September 19, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



275 



order to accept the professorship of horticul- 

 ture in West Virginia University. 



L. E. Hesler, assistant professor of plant 

 pathology in the New York State College of 

 Agriculture at Cornell University, has been 

 appointed professor of botany and head of the 

 department of botany at the University of 

 Tennessee. 



New appointments in Colorado College in- 

 clude in biology: E. J. Gilmore, Ph.D. (Cor- 

 nell), professor; A. E. Lambert, Ph.D. (Dart- 

 mouth), assistant professor, and Florence 

 Brumback, instructor. In chemistry : F. W. 

 ■Douglas, Ph.D. (Cornell), of Albion College, 

 associate professor. In philosophy and psy- 

 chology, A. E. Davies, Ph.D. (Yale), recently 

 professor of philosophy in Ohio State Univer- 

 sity, professor. 



At the University of North Dakota Howard 

 E. Simpson, associate professor of geology and 

 physiography, has been promoted to a professor- 

 ship of geographic geology, and Leonard P. 

 Dove, now instructor in geology at Northwest- 

 ern University, has been appointed assistant 

 professor of geology. 



At the Michigan Agricultural College Mr. 

 C. W. Bennett, graduate assistant in botany, 

 has been appointed instructor to succeed Miss 

 Eose M. Taylor, who died last December. Mr. 

 H. C. Young, absent for a year on leave on ac- 

 count of military service as lieutenant in the 

 Sanitary Corps, has resumed his position as 

 research associate in plant physiology. 



Mme. Curie has been appointed professor of 

 radiology in the Warsaw University. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



OPISTHOTONOS 



Past events can only be interpreted in the 

 light of recent phenomena, and to this rule, 

 first so clearly outlined by Sir Charles Lyell, 

 the writer^ was adliering when he proposed 

 the interpretation that the attitude of fossil 

 vertebrates often suggested spastic distress 

 and induced an inquiry into the causes of 



1 Am. Naturalist, LII., pp. 369-394. 



their death. Bashford Dean^ especially has 

 criticized this interpretation and suggested an 

 alternative, voicing not only his sentiments, 

 but the sentiments of the large majority of 

 paleontologists, for on a recent trip through 

 the east the writer found many of them op- 

 posed to this interpretation. The causes for 

 this opposition were puzzling in the extreme 

 until it was learned that one chief cause was 

 that opisthotonos is regarded as a phenomenon 

 restricted to the human race, and on reread- 

 ing my paper I find I owe my readers an 

 apology. It now becomes necessary to say 

 that the phenomena, opisthotonos, pleurotho- 

 tonos and emprosthotonos are extremely com- 

 mon among modern vertebrates of all classes, 

 and these phenomena are so commonly seen in 

 medical laboratories as to be well known to 

 sophomore medical students. Captain Weed 

 told me that eats inoculated with cerebrospinal 

 meningitis often died during the night in the 

 opisthotonic position and were found iixed in 

 this attitude by the rigor mortis. Eabbits, 

 guinea pigs, dogs, frogs and other laboratory 

 animals frequently exhibit the phenomena. 

 The phenomena occur among modern verte- 

 brates in the order of frequency named as 

 they do also among fossil vertebrates. It was 

 the similarity of these occurrences which first 

 suggested that these phenomena might in- 

 dicate disease among fossil vertebrates. 

 Dr. Dean is quite right in saying: 



It would trouble one to find recorded cases of it 

 (opisthotonos) in reptiles or birds, amphibia or 

 fishes: even in mammals collectively the percentage 

 of deaths following opisthotonos would evidently 

 be microscopically small. 



There is no medical literature bearing on 

 this problem, partly because the phenomena 

 are so commonly seen that medical writers 

 have not deemed it worth while. However, 

 Cushny in his text-book of pharmacology has 

 figured a rabbit in opisthotonos, and most 

 medical works on nervous diseases mention 

 the phenomena, but to date none have dis- 

 cussed it. 



It is difficult to see the logic of Dr. Dean's 

 reasoning that the pull of the ligaments in dry- 



2 Science, N. S., XLIX., No. 1267, pp. 357, 1919. 



