August 15, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



149 



ting them into the newspapers (a speech is 

 news, when it is delivered, even if it is about 

 the eternal verities) the farm advisers, as the 

 outposts of agricultural science, have largely 

 solved the problem which the rest of you are 

 facing, of bridging the gap between the scien- 

 tist and the people. 



Medical science, because it is subject to 

 hostile controversy stands particularly in need 

 of publicity, not merely as to its results, but 

 as to its methods. There is a popular delusion 

 that the established facts of medical science 

 are sectarian dogmas, deniable by any one who 

 chooses to propound the contrary dogma. The 

 isolation, therefore, of a new disease germ 

 means nothing to the reader who " does not 

 believe in the germ theory." But if the facts 

 are given out that this germ, isolated from 

 patients sick of the disease, was cultivated for 

 many generations outside of the body, was in- 

 oculated in susceptible animals and uniformly 

 produced the disease, and was finally tried on 

 volunteer men and produced the disease in 

 them the knowledge of these facts, which have 

 of course been conunonplaces of scientific 

 methodology since Koch, will increase popular 

 confidence jn the soundness of medical conclu- 

 sions, by showing the soundness of the meth- 

 ods by which they are reached. But this sort 

 of publicity is frequently prevented by scien- 

 tific squeamishness. For instance, army re- 

 search laboratories, during the recent influ- 

 enza epidemic, succeeded in isolating the bacil- 

 lus of Pfeifl^er from most of the cases, at least 

 in the early part of the epidemic. I know of 

 at least one such laboratory in which inocula- 

 tions of fifty volunteer men with pure cultures 

 was followed by clinical influenza in forty- 

 eight, with incidental pneumonia in four or 

 five cases. These results were never given out. 

 But in a certain army hospital, twelve soldiers 

 had their noses sprayed with what was said 

 to be a pure culture of some influenza bacillus, 

 with negative results. This result was given 

 out and got on the wires. The result was that 

 every apostle of medical unorthodoxy in 

 America had a clipping in his pocket, giving 

 this alleged demonstration that influenza is 

 not a germ disease. Nothing will counteract 



this sort of propaganda, but the truth, 

 promptly, unsqueamishly and if necessarily 

 immodestly proclaimed. 



But I have gone on too long on my favorite 

 subject of the daily newspaper end of the 

 subject. Let us consider the still more shock- 

 ing problem of the Sunday newspaper. 



Because of the great amount of advertising 

 in the Sunday newspapers, it becomes nec- 

 essary to print an excessive amount of reading 

 matter, to float that advertising. The news, 

 as the more buoyant medium, is spread as far 

 as it will go, but it is not enough, and for the 

 rest the newspai)ers have recourse as a last 

 desperate resort, to literature, science and the 

 arts. Being regarded with contempt, as rub- 

 bish in comparison with the news, naturally 

 the standard of selection of these unavoidable 

 evils is far from idealistic. I am not recom- 

 mending the literature of the " Sunday Sup.," 

 afid I share your horror of most of its science. 

 But the point is that there is a page of science 

 there, and where bad science is, surely good 

 science might go. It must, to be sure, be well 

 "yellowed up." If a disease germ can be at- 

 tached to some well-known man or a geolog- 

 ical truth to some recent calamity, so much 

 the better. And it will not do to banish en- 

 tirely the speculative imagination. May not 

 the rumors of the sea serpent be based on the 

 survival of some monster of a former age? 

 How would the earth look to the inhabitants 

 of Mars, if there are any, and what chest 

 measure would they have to have to breath 

 its thin air, and how high could they jump? 

 Can the creatures of the abyss teach us the 

 mystery of cold light? Can synthetic chem- 

 istry feed mankind when the earth becomes 

 too overpopulated for animal and vegetable 

 food ? These may be childish ijuestions, but 

 at least it is better to answer them with truth 

 than with falsehood. And if the scientist 

 will bring himself to realize the primary im- 

 portance of the picturesque and the human 

 interest, as unlocking the key to the " Sunday 

 Sup.," he can then at least do something to- 

 ward keeping scientific nonsense out of this 

 the most widely circulated of all scientific 



