November 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



633 



pages 235 and 236, after giving a description 

 of the disease, he says : 



This liorrible disorder [the yaws] is contracted 

 by inhabiting the same room with the patient, 

 and by inoculation; this is efFeoted by means of 

 a small fly, from which every precaution is often- 

 times of no avail. Great numbers of the insects 

 of this species appear in the morning, but they 

 are not so much seen when the sun is powerful. 

 If one of them chances to settle upon the corner 

 of the eye or mouth, or upon the most trifling 

 scratch, it is enough to inoculate the bohas, if the 

 insect comes from a person who labors under the 

 disease. 



It v?ill be noted that, while Koster is not 

 able to give the specific name of the fly, he 

 definitely declares it to be a certain fly V7ith 

 well marked characters. It may be well to 

 add that the disease called " bobas " through- 

 out Brazil, is identified by Koster liimseK as 

 identical with the " yaws " prevalent in Ven- 

 ezuela and the Guianas. 



For the loan of the book from which this 

 note is taken, I am indebted to the courtesy of 

 Mr. E. C. Richardson, librarian of Princeton 

 University. 



E. W. GUDGER 

 State Noemal College, 

 Gkeensboeo, N. C. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



A FURTHER STATISTICAL STUDY OF AMERICAN MEN 

 OF SCIENCE 



The advancement of science and the im- 

 provement of the conditions under which sci- 

 entific work is done are of such vast impor- 

 tance for society that even the most modest 

 attempt to introduce scientific method into 

 the study of these conditions has some value. 

 It is truly both exhilarating and appalling to 

 face the opportunities and responsibilities of 

 science and of scientific men. The applications 

 of science have quadrupled the wealth which 

 each individual produces and have doubled 

 the length of human life. In many cases the 

 gain has been greater than this. In trans- 

 porting freight or printing a newspaper, the 

 products of each man's labor have been multi- 

 plied a hundredfold; in equal measure the 



danger from smallpox, cholera and the plague 

 has been diminished. 



As intercommunication increases between 

 the nations, bringing them all within the circle 

 of our civilization, and as the total population 

 of the earth grows, the number of scientific 

 advances becomes continually larger and the 

 value of each of ever greater magnitude. It is 

 thus an economic law that the means of sub- 

 sistence tend to increase more rapidly than the 

 population.' When the applications of elec- 

 tricity increase the efficiency of each individ- 

 ual on the average by twenty per cent. — as 

 may now be the case in civilized countries — 

 the economic value would be in the neighbor- 

 hood of twenty billion dollars a year. In 

 comparison with a sum so inconceivable, the 

 cost of science since the days of Faraday and 

 Henry is altogether insignificant. In the 

 United States at present there are scarcely 

 more than a thousand men engaged in serious 

 research work, and they do not on the average 

 devote more than half their time to it. 

 Throughout the world there may be seven to 

 ten times as many. The investigations of 

 these men may cost a total of $20,000,000 a 

 year, perhaps one thousandth of what may be 

 gained by the applications of electricity, or 

 one hundredth of what is saved by the use of 

 the phosphorus match. 



But man does not live alone by the applica- 

 tions of electricity and the use of the phos- 

 phorus match. Science has given us a new 

 heaven as well as a new earth, for it has 

 checked not only poverty and disease, but also 

 superstition, ignorance and unreason. It has 

 done away with slavery and with the need of 

 child labor; it has made excessive manual 

 labor by women or by men unnecessary. By 



' This inversion of the law of Malthus, to which 

 the writer has called attention on several occa- 

 sions (e. g., Science, December 18, 1896) has 

 recently been given a most interesting expression 

 by Professor T. H. Norton (The Popular Science 

 Monthly, September, 1910). Both the number and 

 the value of scientific advances being directly 

 proportional to the total population, the means of 

 subsistence tend to increase as the square of the 

 population. 



