November 7, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



663 



The Philadelphia Pathological Society will 

 hold at the College of Physicians, on Novem- 

 ber 20, at 8 :15 p.m., a symposium on the sub- 

 ject of " Physical Growth and Mental Devel- 

 opment." The speakers will be Dr. H. H. 

 Donaldson, of the Wistar Institute, " Studies 

 on the Growth of the Central Nervous Sys- 

 tem"; Professor Bird T. Baldwin, of Swarth- 

 more College, " The Normal Child ; Its Phys- 

 ical Growth and Mental Maturity," and Pro- 

 fessor Lightner Witmer, of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, " Children with Mental Defects 

 Distinguished from Mentally Defective Chil- 

 dren." The discussion to be opened by Dr. 

 H. H. Goddard, of the New Jersey Training 

 School, Vineland, N. J., Dr. Charles Burr, of 

 Philadelphia, and Professor J. H. Leuba, of 

 Bryn Mawr College. 



We learn from the report in the London 

 Times that the International Tuberculosis 

 Conference held its first meeting in the Lower 

 House of the Prussian Diet. Berlin, on October 

 23. Dr. Franz Bumm presided in the absence 

 of M. Leon Bourgeois. The conference was 

 welcomed by the secretary of state for the 

 Imperial Ministry of the interior, Dr. Del- 

 briick, who observed that the conference was 

 meeting at the place where the international 

 organization was founded eleven years ago 

 under the patronage of the German empress. 

 It now embraced the whole world and united 

 the nations in a common labor for humanity. 

 Speaking of the fight against tuberculosis in 

 Germany, Dr. Delbriick said that there were 

 now 14Y sanatoria, with 15,278 beds. There 

 were 103 institutions, with more than 9,000 

 beds, for children threatened with tuberculosis, 

 114 forest sanatoria, and 17 forest schools. 

 Dr. Delbriick called special attention to the 

 movement for the addition of wings to hos- 

 pitals rather than for the building of sanatoria, 

 and said that there were now more than 200 

 tuberculosis wings of general hospitals in 

 Germany. He observed that England held the 

 lead in the matter of notification, and referred 

 to the new movement in Germany for the iso- 

 lation of cases in an advanced stage of the 

 disease. This point was endorsed by the medi- 

 cal officer of health for Berlin, who announced 



that a special tuberculosis hospital, with 1,000 

 beds, is to be built here. Dr. Delbriick said 

 that within about fifteen years the mortality 

 due to tuberculosis had declined by one third 

 in England, Germany, France, Belgium and 

 the United States, and by one fifth in Austria, 

 Switzerland and the Netherlands. 



Nature states that in his evening lecture to 

 the British Association at Birmingham on 

 September 16, Dr. Smith Woodward took the 

 opportunity of replying to Professor Arthur 

 Keith's recent criticisms on his reconstruc- 

 tion of the Piltdown skull. It will be re- 

 membered that Dr. Woodward regarded the 

 mandible as essentially that of an ape, and 

 restored it with ape-like front teeth, while he 

 determined the brain-capacity of the skull to 

 approach closely the lowest human limit. 

 Professor Keith, on the other hand, modified 

 the curves of the mandible to accommodate 

 typically human teeth, and reconstructed the 

 skull with a brain-eapacity exceeding that of 

 the average civilized European. Fortunately, 

 Mr. Charles Dawson has continued his dig- 

 gings at Piltdown this summer with some 

 success, and on August 30, Father P. Teil- 

 hard, who was working with him, picked up 

 the canine tooth which obviously belongs to 

 the half of the mandible originally discov- 

 ered. This tooth corresponds exactly in 

 shape with the lower canine of an ape, and its 

 worn face shows that it worked upon the 

 upper canine in true ape fashion. It only 

 differs from the canine of Dr. Woodward's 

 published restoration in being slightly 

 smaller, more pointed and a little more up- 

 right in the mouth. Hence, there seems now 

 to be definite proof that the front teeth of 

 Eoanthropus resembled those of an ape, and 

 its recognition as a genus distinct from 

 Homo is apparently justified. The associa- 

 tion of such a mandible with a skull of large 

 brain-capacity is considered by Dr. Wood- 

 ward most improbable, and he has made 

 further studies of the brain-case with the 

 help of Mr. W. P. Pycraft, who has attempted 

 a careful reconstruction of the missing base. 

 Dr. Woodward now concludes that the only 

 alteration necessary in his original model is 



