APRIL 5, 1912] 
chart published in volume 3, p. 234, of the 
final report of the commission. That any one 
should claim authorship for this discarded 
chart is remarkable. Certainly Dr. Jordan 
never has. When, after a number of years, 
Mr. Elliott laid claim to it, Dr. Jordan was 
assured by the Treasury Department that it 
was under no obligations to Mr. Elliott for 
the chart. 
Grorce A. CLARK 
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 
February 28, 1912 
QUOTATIONS 
LORD LISTER AND WESTMINSTER ABBEY 
It is only by reason of Lord Lister’s known 
wish that he is not buried in Westminster 
Abbey. Yesterday an impressive service was 
held there to give expression to feelings of 
gratitude and thankfulness, and in memory of 
what he has done for mankind. Posterity 
does not always confirm the opinion of con- 
temporaries as to those meriting such honor. 
The Abbey has its monuments of the pseudo- 
great, statutes of justly forgotten worthies, in- 
scriptions pretentious if not mendacious. If 
there were a centennial expurgation, much 
might be cast out. But of this we may be as- 
sured, that it would have been matter of endur- 
ing surprise and reproach if no place had been 
offered in the Abbey for the great healer who 
has passed away. It is crowded with memo- 
ries or associations of strife and enmities, and 
heroism displayed therein. The world does 
not fight every day as of old, at all events 
with enemies of one’s own race; and so, as 
time goes on, if the Abbey is to continue to be 
the place where the nation’s chief worthies 
repose or where it bids them farewell, it must 
be associated more and more with the heroes 
and victims of peace. He who cured where 
death had been certain, who brought hope 
where there had been despair; he who found 
surgery, as some thought, little more than the 
art of killing quickly those who would have 
died slowly, and who transformed it into a 
wellnigh miraculously beneficent agency for 
the relief of human suflering—he, of all 
others, merits such honor. We are not under- 
SCIENCE 
541 
valuing the ceremony of yesterday—one of 
the most impressive ever held in the Abbey; 
one in which every one present was a sincere 
mourner—in saying that there will be many 
unseen and nameless tributes of gratitude 
which Lord Lister would have valued even 
more. In every hospital, the world over, must 
be some who, the subjects of operations suc- 
cessfully conducted by reason of his methods, 
will, on the news of his death, think of him 
with gratitude. The victories of war are 
fleeting; they may be over in a day or an 
hour; and some of the greatest of them are 
local in their effects. But those of the heal- 
ing art, such as were due to Lister, are re- 
newed everywhere and for all time. 
There exists no means of measuring, even 
approximately, the amount of pain and suf- 
fering in the world at any given time. We 
can not doubt that it varies from age to age; 
and there is no certainty that it decreases 
with the growing complexity of our every-day 
life. While some primitive sources of suffer- 
ing, such as famine, pestilence and war, may 
diminish, others may increase. The hurry 
and tear and wear incident to our civiliza- 
tion make more calls upon the nerves; they 
are always on the stretch; and it is not im- 
probable that we are more susceptible to pain 
than were our rude ancestors. It is the draw- 
back of so many discoveries and inventions 
that they take away from us almost as much 
as they give; they create unrest and multiply 
needs; they spread the limited capacity for 
pleasure over many objects, to the impair- 
ment in the end, it may be, of the total 
amount of enjoyment; and the greatest mar- 
vels of ingenuity may leave us no richer in 
essentials than before. The inventor who robs 
us of nothing, whose gifts are all pure gain, 
is the healer who has found secrets before un- 
known. In life the presence of pain is the 
mystery of mysteries. The moralist offers us 
his feeble explanations, and tells us that with- 
out sacrifice no permanent satisfaction or 
truly good results can be attained; that, to 
use a common and unconvincing expression, 
it is a masterful and wholesome discipline; 
that, to cite the words of one who in all sin- 
