320 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1447 



memlDers of the senior staff who may be con- 

 cerned with tlie problems presented by indi- 

 vidual patients. The various aspects of the 

 cases are then discussed at the daily visits 

 when all the members of the medical depart- 

 ment join the house staff in the wards. In 

 addition to these exercises, of a strictly clinical 

 nature, other opportunities are provided to 

 enable the men to keep in touch with the work 

 which is being done by their colleagues in 

 Peking and elsewhere in the medical world. 

 On Saturday mornings the whole staff meets 

 i?or an hour in the laboratories while one of the 

 members talks to them about his researches, or 

 about some of the broader fields with which 

 he is in close touch; once a fortnight the Med- 

 ical Society meets for the more formal pre- 

 sentation of papers; and at a similar interval 

 the "Review Club" discusses special topics from 

 the medical literature. The fact that the fac- 

 ulty of the medical school is so large (about 

 forty members, besides assistants in clinics and 

 laboratories), that so much progressive scien- 

 tific work is being carried on in all depart- 

 ments, and the relations between the depart- 

 ments are so intimate and harmonious, makes 

 it almost impossible for one to be a member of 

 the staff and fall by the professional wayside. 

 To many people in America, China may seem 

 to be remote and Peking an outpost of western 

 civilization, but to those who know the situa- 

 tion the Peking Union Medical College is pro- 

 gressing hand in hand with the foremost med- 

 ical schools of the world on the frontier of 

 scientific medicine. 



Francis W. Peabodt 

 Boston City Hospital 



A FIRST COURSE IN GENERAL 

 CHEMISTRY! 



The opportunity to take part in a discus- 

 sion on the above topic is 'highly appreciated, 

 particularly because during the past twenty 

 years I have had an exceptional opportunity to 

 try out certain ideas relating to the teaching of 

 general chemistry to first year students at the 

 Phillips Exeter Academy. Since Dr. Gordon 

 stated that I could confine the discussion either 



1 Paper read before the American Chemical 

 Society at its meeting in April. 



to content or method or both I shall probably 

 avail myself to the limit of this proviso. 



Since my main criticism of the majority of 

 papers thus presented has been that the state- 

 ments have been too general, and that there 

 has been too little of what was definite and 

 capable of being carried away by the listener 

 and put into immediate practice, perhaps I 

 may be allowed to speak rather personally in 

 parts, and to mention existing texts by name. 



There stand before me on the desk fourteen 

 of the more modern texts from which the sec- 

 ondary school teacher must usually choose the 

 one to use with his classes. From these, three 

 must reluctantly be dropped out of our con- 

 sideration. The excellent "Text-book of Chem- 

 istry," by W. A. Noyes, is designed for use 

 with college students, although it is so written 

 as to be suitable for college students who have 

 had no chemistry. As I interpret the subject 

 before us to refer to the first year student in 

 chemistry during his period of preparation for 

 college, we must consider the large difference 

 in the mental attitude of the student towards 

 his subject manifested in the last years of sec- 

 ondary school and in the early years of college. 

 Vivian's "Every-day Chemistry" and "Chem- 

 istry and Its Relation to Daily Life," by 

 Kahlenberg and Hart, must be laid aside be- 

 cause, although they are designed for use in 

 secondary schools, they are adapted particu- 

 larly to students of agriculture and home eco- 

 nomics. Students, should, however, have ac- 

 cess to these two texts which show successfully 

 how live and every-day a subject chemistry is. 



In this connection it may be interesting to 

 note that at a recent meeting of the New Eng- 

 land Association of Chemistry Teachers a text- 

 book survey was made. Of those present about 

 one third used McPherson and Henderson's 

 "Elementary Study of Chemistry," about one 

 third used "Elementary Principles of Chem- 

 istry," by Brownlee and Others, while the re- 

 maining one third were divided among McPar- 

 land's "Practical Elementary Chemistry," 

 Black and Conant's "Practical Chemistry" and 

 Newell's "Chemistry" in about the ratio of 

 2:2:1, respectively. I shall have occasion to 

 refer again to these five books, as well as inci- 

 dentally to the other six before me. 



I have never been able to understand why 



