732 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 623. 



men, the first speaker being Mr. Charles F. 

 Stewart, a reporter on the Cleveland News. 

 He most entertainingly described how, after 

 a thorough physical examination had shown 

 him to be in good health, the various quacks 

 and charlatans in Cleveland, one of whom was 

 able to expend $80,000 a year for postage 

 stamps alone, pronounced him suffering from 

 various diseases of an unmentionable nature. 

 Among the other speakers were Mr. Eugene 

 O'Dunne, of Baltimore; Mr. Thomas W. Bar- 

 low, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Anthony Com- 

 stock, of New York. 



It seems as if politics can not be run with- 

 out a boss or the laws upon our statute books 

 be properly enforced without special societies 

 for this purpose. The success of such a move- 

 ment started from without the medical pro- 

 fession, but with every aid extended to it by 

 physicians, will be even more marked than if 

 it had been undertaken under the auspices of 

 such an organization as the American Medical 

 Association. The chief difficulty to cope with 

 will be to formulate a working plan so that 

 the various branches will be able to cooperate 

 most efficiently with the parent chapter. As 

 was pointed out in the remarks of Dr. Charles 

 A. L. Reed, of Cincinnati, one of the first 

 things to do is to make the laws of our dif- 

 ferent states bearing upon public health and 

 morals uniform. Thus it would be advisable 

 to have the present United States pure food 

 and drug law passed by the legislature of each 

 state, and to frame a law making it a penal 

 offence to offer to perform a criminal opera- 

 tion and to revoke the license of any physi- 

 cian who upon due process of law has been 

 convicted and sentenced for the performance 

 of such illegal act. To prosecute work of 

 this character and the sanitation of to-day 

 there should be created a national department 

 of health with its head a member of the 

 Cabinet, as so ably advocated by Professor 

 Norton, of Tale. H. W. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



A STATISTICAL STUDY OF AMERICAN MEN OF 



SCIENCE, m. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE. 



Prom a conventional point of view the dis- 



tribution of men of science would not be 

 regarded as a psychological problem, perhaps 

 not even as a scientific problem. But in re- 

 cent years the distribution of plants and ani- 

 mals has received increasing attention in bot- 

 any and zoology, and apart from its perti- 

 nence as a correct description of the world in 

 which we live, it has proved, on the one hand, 

 to have certain practical applications, and, on 

 the other hand, to throw light on certain 

 general problems of heredity and evolution. 

 Similar results may accrue from a scientific 

 study of the distribution of human ability 

 and performance. 



The birthplace and the present residence of 

 the thousand leading men of science of the 

 United States are shown on the accompanying 

 table, the divisions used being those of the 

 census. Figures are given separately for the 

 five hundred (I.-V.) who are more distin- 

 guished and for the five hundred (VI.-X.) 

 whose reputations are less, followed by the 

 totals and their number per million of the 

 population. As the average age of the scien- 

 tific men is about 45 years, their birth rate 

 is referred to the census of 1860.^ Thus the 

 first line of the table shows that 29 of the 

 1,000 scientific men were born in Maine, and 

 four now reside there. Of the 29 scientific 

 men born in the state, 19 are among the 500 

 who are more eminent and 10 among the 500 

 who are less eminent. The number born was 

 at the rate of 46.1 per million of the popula- 

 tion at the approximate time of their birth, 

 or one for each 22,000. The scientific popula- 

 tion of the state is now only at the rate of 5.7 

 per million of the population, or scarcely more 

 than one for each 200,000. 



There are striking variations in the origin 

 and in the present residence of scientific men 

 throughout the United States. Massachusetts 

 and Boston have been the intellectual center of 

 the country. The birth rate of these leading 

 men of science is in Massachusetts 108.8 per 

 million population; it is 86.9 in Connecticut, 



^ This is not exact, as the age distribution is 

 not symmetrical, and the rate of increase of the 

 population in the different states is not uniform, 

 but the results are as nearly correct as is neces- 

 sary. 



