234 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1077 



children and won^&i and those not in robust 

 health, but it has also been great for those 

 healthj"- men who have been accepted as 

 risks by the life insurance companies. Life 

 insurance business has been based upon 

 mortality tables which represented the ex- 

 pectation of life under the relatively un- 

 healthy conditions which existed a half cen- 

 tury ago. Those tables do not fit modern 

 conditions. The number of deaths is now 

 smaller than the insurance tables predict. 

 This means that the actual cost of insurance 

 is correspondingly reduced. The statistics 

 for the saving from this source are not 

 readily available. It can be said, however, 

 that the increase in the duration of the 

 lives of those healthy men who carry in- 

 surance, during the past thirty years, has 

 meant a money saving greater in amount 

 than all the expenditures ever made by the 

 universities, research institutes and indi- 

 viduals in support of medical investiga- 

 tion. This reckoning does not include the 

 saving of the lives of women and children, 

 nor take into account the economic values 

 of the lives of the men, women and children 

 saved. The reckoning likewise omits the 

 vastly greater factor of human happiness 

 which proceeds from healthful and com- 

 plete family life. 



We have referred at considerable length 

 to progress in medical science and have 

 said that this progress followed naturally 

 from Pasteur's investigation of fermenta- 

 tion as a problem in pure chemistry. "We 

 do not intend to detract in any sense or to 

 any extent from the glory of Pasteur's 

 work, from the glory of Lister's, Koch's, 

 Roux's, Behring's, Ross's, Ehrlieh's and 

 Flexner's services, when we record the 

 simple fact that the structures which they 

 erected and which mankind is finding of 

 incalculable value were built upon the 

 broad and firm foundations which the 

 earlier investigators in biology and chem- 

 istry had made ready. 



The development of the other subjects 

 which have become so vital in modern life 

 have essentially paralleled that of biology, 

 chemistry and medicine. 



It is so well known as to be a trite sub- 

 ject that electricity was studied a full cen- 

 tury, following Volta and Galvani, before 

 it was seriously applied to the arts. It is 

 not so well known that the immense value 

 of electricity in current life, as applied by 

 the electrical engineers, is due chiefly to 

 the work of two men: Faraday, in the 

 Royal Institution of London, who, study- 

 ing electricity as a pure science and with no 

 apparent thought for its possible applica- 

 tions, discovered the principles of magneto 

 electric currents, upon which all modern 

 dynamos and transformers, electric light- 

 ing, telephoning and telegraphing, and the 

 transmission of power depend; and Max- 

 well, of Cambridge University, who 

 wrought Faraday's results into a founda- 

 tion of complete and rigorous theory upon 

 which future electrical engineers might 

 build. 



The X-rays and radium are the prod- 

 ucts of research in pure science, and quite 

 regardless of so-caUed utility; yet what is 

 to-day more useful than the X-rays, and 

 what promises greater usefulness than 

 radium and its related radio-active sub- 

 stances ? 



Pure science studies in the broad fields 

 which we may call botany and chemistry- 

 have made scientific agriculture possible. 

 We can not exaggerate the importance of 

 science in farming for the future of the 

 human race. 



A few months ago the people of the Pa- 

 cific coast acquired the power of telephon- 

 ing directly to Atlantic coast points. News- 

 paper accounts made much of the fact as 

 a great advance, and so it was; but the 

 newspapers left Hamlet out of the play. 

 Improvements in the insulating system, to 

 reduce losses of current along the line, were 



