August 20, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



179 



surgeon was forced to become a more prac- 

 tical bedside man than the top-heavy scholas- 

 tic internist. The Levitical code of sanita- 

 tion (isolation of suspects in eight contagious 

 diseases), and Hindu (non Eoman) surgery 

 also gained a status. Modern science differs 

 from Greek and medieval science, however, 

 not so much in aims or results, as in processes 

 and methods ; and here we have " certain new 

 factors of an order the world has not before 

 seen." Except in the mathematics, the 

 essence of which is to give steps and processes, 

 the Greek scientist gave only conclusions and 

 concealed his proofs, his findings being in the 

 Lucretian phrase " ohscura reperta." Con- 

 cerning this. Singer says (p. 20) : 



Ancient mathematics, like everything else that 

 has come down to us from antiquity, have of course 

 suffered from the accidents of time, but the ob- 

 scuring power of time is a mere light veil com- 

 pared to that heavy impenetrable curtain that the 

 Greeks have themselves drawn over their biolog- 

 ical works. 



The medieval scientists (witness the alchem- 

 ists or Leonardo's mirror-written physiology) 

 had the same tendency. But we pride ourselves 

 upon the fact that our scientific monographs 

 are devoted mainly to definite proofs of the 

 author's propositions. The Greeks had no in- 

 struments of precision because, being specula- 

 tive philosophers, they felt no necessity for 

 proofs. Thus, while mathematics, however 

 interrupted by the Dark Ages, is a scientific 

 continuum, medieval science, like Greek sci- 

 ence, is too frequently a solution of continu- 

 ity, while the continuity of modern science is 

 insured by simple preservation of records. 

 The only danger threatening modern science, 

 as Singer sees it, is in the isolation of scien- 

 tific workers through the extreme and com- 

 plex specialization of their subjects, making 

 one branch of science unintelligible to the 

 followers of another. The best way to obviate 

 this danger is through the broad study of the 

 historical evolution of science as such, for 

 this " experimental " method will evade the 

 pitfalls which befell Wliewell and Comte, viz., 

 the arbitrary concept of a rigid orthodoxy in 

 science, based upon a quasi-medieval hierarchy 



of all the sciences. The history of science is 

 not secular or sociological history, but the cul- 

 tural history of mankind, the bases of which 

 are anthropology and psychology. Through 

 this branch of study we may clarify our own 

 concepts, document and preserve our records, 

 correlate our findings and so establish a con- 

 tinuum with the future and the past. 



The finely wrought argument (Singer at 

 his best) concludes with the thought, familiar 

 to us in certain well-known verses of Lucre- 

 tius, that the distinctive hope and glory of 

 the science of our age is " that it will place 

 in the hands of the inheritors of our civiliza- 

 tion and our thought, whoever they may be, 

 an instrument that will enable them to carry 

 on our work from the point at which we leave 

 it." No one can read this inspiring lecture 

 without a heightened, clarified perception of 

 the superior worth of modern science and the 

 dangers which beset it. In the lecturer's own 

 words : 



Our scientific systenij of its nature, claims an 

 independence of all race, nationality or creed. It is 

 of all studies the most truly international. The 

 scientific man may, better than most, claim with 

 St. Paul that he is a citizen of no mean city, that 

 he is the true citizen of the world. 



F. H. Garrison 



Army Medical Museum 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



THE PRODUCTION OF ARTIFICIAL HERMA- 

 PHRODITES IN MAMMALS 



During the last ten years especially, there has 

 been a decided impetus towards the analysis of 

 sexual conditions, in animals, that has largely 

 centered itself around a study of the phys- 

 iology of the sex glands by means of trans- 

 plantation experiments. From 1910 to 1913 

 Steinaeh reported his remarkable results ob- 

 tained from sex gland transplantation in 

 which one sex gland had been transferred to 

 young castrated animals of the opposite sex 

 (rats and guinea-pigs). The results in brief 

 were: (a) masculinization of female animals 

 by implanted testes (i. e., the young female 

 animal, after receiving the transplant, de- 

 veloped into a male-like animal as indicated 



