Decembee 6, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



789 



significant that we succumb to the temptation 

 to look a little further behind the ill-disguised 

 vanity of this professor who poses as the only 

 infallible authority on matters Chinese. 

 There is a further reason for our doing this: 

 in replying to Professor de Groot's speech, the 

 Secretary of the Berlin Academy intimated 

 that the professor's writings contained much 

 information and valuable suggestions for one 

 desiring to understand the actual politics of 

 the China of to-day. A significant example of 

 this kind of practical polities may be found in 

 Professor de Groot's " Religious System of 

 China," which is little more than an ill-di- 

 gested mass of Chinese quotations couched in 

 bad English. In Volume III., page 1052, we 

 find this gem: 



Should European armies have occasion a second 

 time to march on Peking, it will be worth their 

 while to try whether the campaign can not be 

 shortened and loss of life spared by military occu- 

 pation of the burial grounds of the Imperial 

 family. Indeed, should the Court receive an ulti- 

 matum that these tombs would be destroyed one 

 after another by explosives, its belief in the 

 efficacy of Fung-shui would be weakened, and the 

 Court would implicitly submit to the foreigners' 

 demands. 



As a recommendation for a modus operandi 

 to compel Chinese submission, this is, perhaps, 

 without a parallel. Even the German gov- 

 ernment in the Boxer debacle of 1900 did not 

 stoop to such depths. And yet, the paragraph 

 just quoted is characteristic of the fiber of a 

 man who professes to be a sinologue and 

 shows neither a glimpse of sympathy with nor 

 a particle of understanding of the Chinese 

 people. 



Professor de Groot's political zeal led him 

 to accomplish a still greater triumph in the 

 field of sinology. In 1904 he gave to the 

 world, in two volumes, his " Sectarianism and 

 Eeligious Persecution in China." In this he 

 attempts to prove that the Chinese are the 

 most intolerant people on earth, and he ac- 

 complishes his task by wiKully and malic- 

 iously ignoring the whole series of Imperial 

 toleration edicts, of which the Jesuit mission- 

 aries are still proud. This sycophantic pro- 



duction was justly condemned by all thought- 

 ful men ; and, it is to be hoped, it wiU remain 

 for all time a unique feat in the history of 

 science that a university professor prostituted 

 and humiliated his scholarship to political 

 ends, dictated by an ephemeral fad of the time. 

 ISTo doubt many of our misconceptions of the 

 Chinese are due to the distortions of mission- 

 aries, made with a view of proving their case, 

 based on the necessity of their securing funds 

 to carry on their work, but we are hardly pre- 

 pared for such a perversion of facts at the 

 hands of one who pretends to call himself a 

 sinologue. 



George A. Dorset 



RELATION OF PLASMA-GROWN TISSUE TO SENILITY 



To THE Editor of Science: The success of 

 the method for prolonging the life of tissues 

 grown in plasma, devised in the laboratory of 

 Dr. Carrel, has led to such a widespread mis- 

 conception of its significance, as evidenced by 

 articles in medical and semi-popular scientific 

 periodicals, that a note regarding it may not 

 be out of place. It is needless to say that these 

 extravagant claims are not based on Dr. 

 Carrel's conclusions as published, but upon 

 independent interpretations of the results of 

 his experiments. 



The mere statement of the conclusions gen- 

 erally reached by writers in the above men- 

 tioned periodicals is sufficient to indicate their 

 character, to the biologist at least. It is first 

 claimed that the cessation of cell activity of 

 the tissue in the plasma after twenty days or 

 so is due to the same conditions which pro- 

 duce senility. Then it is pointed out that the 

 actual cause of the cessation in the plasma is 

 the accumulation of waste products, therefore 

 the proof is complete and the great discovery 

 at last accomplished, that senility is the re- 

 sult of the accumulation of waste products in 

 the cells. On the same grounds death of a 

 human being through uremic poisoning would 

 be considered as due to old age, and a man 

 suffocated by drowning be a victim of senility. 

 Obviously there is no evidence that the causes 

 which stop the activity of the cells in the 

 plasma are the same as those which produce 



