DECEMBER 20, 1918] 
of Akron will furnish space and to a certain 
extent equipment. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 
THE late W. J. Murphy, owner and pub- 
lisher of the Minneapolis Tribune, left a large 
part of his fortune in trust for the establish- 
ment of a school of journalism in the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota. 
THE endowment fund being raised for the 
establishment of a University College in 
Swansea has been augmented by donations of 
£25,000 from Mr. F. Cory Yeo and £10,000 
from Mr. W. T. Farr, retiring directors of the 
Graigola Merthyr Co., Ltd. More than £100,- 
000 have so far been subscribed. 
THE sum of £1,000 has been given to the 
City of London School by Professor Carlton 
Lambert for the foundation of a science 
scholarship. 
Dr. Herman Carey Bumpus, president of 
Tufts College for the past four years, has re- 
signed. Dr. Bumpus had been previously pro- 
fessor of comparative anatomy, at Brown 
University and director of the American 
Museum of Natural History. 
Preswent Epmunp J. James, of the Uni- 
versity of Illinois, has withdrawn his resigna- 
tion. Some time ago he asked to be perman- 
ently relieved of his duties at the university in 
order that he might devote all his time to 
war work. With the signing of the armistice 
he has reconsidered that decision. 
Dean FE. C. Jounson, for the past seven 
years dean of the division of extension at 
Kansas State Agricultural College, has ac- 
cepted an appointment as dean of the College 
of Agriculture and director of the Experiment 
Station at the State College of Washington. 
Dr. Lawrence JosepH Henperson has been 
promoted to be professor of biological chemis- 
try at Harvard University. 
Srepuen S. Visuer, Ph.D. (Chicago, 714), 
has accepted an assistant professorship in geog- 
raphy in the University of Indiana. 
SCIENCE 
619 
Mr. Harry L. Coxe, who has been in the 
Aviation Service while on leave from the State 
College of Washington, will resume his aca- 
demic duties on January 15, as instructor in 
the department of chemistry. 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
SYNTHESIS OF PALEONTOLOGY AND MEDICAL 
HISTORY 
THE study of the ancient evidences of dis- 
ease, for which the term paleopathology was 
proposed by Ruffer in 1914 during his studies 
on the pathology of ancient Egyptian mum- 
mies, is a phase of medical history which must 
depend upon paleontological data for its ex- 
tension. That pathological lesions, especially 
those on the bones, retain all of their charac- 
teristics after many hundreds of thousands and 
millions of years has been clearly shown and 
distinct evidences of disease are known as far 
back in geological time as the Carboniferous. 
Evidences of traumatism, fractures with the 
formation of callosities on the inner surface of 
the shells of brachiopods have been seen as old 
as the middle of the Ordovician. Reasoning 
from the theoretical aspects of paleopathology, 
on the basis of possible parasitism of early 
hosts, disease may have originated in the 
Archeozoic but there is no definite recorded 
evidence prior to the Pennsylvanian. 
The relation of paleontological data to med- 
ical history is based on the assumption that 
the manifestations of disease are the same 
whether seen on man or in animals, and the in- 
fection of a Cambrian crustacean by Protozoa 
is as much a matter of medical history as the 
presence of osteophytes on the femur of Pithe- 
canthropus, the fractured ulna of the Neander- 
thal man, or bilharziosis among ancient Egyp- 
tians. 
Many lesions are so commonly seen among 
fossil vertebrates especially that paleontolo- 
gists have not referred to them at all, or merely 
mentioned them incidentally, forgetting that 
such evidences are of extreme importance in 
tracing the origin and antiquity of phenom- 
ena which are of such vital importance to hu- 
manity to-day. 
