course of 

 Iraining such as I have advocated. For the chemical 

 industries, the technical education movement has been 

 arrested just at that stage where the true technical train- 

 ing should begin. The technical institutions are not 

 wholly, nor for the greater part, to blame ; the manu- 

 facturers have not sufficiently encouraged them. The 

 greater part of the chemical instruction in the technical 

 Institutions is carried on in evening classes. This kind of 

 training is practically useless for industrial chemists. It 

 would take the evening student nine years to complete the 

 three years' preparatory course of the day student. At 

 the same time, evening classes are of real value for men 

 already engaged in the factory work — say foremen and 

 managers who have had no training in scientific theory. 

 After thirty years' technical education applied chemistry is 

 lagging behind all other branches of technology. • 



The Universities as Schools of Applied Science. 



While large numbers of institutions originally intended 

 for instruction in applied science arc carrying on purely 

 scholastic courses, the universities, originally academic in- 

 stitutions, are now developing schools of applied science. 

 Ought the universities to create departments of applied 

 chemistry? If the ordinary graduate courses were not 

 suitable for the chemical technologist they could be adapted 

 without much difficulty. The university need onlv make 

 provision for that kind of advanced work which I have 

 advocated. It does not matter what kind of institution 

 ■does the work so long as it is done efficiently ; the need 

 for it is great. 



The Conclusion. 



But if the higher work is to be taken over by the 

 universities, the raison d'etre of the technical school for 

 chemical industry will become a thing of the past. It will 

 lie deplorable and wasteful if we find the university and 

 the technical institution in the same town rivals instead 

 of colleagues. The rational solution is that the technical 

 institution should become a school of the university, as is 

 the case at Manchester. Such a solution carries with it 

 the implication that the technical institution will raise its 



NO. 2066, VOL. 80] 



technological teaching to the university standard. That 

 is precisely what we want. In framing any educational 

 policy of practical value for our subject the Society of 

 Chemical Industry can play an important part. We are 

 both imperial and international ; we have the means of 

 bringing together a body of expert knowledge and ex- 

 perience, both educational and technological, such as is 

 possessed bv no other organisation. An advisory or con- 

 sultative education committee or board formed by our 

 council from the ranks of our members, and comprising 

 teachers and manufacturers, ought to be of such power 

 that no departure in the technical training of chemists in 

 any educational establishment, of whatever rank, could 

 afford to neglect its counsels. 



THE C.iMP.iIGN AGAINST MALARIA.'- 

 V/r ORE than nine years ago I had the privilege of 

 -'■'•'■ addressing the Royal Institution CMarch 2, 1900) on 

 the subject of my researches on the mode of infection in 

 malarial fever, and I am now called upon to describe what 

 has been done, or not done, in various countries to utilise 

 for the alleviation of the disease the information then 

 obtained. 



The ancients appear to have recognised, not only the 

 principal symptoms of malarial fever, but the fact that it 

 is often connected with marshes ; and more recently many 

 authors ascribed this fact to the existence of poisonous 

 vapours, which they supposed are given ofif by stagnant 

 waters, or even by the soil. Still later, a series of patho- 

 logical studies led to the discovery by Laveran in 1880 

 that the malady is produced by vast numbers of minute 

 protozoal parasites of the red blood-corpuscles, and students 

 of the subject now conjectured that these organisms origin- 

 ally inhabited the marshes, and infect man through air or 

 drinking-water. My own studies, however, commenced 

 eighteen years ago, and, confirmed and extended by many 

 workers, showed that the parasites are carried from man 

 to man by certain species of Culicida; (gnats or mosqui- 

 toes), and that it is these carrying agents, and not the 

 parasites themselves, which live in the marshes. Thus 

 malarial fever was now proved to be merely a parasitic 

 disease, the infection of which is carried from man to 

 man by the ageacy of certain water-breeding insects. _ 



.As described in my previous lecture, the broad principles 

 of this theorem were really fully established by the end 

 of the year 1898. Although numerous minor details still 

 required study — such as the precise species of mosquitoes 

 which carry the infection in various countries, the exact 

 habits of each species, and so on — yet I held that these 

 questions could now be elucidated without difificulty in the 

 ordinarv course of work, and that we were already in a 

 position to apply the discovery at once to the saving of 

 human health and life. I propose, therefore, to take up 

 the story again from this point. 



First let me emphasise the great importance of this 

 practical side of the subject. Malarial fever is spread 

 over nearly the whole of the tropics, abounds in many 

 temperate climates, and has been known to extend so far 

 north as Sweden. In vast tracts of tropical .Africa, Asia, 

 .America, and southern Europe almost every town and 

 village is infested by it; millions of children suffer from it 

 from birth to puberty ; and native adults, though they tend 

 to become partially immune, still remain subject to attacks 

 of it. -Although it is not often directly fatal, yet it is so 

 extremelv prevalent, so endemic in locality, so persistent 

 in the individual, that the total bulk of misery caused by it 

 is quite incalculable. More than this, its special predilec- 

 tion for the most fertile areas renders it economically a 

 most disastrous enemy to mankind. Throughout tropical 

 life it thwarts the traveller, the missionary, the planter, 

 the soldier, and the administrator. From one-quarter to 

 one-half the totnl admissions into military hospitals are 

 returned as being due to it, and it is often the most 

 formidable foe which military expeditions have to encounter. 

 There are reasons for thinking that it indirectly increases 

 the geneml death-rate of malarious countries by something 

 like 50 per cent., and I venture to say that it his pro- 



1 Discourse He'^vered at the Royal Institulion on Friday, May 7, by Prof. 

 Ronald Ros=, F.R.S. 



