Z70 



NA TURE 



[September 23, 190Q 



delegates. He was ably assisted throughout by 

 Count Albert Apponyi, the Hungarian iNIinister of 

 Education, who made several important and states- 

 manlike speeches showing that he was in touch and 

 in full sympathy with the work of the medical 

 profession throughout the world. 



The work of the congress was divided into official, 

 sectional, and general. The official worli was of 

 unusual importance. It was decided that in future a 

 meeting should be held once in four years instead of 

 once in three years, as has been the case hitherto ; 

 that a permc.nent committee should be formed, with a 

 president, a paid secretary, and a fixed office. Dr. 

 F. W. Pavy, F.R.S., the president of the National 

 Committee for Great Britain and Ireland, was 

 nominated president, and it was determined that the 

 office of the paid secretary should be at The Hague. 

 By these means it is hoped that there will be a con- 

 tinuity of policy in the affairs of the congress which 

 has hitherto been impossible, because there has been 

 no permanent board to which difficulties and questions 

 of policy could be referred. 



The work of the sections did not prove of 

 much interest, although many members attended 

 and the papers were exceptionally numerous. The 

 subjects chosen for discussion, like appendicitis, 

 malignant disease of the larynx, the tuberculin treat- 

 ment of tuberculosis, and uterine myomata, did not 

 lend themselves to the expression of very novel views, 

 and if the speakers who took part in them were not 

 very inspiring, they were not belligerent, and the 

 congress was spared the painful scenes which have 

 occasionally turned the arena into a veritable battle- 

 field. 



Puerperal infection was selected appropriately as 

 a subject of discussion. It was a tardy tribute to 

 the memory of Semmelweis, the pioneer of modern 

 obstetric prophylaxis, who died broken-hearted in the 

 town where he had spent the best years of his life in 

 declaiming against the fearful mortality of childhood 

 and showing some of the means by which it might 

 be avoided. He remained a voice crying in the wilder- 

 ness until the end, but the statue erected by inter- 

 national effort, and placed in the gardens of the 

 Ergebet-teren, was visited by every member of the 

 congress, and was duly decorated with tributes from 

 every nation. 



The general addresses were excellent, and drew 

 very large audiences, who listened most attentively. 

 Prof. Hollander showed by means of lantern-slides 

 some of the diseases and mutilations depicted in the 

 records of the Incas and Huacos. Dr. Bashford, 

 director of the Imperial Cancer Research in London, 

 explained by similar means the present state of the 

 cancer question, whilst Prof. Loeb, of Berkeley, made 

 a remirkable communication upon artificial partheno- 

 genesis. 



The net outcome of the congress was the hold 

 which the doctrine of immunity has gained upon 

 the whole of the scientific side of the medical profes- 

 sion. Evidence of its importance was forthcoming 

 from every side. There was a general discussion upon 

 the subject. Dr. Bashford laid much stress upon it 

 in his general address, and it formed an important 

 factor in the work done by Prof. Loeb. It is evident 

 that a great future lies before those who are working 

 at the subject. At the present time there is much 

 confusion and overlapping, a jargon of confusing 

 terms masks the principles, but it is clear that before 

 long the whole theory will be simplified and a most 

 important agent will be added to the practice of 

 medicine. 



NO. 2082, VOL. 81] 



THE INTERNATIONAL SEISMOLOGICAL 

 ASSOCIATION. 



THE third meeting of the permanent committee of 

 the International Association of Seismology was 

 held at Zermatt on Monday, August 30, and the three 

 succeeding days. Out of twenty-two States which 

 now belong to the association, seventeen were repre- 

 sented. In his presidential address, Prof. Schuster 

 directed attention to the importance of determining 

 the movement of the soil in a seismic disturbance, and 

 laid stress on the conditions which seismographs must 

 satisfy, in order that the components of the displace- 

 ments should be capable of being deduced from the 

 records obtained. 



A number of committees, which had been appointed 

 at the previous meeting, now presented their reports. 

 Perhaps the most important of these referred to the 

 microseismic oscillations, which have lately attracted 

 attention in many places. Two kinds of oscillations 

 are to be distinguished, one having a period varying 

 between four and nine seconds, and the other a period 

 of about half a minute. The short-period microseisn-> 

 is often observed simultaneously over large portions 

 of the earth's surface; its most interesting feature^ 

 which was independently discovered by Prince Galitzin 

 in Pulkowa, bv Hecker in Potsdam, and by Omori in 

 Japan, is that there is a direct relationship between the 

 amplitude of the oscillation and the period, the larger 

 amplitude corresponding to the longer period. Dr. 

 Klotz, the representative of Canada, has also investi- 

 gated the subject, and found that whenever a centre 

 of low barometric pressure, after traversing the con- 

 tinent, reaches the ocean, these microseismic waves of 

 short period appear. Though we cannot at present 

 give a quite satisfactory explanation of these waves. 

 Prof. Wiechert's suggestion that they are caused by 

 the impact of ocean waves on land areas deserves 

 further investigation. For this purpose the committee 

 intends to set up, probably on the west coast of 

 Ireland, an instrument capable of registering the 

 number and height of the waves. The microseismic 

 disturbances, which have a period of about half a 

 minute, have been found to depend on the intensity of 

 local winds. They seem due to a wave-motion set up 

 on land in a similar manner to that in which waves 

 are set going on the ocean. 



Probably the most important communication made 

 to the meeting was that in which Prince Galatzin 

 showed that it is possible to determine the azimuth of 

 the seat of an earthquake by combining the indica- 

 tions of two seismographs, set up so as to give dis- 

 placements in two directions at right angles to each 

 other. The coincidence of the azimuth determined in 

 this way for a number of earthquakes with that known 

 independently was quite remarkable, the difference in 

 many cases being less than a degree. As the distance 

 of the earthquake can be determined from the interval 

 elapsing between tlie arrivals of the forerunners and 

 surface waves, Prof. Galitzin's investigations show 

 that it is possible to fix the locality of an earthquake 

 by observations at one distant station only ; but such a 

 result could only have been achieved by means of a 

 perfection of instrumental appliances consequent on a 

 complete mastery of the problems involved. Mr. 

 H. F. Reid, of Baltimore, unable, unfortunately, to be 

 present himself, sent a communication, in which he 

 summarised his experiences gained by a study of the 

 San Francisco earthquake. After directing attention 

 to various instrumental matters, notably the absence 

 of damping in many of the .American instruments, 

 which rendered the investigation difficult, he suggests 

 the theory of a slow secular displacement as a pre- 



