154 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 996 



have been suppressed, and how the most 

 pestilential spots on earth may be converted 

 into healthful habitations for man. Sci- 

 entific medicine has made these demonstra- 

 tions and the world applauds, but seems 

 slow to make general application of the 

 rules of hygiene. 



Dr. Foster had experienced the doctor's 

 dream when he said to you in 1909 : 



I look forward with confidence to the time when 

 preventable diseases will be prevented, and when 

 curable diseases will be recognized in the curable 

 stage and will be cured, and I believe the grandest 

 triumphs of civilization will be the achievements 

 which will result from a realization of the possi- 

 bilities of preventive medicine. 



Professor Fischer, a most earnest and 

 intelligent student of the prevention of 

 sickness and the deferring of death has 

 stated that "by the intelligent application 

 of our present knowledge, the average span 

 of human life may be increased full fifteen 

 years. ' ' 



It has been proposed that the life insur- 

 ance companies represented here seek to 

 prolong the lives of their policyholders by 

 offering them free medical reexamination 

 at stated intervals. It has been shown that 

 in all probability this would financially 

 benefit the companies in the increased 

 longevity of their policyholders and the in- 

 creased number of premiums they would 

 pay. This is a business proposition, and I 

 hope that the companies will inaugurate it 

 and thus demonstrate that the lessening of 

 sickness and the deferring of death will 

 pay. Let the insurance men join the doc- 

 tors and help in the great work for the 

 uplift of the race through the eradication 

 of unnecessary disease and premature 

 death. In this way we can hasten the 

 coming of the better man by making the 

 doctor's dream a reality. I am confident 

 that you will do this, not because it will 



pay, but because it is the highest service 

 you can render humanity. 



Victor C. Vaughan 

 University of Michigan 



T3E AMEEICAN ASSOCIATION FOB TSE 

 ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 

 SCIENCE, EDUCATION AND DEMOCBACY^ 

 Science, education and democracy — the 

 three great enterprises of the modern world 

 — are in no institution more completely 

 represented than in this American Associ- 

 ation for the Advancement of Science and 

 in its section of education. We are organ- 

 ized to advance science in all its range 

 from the most esoteric deduction of the 

 mathematician to the most homely con- 

 trivance of the inventor, and at the same 

 time to diffuse scientific knowledge and 

 scientific method among all who are willing 

 to listen. Our membership includes the 

 ablest scientific leaders and equally those 

 who in Bishop Berkeley's phrase are "un- 

 debauched by learning. ' ' We migrate from 

 place to place for our meetings in order 

 that we may teach and learn in all parts of 

 the country. We form more nearly a 

 democracy of science than any other organ- 

 ization. Education is amalgamated with 

 every section of our association, which is as 

 completely an educational institution as is 

 a university. And as the university, de- 

 voted throughout to education, yet may in- 

 clude a department or school of education, 

 so we have conducted in recent years a 

 section of education. This section is con- 

 cerned with the place of the sciences in our 

 educational system and with improving the 

 methods of teaching them. It has also as 

 its object, perhaps its principal object, the 

 development of a science of education; for 

 there is no other applied science — not agri- 



1 Address of the vice-president and chairman of 

 the Section of Education of the American As- 

 sociation for the Advancement of Science, read at 

 Atlanta, Ga., on December 31, 1913. 



