412 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. n. No. 39. 



readers to say whether this shows a spirit of 

 fairness or a desire to suppress discussion. Does 

 it even indicate an inclination to refuse ' articles 

 which give a true account of what has been said 

 against the American system ? ' 



"So much the editor of the Journal could 

 have inferred ft-om the action of the Gazette. It 

 is enough to raise at least a presumption that 

 his correspondent's statement was untrue. But 

 he prefers to assume that what the Gazette has 

 rejected has been rejected for the purpose of 

 suppressing the truth. 



" As a mattor of fact the Gazette has rejected 

 but one article on the subject of nomenclature. 

 The article ' suppressed ' by Science was re- 

 jected by us because it contained numerous ob- 

 jectionable personalities. In returning the 

 MS. we took pains to inform the author that 

 we objected only to the personalities, not to his 

 opinion ou nomenclature, and that if the per- 

 sonalities were eliminated the paper would be 

 accepted. When the MS. was returned to the 

 editor, however, it had been so greatly amplified 

 that it would have filled at least thirteen pages of 

 the Gazette. It was therefore returned to the wri- 

 ter with a request to condense it, and he was of- 

 ered any space up to five pages (about the space 

 required by the original paper), but he declined 

 to alter the MS. , and finally withdrew it. 



" It is difficult to believe that a wish to be 

 fair to what he is pleased to call ' the arbitrary 

 dicta of certain American botanists ' animates 

 the utterances of the editor of the Journal of 

 Botany. If it does it is at least curious that two 

 scientific men should come to such opposite con- 

 conclusions upon the same facts as do Mr. 

 James Britten and a strenuous but gentlemanly 

 opponent whose name we withhold but whose 

 voluntary words we are permitted to quote : 



"'I have greatly regretted the ill-natured 

 statements of J. Britten, especially those in 

 which he implies that there has been any unfair 

 suppression of opinion by the Gazette. I am 

 confident that whatever has been rejected by 

 the Gazette has been refused for the best reasons 

 and for the sake of harmony and the best good 

 of all concerned.' " 



It would seem certain fi'om the above that no 

 attempt has been made either by Science or by 

 the Botanical Gazette to suppress discussion of 



botanical nomenclature. Probably no American 

 journal wishes to suppress discussion, but it is 

 evidently impossible to accept everything pre- 

 sented, and but few journals would care to print 

 an article such as that contained in the July 

 number of the Journal of Botany. 



J. McKeen Cattell. 



BLOOD EXAMINATION IN DISEASE. 



The suggestion of Prof Le Conte that some 

 notice be taken of articles in which statements 

 are made that are liable to mislead, or that are 

 absolutely erroneous, calls to mind an article in 

 the Scientific American Supplement for May 4, 

 1895 (p. 16, 126), by Prof. John Michels, en- 

 titled ' ' Does a nucleus exist in the red corpus- 

 cles of mammalian blood?" In it the following 

 assertion is made : 



" It is a remarkable fact that although a knowledge 

 of blood is of such importance and probably the key 

 to a perfect knowledge of the treatment of disease, 

 little or next to nothing is known relating to its phys- 

 iological properties, its constituents or its eii'ects on 

 the human economy in health or disease. No phy- 

 sician ever makes a microscopical examination of 

 blood in making his diagnosis, and if he did, he 

 ^ould he unable to interpret the appearances he 

 would notice, for there is no guide to the subject, the 

 medical profession remaining under a cloud of igno- 

 rance in regard to this matter, and they appear to be 

 content to wait to have this knowledge forced upon 

 them hy chemists and biologists, rather than make 

 any effort on their own iiart to relieve their condition 

 of disgraceful ignorance." 



That there still remains much to be learned 

 regarding the blood is uudeuiable. But that 

 the medical profession is in a state of ignorance 

 in regard to it, or that no one ever makes a 

 microscopical examination of blood in making 

 his diagnosis, is absolutely false. Since the dis- 

 covery of the hematozoa of malaria by Laverau, 

 in 1880, thousands of cases of malarial fever 

 have been diagnosed absolutely by blood ex- 

 amination. All late books on the practice of 

 medicine refer to this as a valuable aid to diag- 

 nosis in this disease. Dr. Wm. Osier, of John 

 Hopkins University, who has made a special 

 study of malarial diseases, can, perhaps, give 

 Prof. Michel some information on this point. 



So, too, in cases of anicmia. An examina- 

 tion of the blood will iniiillibly diagno.sc the 



