126 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1363 



man's comfort and health, during my lifetime 

 have been marvellous. 



The shrill whistle of the locomotive had 

 been barely heard before 1837, but few there 

 were who foresaw what a revolution in trans- 

 portation and in industry steam was to pro- 

 duce. Steamships, depending wholly on steam, 

 first ventured across the Atlantic when I wag 

 a year old. 



The early staccato of the telegraph had 

 also made itself heard, but its future growth 

 and possibilities on land, and under the sea, 

 and in the air could not have been even 

 imagined. 



The typewriter, the telephone and the auto- 

 mobile have tripled the efficiency of the doctor. 

 Possibly the airplane in time may quad- 

 ruple it. 



May I venture here to digress for a moment 

 to let you enjoy the recent experience of one 

 of my London scientific friends. In writing 

 a letter he dictated to his secretary, an ardent 

 suffragette, the phase, "When Plancus was 

 Consul," alluding to the friend of Horace to 

 whom he addresses the seventh in the first 

 book of his Odes. What was his amazement 

 to read in the letter presented for his signa- 

 ture, " When PanJchurst was Consul." He 

 was so appreciative of the joy that this 

 variant reading would give his friend, that he 

 signed the letter unchanged. 



Science has progressed by leaps and bounds. 

 " The most fruitful periods of Science," says 

 Duclaux, in his recent Life of Pasteur, " are 

 those in which dogmas are shaken," that is 

 to say when every postulate is ruthlessly re- 

 examined. This " shaking of dogmas " has 

 given us radio-activity, and has divided the 

 "atom" — that supposed ultimate particle of 

 matter, whose very name means " indivisible " 

 — in some cases into hundreds of electrons. 



By • the Spectroscope which, in my imiver- 

 sity days at Brown, existed only in embryo as 

 the curious " Fraunhofer lines " of the solar 

 spectrum, we now analyze the chemical ele- 

 ments of Sims many millions of times larger 

 than our own and so distant that the light 

 now reaching our eyes from them started on 

 its earthward journey hundreds of thousands 



of years ago. Even light itself has been 

 measured and weighed, and Einstein's formu- 

 lation of the doctrine of relativity is pro- 

 claimed as the most fundamental discovery 

 since the days of Sir Isaac Newton. 



In 1876, scarcely 45 years ago, electricity 

 had progressed but little beyond the point 

 where Franklin had left it at the time of his 

 death in 1790, just eighty-six years before the 

 Centennial Exposition. Now, the slogan, "If 

 it is not electric, it is not modem " is almost 

 literally true. 



At the Centennial Exposition, modern elec- 

 tricity was represented by Professor Farmer's 

 one arc light on the roof of the main build- 

 ing, the " avant courier " of a mighty host. 

 The dynamo — appropriately named. Might, 

 Force, Power — had been slowly developing in 

 the brains of Faraday and his successors. 

 Within the last two score years, that giant 

 has been harnessed and has become our 

 obedient slave in heat, light and power, on 

 land and on sea, in mine and in mill. In 

 fact, the catalogue of the things that the 

 dynamo can not as yet do would be shorter 

 than the things it is actually doing — and the 

 end is not even yet in sight. 



My professional life covers sixty-one years 

 of study, active practise, writing and teach- 

 ing. At its very outset occurred the most 

 fortunate event in my professional life — I fell 

 under the spell of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. I 

 have met many eminent medical men at home 

 and abroad, but I do not hesitate to say that 

 he was by far the most alert, original and 

 stimidating mind with which I have ever 

 been in contact. I have often called him a 

 " yeasty man " for he leavened and set in 

 fermentation every mind which touched his 

 own. He gave me my first scientific impulse 

 and set congenial tasks for my mind and pen. 

 For over 53 years we worked together in 

 many activities of the profession, with never 

 a cloud between us. 



Close upon making his acquaintance came 

 the Civil War. By a curious accident^ I be- 

 came an assistant surgeon in the Army on 



1 Keen's "Addresses and Other Papers," p. 421. 



