SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1886. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 



Considerable interest has of late been taken 

 in the study of the etiology of pneumonia. Some 

 believe it to be due, in the majority of cases, to mi- 

 crobes, and base this opinion upon the discovery of 

 f ovir varieties of micro-organisms in lungs affected 

 with the disease ; others find a marked relation 

 between its prevalence and the increased amount 

 of ozone in the air, either just at the time or im- 

 mediately preceding. Dr. Seibert has made a 

 study of 768 cases of primary pneumonia, which 

 were reported to him by the members of the New 

 York medical society, and which occurred in their 

 practice during twelve months. These cases were 

 distributed as follows : January, 71; February, 140; 

 March, 103 ; April, 73 ; May, 55 ; June, 37 ; July, 

 26 ; August, 25 ; September, 43 ; October, 62 ; No- 

 vember, 65 ; December, 78. The results of Dr. 

 Seibert's investigations are, 1'^, that the varying 

 prevalence of pneumonia may be explained by 

 changes in temperature, humidity, and velocity 

 of the winds ; and, 2°, that, whenever there ex- 

 ists a low or falling temperature with excessive 

 and increasing humidity and high winds, pneu- 

 monia prevails to its greatest extent. If two of 

 these conditions exist without the third, the dis- 

 ease will be markedly prevalent, but not so much 

 so as in the preceding instance. Catarrhal trovibles 

 are also favored by the same conditions. 



There has recently been published a biog- 

 raphy of Se-Quo-Yah, styled the American Cadmus. 

 Born in 1770, of a Cherokee mother whose Euro- 

 pean husband had deserted her, he grew up as the 

 pride of his people, both in games and war. One 

 day (so the story goes) a white captive produced a 

 letter, and everybody wondered at the 'talking 

 leaf.' Se-Quo-Yah (which translates suspiciously 

 into ' he guessed it ') pondered over the mystery, 

 and with the use of an English spelling-book which 

 had fallen into his hands (but which of course he 

 could not read), invented a written alphabet for 

 his people, making the English characters, with 

 modifications and additions of his own, stand for 

 No. 184. — 1886. 



the eighty-two syllables of which the Cherokee 

 language is composed. He analyzed the spoken 

 speech, and had each distinct syllable represented 

 by a sign. His tribe at first considered him as 

 weak-minded, but eventually recognized the utility 

 of his invention. Five yeai's after the invention 

 he had a school with many scholars, and a print- 

 ing press was publishing a Cherokee paper, part 

 of which was printed in the Se-Quo-Yah alphabet. 

 This invention is referred to as the means of civil- 

 izing the Cherokee nation. The story is unfor- 

 tunately not sufficiently clear to enable one to 

 appreciate just how much of the idea was original 

 with Se-Quo-Yah, or to claim for him the honor 

 of doing by a flash of genius what in other races 

 had been slowly worked out before history began. 



It is a prevalent jDopular impression that some 

 special providence surrounds the physician with 

 protective agencies, and that, although daily ex- 

 posed to disease in its most malignant forms, he 

 escapes when others are attacked. Dr. Ogle of 

 England finds that while the lawyers die at the 

 rate of 20, the clergy at the rate of 16, the doctors' 

 mortality is 25 per 1,000. In a million adults 

 other than physicians, 16 died of scarlet-fever, 14 

 of diphtheria, and 238 of typhoid-fever ; while, of 

 an equal number of physicians, 59 succumbed to 

 scarlet-fever, 59 to diphtheria, and 811 to typhoid- 

 fever. Small - pox, on the other hand, claims 

 more victims among the laity than in the medical 

 profession ; due, doubtless, to the fact that physi- 

 cians have sufficient confidence in the protective 

 influence of vaccination to keep themselves insus- 

 ceptible to the attacks of small-pox. 



Dr. Lincoln, in the ' Report of the Massachu- 

 setts state board of health for 1884,' says that a 

 child who enters a public school has become a 

 fractional part of a machine. He has been well 

 understood by persons who have watched him 

 from bu'th, and who are deeply interested in him. 

 He is now transferred to the care of strangers, 

 who meet with him only five hours in the day, 

 and whose interest in him is restricted by the fact 

 that he forms but a portion — say, from one and 

 one-tenth to two and one-half per cent — of the 



