July 2, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



13 



tion therefore whether the American med- 

 ical profession shall permit to develop un- 

 challenged that movement now grown so 

 powerful in this country whereby non- 

 medical men are elevated to positions of 

 authority and responsibility in public 

 health matters, which after all are medical 

 matters. Without doubt many non-medical 

 men may become expert health officers and 

 discharge their duties to the communities 

 which they serve in an intelligent manner. 

 Can they be trusted in a crisis however and 

 are we willing as physicians that a practise 

 so fraught with danger be continued? 



Finally how can we educate the great 

 mass of people in this country who are en- 

 gaging in all sorts of philanthropic enter- 

 prises which verge on medicine or which re- 

 quire some medical advice and assistance if 

 all this work is to be prosecuted intelli- 

 gently. These individuals are constantly 

 turning to the medical profession for the 

 solutions of knotty, difficult problems and 

 indeed in no time in the history of this 

 country have physicians had greater oppor- 

 tunities of directing broad, comprehensive 

 charitable movements in the proper direc- 

 tion so that great sums of money shall be 

 intelligently used for useful and beneficial 

 objects. This education of the people in 

 matters affecting their health can probably 

 best be given in a museum of hygiene where 

 models of all sorts of apparatus, collections 

 of charts and statistical materials can be 

 made available for study, where public lec- 

 tures can be given on health topics, where 

 experts in various lines can be consulted, 

 where commissions can be formed for the 

 investigation of special problems of public 

 health. Such a museum would become a 

 great center for education in hygiene and 

 public health and prove of incalculable 

 benefit to the community in which it might 

 happen to be located. 



The question as to which of these three 



needs should first be satisfied is not easy to 

 answer and the answer will also vary ac- 

 cording to the individual point of view of 

 those of us who study the problems. They 

 are here presented in what seems to me to 

 be the logical arrangement. If possible let 

 us first educate our medical students, then 

 our officers of health, then the public. 

 Should the order be changed however no 

 great harm wiU result. Should this country 

 be so fortunate as to see schools of hygiene 

 attached to the medical departments of our 

 universities properly endowed and aiming 

 to satisfy all three needs, then indeed shall 

 we be fortunate beyond the wildest dreams 

 of the most enthusiastic student of the 

 subject. William W. Foed 



The Johns Hopkins University 



bibliography 



Eeport of the Sanitary Commission of Massachu- 

 setts, 1850. 



Nuttall, in Transactions of the Fifteenth Interna- 

 tional Congress on Hygiene and Demography, Vol. 

 IV., p. 417, 1913. 



Simon, English Sanitary Institutions, London, 

 1890. 



MEASUBEUENTS OF THE DISTANCES OF 

 TEE STABSi 



Foe the lecture in honor and memory of 

 Edward Halley, which it is my privilege to 

 deliver this year, I have chosen an account 

 of the persistent efforts made by astron- 

 omers to measure the distances of the fixed 

 stars. For many generations their attempts 

 were unsuccessful, though some of them led 

 to great and unexpected discoveries. It is 

 less than eighty years ago that the distances 

 of two or three of the nearest stars were 

 determined with any certainty. The num- 

 ber was added to, slowly at first, but after- 

 wards at a greater rate, and now that large 



1 The "Halley Lecture" (slightly abridged), 

 delivered at Oxford on May 20, by Sir F. W. Dy- 

 son^ P.R.S., Astronomer Eoyal, and printed in the 

 issue of Nature for June 3. 



