402 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 402. 



they are studied in their mutual relations 

 and, those relations being ascertained, the 

 law underlying them may be identified. 

 When that law is determined, and in such 

 manner as to make it possible to formulate 

 it, verbally, perhaps algebraically or graph- 

 ically, its general operation may become 

 discoverable and its action may often be 

 traced backward into an indefinitely ex- 

 tended past and even forward into an 

 equally unlimited future. Revelation and 

 prophecy are thus fruits of science. It 

 may perhaps be said, with truth and liter- 

 ally, that we to-day know no other method 

 of either revelation or prophecy. 



It is thus that Leverrier and Adams 

 prophesied the discovery of an outer planet 

 previoiisly unseen. Thus the statistician, 

 observing the growth of a population, or 

 the development of industry during earlier 

 years, predicts the filling of the valley of 

 the Mississippi with a teeming population 

 or the transfer of the financial center of 

 the world into a new metropolis. Darwin 

 revealed a past world history and Laplace 

 indicated the process of organization of a 

 universe. Lodge showed the way to com- 

 municate through the intermediate space 

 over an indefinite distance and Marconi and 

 Slaby have talked across a state or an ocean 

 without tangible connections. Rumford 

 and Davy revealed the transmutation of 

 energies, and Morse and Watt and Bell and 

 their fellow-physicists produced national 

 and international systems of utilization and 

 transformation, giving us the steam-engine, 

 the telegraph, the telephone, the electric 

 light and the electric railroad. Hertz and 

 Roentgen introduced us into a new depart- 

 ment of energy-transmission in which light 

 penetrates the opaque, and Daguerre gave 

 us an art which permits exact picturing of 

 our surroundings and enables even invisible 

 stars or nebulfe to imprint their portraits 

 upon the photograpliic plate, and previously 

 unknown worlds thus to reveal themselves. 



Lyell, Hugh Miller and the later geolo- 

 gists gave us our knowledge of the past his- 

 tory of the globe and a prophecy regarding 

 its future ; while the astronomer watching 

 the developments in Perseus now sees and 

 describes to us the destruction of the world, 

 ' of which the heavens are seen to melt with 

 fervent heat,' and the simultaneous begin- 

 ning of the new heaven and the new world, 

 the process and the sequence prophesied 

 alike by Laplace and the inspired seer. 



When it was discovered that the brain 

 was capable of being marked off: into defi- 

 nite and located sections, each of which 

 related itself to a defined process or func- 

 tion, it became possible to predict that the 

 surgeon might thus determine the point at 

 which to operate, the place at which a tu- 

 mor might be found; ultimately, perhaps, 

 finding safe ways of excision, of promotion 

 of healthy growths or of reproduction of 

 degenerated tissue. When, after scientific 

 investigation, the bacteriologists showed the 

 physician how to look for a cause of dan- 

 gerous diseases and of world-devastating 

 plagues, it became evident that a method 

 of remedy could be intelligently sought 

 through 'research.' Thus the revelation of 

 that extraordinary action of microscopic 

 forms of vegetable life had, as its almost 

 axiomatic corollary, the prophecy of con- 

 trol, if not of entire extinction, of the most 

 vicious and intimidating and fatal diseases, 

 and of relief from the scourges of diphthe- 

 ria, malaria and yellow fever and even from 

 consumption and intestinal poisons. The 

 previous triumphs of Lister and his col- 

 leagues in rendering internal surgery safe 

 and successful were but the forerunners of 

 other triumphs in every branch of medi- 

 cine and surgery. When the action of al- 

 cohol upon the tissues was scientifically 

 demonstrated, and it was assigned its prop- 

 er place in the pharmacopoeia with coffee, 

 tea and other substances of its class, the 

 revelation of its true action, value and 



