October 31, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



243 



aim st infinite number of colors wbich we may today see, 

 especially among the silks, in a dry goods house ? The color- 

 sense of the modern European and American has developed 

 in a wonderful degree in the last quarter of a century ; and 

 can we doubt that " rods and cones " have either undergone 

 a remarkable increase in number, or else have been marvel- 

 lously educated ? The most striking of the advances in this 

 line was the artificial formation of alizarine, the dye-stuff 

 known as turkey red, and which, preserved to us still tin- 

 faded as Egyptian mummy wrappings, justifies the biblical 

 comparison of sin to "scarlet." Indigo has been in more 

 than one way synthetically formed; and it is certain, that, 

 even as the alizarine manufacture has completely ended the 

 cultivation of the madder, so it will bo but a few years before 

 the chemist will vie with nature in the manufacture of 

 indigo But it would seem that the industrial chemist does 

 nothing half way. Not satisfied with imitating nature, the 

 dye-stuff chemist has for his aim the production of colors of 

 any wave-length or any combination of wave-lengths what- 

 soever, and he seems not to waver in his course toward this 

 goal. 



Salicylic acid, salol, antifebrin, sulphonal, and homatropin 

 stand among the brilliant examples of what chemistry has 

 done for the medical profession ; but we shall look in the 

 near future to the artificial formation of quinine and mor- 

 phine, and any other drug that may be demanded. Perhaps 

 here the field of physiological chemistry will in the future 

 hold sway, and we may live to see the time when the drug 

 will be irianufactured directly for the purpose of meeting 

 certain symptoms. This looks by no means impossible, in 

 view of the recent introduction of a large and ever-increasing 

 number of antiseptics, antipyretics, and hypnotics. When 

 it has once been determined what is the relation existing 

 between chemical composition and physiological effect, — 

 and this is to-day the field in which physiological chemistry 

 has the most to hope, — then will the time have come when 

 not only medicine will have been rescued from the bonds of 

 empiricism and reduced to a science, but chemistry will be 

 acknowledged as her handmaiden, furnishing the physician 

 that special drug which will play the specific in each indi- 

 vidual case. 



This leads us to the field of medicine and surgery. Of 

 course, the most marked advance in this department is the 

 general acknowledgment of the germ theory of disease. It 

 may be that in the majority of cases the peculiar germ of 

 the disease has eluded discovery, it may be that the germ 

 theory is but one side of the subject of origin of disease; 

 nevertheless it is true that medicine and surgery, under the 

 influence of this theory, are undergoing a marvellous change, 

 which is destined to add months and years to the average • 

 life of man. Jenner walking in the darkness, and Pasteur 

 in the twilight of early dawn, have traced the path which 

 our successors decades hence will follow. We must not 

 marvel if, in the dimness of early moruing vision, all is not 

 as clear to them as it will be generations hence, but rather 

 wonder that in the faintuess of the light they could have 

 caught the first glimpses of the coming day. 



We to-day can see clearly that the task of the physician 

 of the future will be not so much to heal disease as to pre- 

 vent it; and may we not look forward to the time when 

 every germ of consumption and scarlet- fever and diphtheria, 



and other kindred diseases, will have been exterminated, 

 even as the Diornis of New Zealand and the buffalo on 

 Western prairies? This being the case, surgery will be 

 robbed of its terrors, and its advances in the past decades 

 will be as nothing to what the future has in store. 



If I were asked to name the subject most attracting the 

 scientific man of to-day, I should answer electricity ; if I 

 were asked to name the field in which there is the greatest 

 opening for a scientist, I should say electricity. When 

 looking at this field, we are looking at a field which is hardly 

 yet in the earliest stages of infancy. To be sure, the appli- 

 cation of electricity to the telegraph and telephone seems to 

 us an old story; but the developments which must follow 

 the recent discovery of Herz of the true nature of electricity 

 will undoubtedly bear fruit in the improvement of these in- 

 struments. When we further take into consideration the 

 subjects of electric lighting, electric motors, and electric 

 welding, we have every thing to hope for the future. In- 

 deed, now that we may consider the study of electricity 

 founded upon a solid basis, the wonders which a few decades 

 will bring forth cannot be foretold. 



And now, were I asked to suggest the great problem 

 which is to tax the ingenuity of the scientist of the future, I 

 should say it would be the utilization of energy. To-day we 

 have practically going to waste the energy of the sun and 

 wind, and wave and tide, and even that of our great cata- 

 racts. We could hardly compute the infinitesimal propor- 

 tion which is utilized by the various wind-mills and tide- 

 mills, and turbines beneath Niagara. The stored energy of 

 the sun in the carboniferous period still mostly remains un- 

 used by us in our coal-beds, but these will eventually be ex- 

 hausted. Nevertheless the sun is to-day furnishing us just 

 as much energy as then, and it only remains for the future 

 scientist to devise some method for its utilization ; and we 

 cannot doubt this will be done. Again, the scientist of the 

 future will devise some method by which the energy of fuel 

 will be converted into electricity without passing through 

 the stages of the steam engine and dynamo, in which by far 

 the largest portion is lost. The energy of the combustion of 

 zinc is converted with little loss into electricity. Who vvill 

 be the man to invent a battery in which the energy of the 

 union of carbon with oxygen vvill be directly converted into 

 electricity? When, still further, we to-day take the energy of 

 coal and convert it into steam, thence into engine motion, 

 thence into electricity, thence through the incandescence of 

 carbon into electric light, we do it at tremendous loss. The 

 glow-worm and the lantern-fly effect the same transfoj'ma- 

 tion with scarcely a trace of heat, and, as far as we know, 

 with little loss. One of the greatest problems of the future 

 will be the ti'ansformation of carbon energy into light in 

 some similar way, when a single pound of combustible ma- 

 terial will furnish us as much light as is now obtained 

 through illuminating-gas or the electric light from a ton of 

 coal. 



And what now shall we conclude of the future? Will 

 the time come when by improved machinery one man's 

 labor will clothe and feed a hundred? Will our bread and 

 meatbejnade for us by the chemist from coal and water 

 and air? Shall we traverse the earth and air and water on 

 the wings of the lightning? Will the vagaries of Edward 

 Bellamy become facts, and money vanish, and with it avarice 



