October 10, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



343 



to submit abstracts of papers well in advance 

 of tbe date of the meeting at which they are to 

 be presented. 



Dayton C. Miller, 



Secretary 

 Case School of Applied Science, 

 Cleveland, Ohio 



the red cross and professor richard p. 



STRONG 



, Dr. Eichard P. Strong, professor of trop- 

 lical medicine at the Harvard Medical School, 

 sailed on October 2 for Europe, where he is 

 to be general medical director of the League 

 of Eed Cross Societies, with headquarters in 

 .Geneva. He has been granted leave of ab- 

 sence for a year by Harvard University. 



The league is a new international associa- 

 tion of the Eed Cross planned to act as a cen- 

 tral agency for the improvement of public 

 health, the prevention of disease and the miti- 

 gation of suffering throughout the world. It 

 will also serve in cases of national or interna- 

 tional disaster. Another of its purposes is to 

 jpromote the welfare of mankind by furnish- 

 ing a medium for bringing within the reach of 

 all the peoples the benefits to be derived from 

 present known facts, new contributions and 

 medical knowledge and their application. 



Henry P. Davison is chairman of the board 

 of governors of the league, and the director- 

 general of the league is Lieutenant-General 

 Sir David Henderson, of Great Britain. The 

 public health work and general medical activ- 

 ities of the league will be under the direction 

 of Dr. Strong. In this position he will be the 

 executive at Geneva responsible for stimula- 

 ting the medical work of the various Eed Cross 

 societies and putting the latest medical in- 

 ^formation at the disposal of each of them. 

 His office will be the general headquarters of 

 jthe fight against epidemic diseases, such as 

 that of influenza, which recently swept across 

 the world, and particularly against the ter- 

 rible typhus and other tropical epidemics. 

 I Dr. Strong is fitted for this task by knowl- 

 edge and experience. He went to the Harvard 

 Medical School in 1913 with a distinguished 

 xecord as a student of tropical diseases in the 

 Philippine Islands, where he had begun as an 



,army medical officer. In 1915 he was the 

 (leader of the international corps of workers 

 i;vho combatted the typhus epidemic in Serbia 

 which had taken many thousands of lives. 



After the United States entered the war in 

 1917, Dr. Strong was in charge of the Division 

 of Infectious Diseases of the American Ex- 

 peditionary Forces. He has received the Dis- 

 tinguished Service Medal of the American Ex- 

 peditionary Forces, the British Order of 

 iCommander of the Bath, Officer of the French 

 Legion of Honor and the Chinese Striped 

 Tiger, and has been made Grand Officer of the 

 SeAian Cross of St. Salva. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



The autumn meeting of the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences wiU be held on November 10, 

 ^1 and 12, at Tale University, New Haven, 

 Connecticut. Announcement of the arrange- 

 mients for the meeting will be made later by 

 the local committee. 



, Dr. E. W. Wood, professor of physics in the 

 Johns Hopkins University, has been elected a 

 foreign member of the Eoyal Society, London. 



The nomination of Mr. James E. Eiggs, as 

 assistant secretary of agriculture, has been 

 confirmed by the Senate. 



Dr. D. G. Byers, of the University of Wash- 

 ington, recently a captain in the Chemical 

 Warfare Service in Washington, has been ap- 

 pointed chief of the division of chemistry of 

 the Bureau of Soils. 



Major Douglas Johnson, professor of 

 physiography at Columbia University, has re- 

 turned from Paris where he served as chief of 

 ;the Division of Boundary Geography on the 

 American Commission to Negotiate Peace, 

 and as a member of different international ter- 

 ritorial commissions. 



I EussELL L. Cecil, M.D., lately major, M. C, 

 U. S. Army, William A. Perkweig, Ph.D., 

 lately lieutenant, Sanitary Corps, U. S. Army, 

 ,and Mr. G. I. Steffen, lately lieutenant, Sani- 

 tary Coi-ps, U. S. Army, have been engaged 

 by the U. S. Public Health Service to carry 

 out experimental investigations on influenza 

 and pneumonia. The work will be conducted 



