Vol. lvi December 29, 1922 No. 1461 



The Explanation of the Colloidal Behavior of 

 Proteins: Dr. Jacques Lobb 731 



The Award of the Henry Draper Medal 741 



Appeal on hehalf of the League of Nations 

 for Aid to Austrian Intellectual Worlcers..-. 743 



Scientifie Events: 



London Bird Sanctuaries; The American 

 Electrochemical Society; Professor Max 

 Weier; Ofji.cers of the American Chemical 

 Society; The Hay den Award of the Phila- 

 delphia Academy 744 



Scientifie Notes and News ■. 747 



University and Educational Notes 750 



Discussion and Correspondence: 



Research in Marine Biology: Pbopessok 

 W. J. Ckozier. 071 Translating Einstein: 

 Dr. E. E. Slosson". On the Formation of 

 Family Names lihe Tingidm: Dk. H. M. 

 Parshley. The Beginnings of American 

 Geology: Dr. Marcus Benjamin 751 



Quotations : 



The Federal Budget; The Appreciation of 

 Science 755 



Scieniifio Books: 



Glover's United States Life Tables: Pro- 

 fessor Baymonb Pearl 756 



Special Articles: 



X-ray Crystallometry ; X-ray Wave 

 Lengths; Space-lattice Dimensions and 

 Atomic Masses: Dr. L. W. McKeehan. 

 Peripheral Migration of a Centriole Deriva- 

 tive in the Spermatogenesis of CEcanthus: 

 Dr. H. H. Johnson : 757 



SCIENCE: A Weekly Journal devoted to the 

 Advancement of Science, publishing the official 

 notices and proceedings of the American Asso-- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, edited by 

 J. McKeen Cattell and published every Friday by 



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THE EXPLANATION OF THE COL- 

 LOIDAL BEHAVIOR OF 

 PROTEINSi 



I 



Thls year's Pasteur leefnire coincides with 

 the commemoration of the hundredth anniver- 

 sary of Pasteur's birth. The application of 

 Pasteur's ideas and discoveries has .benefited 

 humamity .to such an extent that they have be- 

 come part of the consciousness of civ- 

 ilized mankind. What is, perhaps, less 

 widely understood is the fact ithat Pasteur 

 changed the method of medical research. In 

 the study of infectious diseases Pasteur substi- 

 tuted for 'the method of hit or miss (with the 

 chances infinitely in favor of' missing) the 

 method of a definitely oriented search which 

 never fails to give results when properly ap- 

 plied. Thousands of physicians had studied 

 infectious diseases before Pasteur, but they 

 tried to solve their problem iby starting from 

 dbservations of the symptoms of some special 

 disease. This led to mo result for the simple 

 reason that 'Withoiit knowing beforehand for 

 what to look — or, in other words, without know- 

 ing the general cause of infectious diseases — 

 it was impossible to discover the cause of any 

 special infectious process. Pasteur reversed 

 this method by his discovei-y of the action and 

 omnipresence of microorganisms, leaving it to 

 the medical men to look for the special agency 

 in the individual cases. 



There is little doubt that the old empiricism, 

 still in vogue in some other fields of medicine 

 and in the physiological sciences, must be re- 

 placed by the more rationalistic method of 

 Pasteur of knowing the general fundamental 

 principles before attempting to explain the 

 more special phenomena, since, unless we 

 follow this method, we never know which of 



1 Pasteur Lecture delivered before the Institute 

 of Medicine of Chicago on November 24, 1922. 



