22 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 362 



harm to the recipient. History, and I "may add personal observa- 

 tion, shows that the same general law holds true to some extent in 

 universities. I believe they should not award fellowships to men 

 fresh from college (save in the very rarest cases), unless they were 

 able to guide and direct as well as to follow their work in every de- 

 tail. A fellow should be encouraged and stimulated by a daily 

 and familiar intercourse with the professors. His methods, read- 

 ing, and researches should be kept at their best, and the entire re- 

 sources of the institution should be a soil for his most rapid and 

 helpful growth. Students thus served, even if their gratitude does 

 not prompt them, as in some late instances in Germany, to study, 

 revive and try to conform with piety to the ideal of ancient and al- 

 most forgotten donors, whose provisions they enjoyed, will not be 

 lacking in appreciation. To appoint a man to use such funds in 

 electing among undergraduate courses, or to take his chances 

 among the confusing multifarious subjects offered in foreign insti- 

 tutions is, I believe, in most cases of small utility, and in some 

 cases that I know, positively harmful. May the methods of exclu- 

 sion we are studying be so effective that neither our precious funds 

 nor the precious energy of our instructors be wasted upon the idle, 

 stupid, or unworthy students, now too often exposed in vain for 

 four years to the contagion of knowledge.' 



"Education used to be a question for ladies and for schoolmas- 

 ters," said a French statesman last spring, but it is now not only 

 a question of state, on which the support of all great institu- 

 tions depends, but the great question into which all others issue if 

 profoundly discussed or studied. So greatly do republics need the 

 whole power of education, and so serious is their struggle for ex- 

 istence against ignorance and its attendant evils, that it has well 

 been said that the problem whether this form of government be 

 permanent is at bottom a question of education. But monarchies 

 are no less dependent upon the education of their leaders and ser- 

 vants. In his famous address declaring that if Germany was ever 

 to be free and strong, it must be by becoming the chief educa- 

 tional state of Europe, must realize the pl'atonic republic in which 

 the education of its youth was the highest care of the rulers, Fichte 

 laid down the policy which has been one of the chief causes of the 

 wonderful development of that country. Moreover, evolution, 

 which shows that even life itself is but the education of proto- 

 plasm, cells, and tissues, that the play-instinct in children and the 

 love of culture in adults not only measure the superfluous individ- 

 ual energy over and above that required by the processes neces- 

 sary to life, but are perhaps largely the same, also makes it plain 

 that the hunger for more and larger education of life is but the 

 struggle of talent to the full maturity and leadership which is its 

 right. 



For myself, I have no stronger wish or resolve than that, in the 

 peculiarly arduous labors I expect, I may never forget that this in- 

 stitution should be a means to these high purposes, and not degen- 

 erate to an end in itself : and may it be as true of our graduates 

 to remotest time, as it is of us in a unique way and degree to-day, 

 that we could not love Clark University so much, loved we not sci- 

 ence and education more. 



HEALTH MATTERS. 

 The Influenza. 



A SINGULAR characteristic of the present epidemic of influenza 

 is its delay in visiting the British Isles. It seems to have been 

 rampant in Paris and in Germany for some time before it crossed 

 the channel, and victims are claimed for Boston even before the 

 existence of the disease in England was acknowledged. This 

 naturally raises the question whether it is a disease really brought 

 from a distance. Is it anything more than the general prevalence 

 of catarrhal affections, of colds and coughs, which the time of year, 

 and the remarkably unsettled weather we have lately experienced, 

 make readily explicable without any foreign importation .' Indeed, 

 is influenza, after all, anything more than a severe form of the 

 fashionable complaint of the season ? 



To answer the last question first, and so to put it by, there can 

 be little doubt that influenza is a distinct, specific affection, and not 

 a mere modification of the common cold. 



The symptoms, the history of the disease, and its distribution, 

 all justify us in treating it as a distinct and specific disease, which 

 when it is prevalent will rarely be mistaken, though, with regard to 

 isolated and sporadic cases, difficulties of diagnosis may arise. 

 About its nature, or its affinities with other diseases, it is unne- 

 cessary to speculate. It will be sufficient to inquire what its re- 

 corded history in the past justifies us in expecting as to its behav- 

 ior in the future. There are few cases in which history proves so 

 important an element in the scientific conception of a disease as it 

 does in that of influenza. For hardly any disease shows a more 

 marked tendency to occur in epidemics — that is, in outbreaks 

 strictly limited in point of time. After long intervals of inaction or 

 apparent death, it springs up again. Its chronology is very re- 

 markable. Though probably occurring in Europe from very early 

 times, it first emerged as a definitely known historical epidemic in 

 the year 1510. Since then, more than 100 general European epi- 

 demics have been recorded, besides nearly as many more limited to^ 

 certain localities. Many of them have in their origin and progress 

 exhibited the type to which that of the present year seems to con- 

 form. We need not go further back than the great epidemic of 

 1782, first traceable in Russia, though there believed to have been 

 derived from Asia. In St. Petersburg, on January 2, coincidently 

 with a remarkable rise of temperature from 35° F. below freezing 

 to 5'^ above, 40,000 persons are said to have been simultaneously 

 taken ill. Thence the disease spread over the Continent, where 

 one-half of the inhabitants were supposed to have been affected, 

 and reached England in May. It was a remarkable feature in this 

 epidemic that two fleets which left Portsmouth about the same 

 time were attacked by influenza at sea about the same day, though 

 they had no communication with each other or with the shore. 



There were many epidemics in the first half of this century ; and 

 the most important of them showed a similar course and geo- 

 graphical distribution. In 1830 started a formidable epidemic, the 

 origin of which is referred to China, but which at aU events by the 

 end of the year had invaded Russia, and broke out in Petersburg 

 in January, 1831. Germany and France were overrun m the spring, 

 and by June it had reached England. Again, two years later, in 

 January, 1833, there was an outbreak in Russia, which spread to 

 Germany and France successively, and on April 3, the first cases 

 of influenza were seen in that metropolis : " all London," in Wat- 

 son's words, "being smitten with it on that and the following day." 

 On this same fateful day Watson records that a ship approaching 

 the Devonshire coast was suddenly smitten with influenza, and 

 within half an hour forty men .were ill. In 1836 another epidemic 

 appeared in Russia; and in January, 1837, Berlin and London 

 were almost simultaneously attacked. Ten years later, in 1847, 

 the last great epidemic raged. ' 



Many interesting points are suggested by this historical retro- 

 spect. What is'the meaning of the westward spread of influenza, 

 of cholera, and other diseases .' Is it a universal law ? To this 

 it must be said that it is by no means the universal law, even with 

 influenza, which has spread through other parts of the world in 

 every kind of direction, but it does seem to hold good for Europe, 

 at least in the northern parts. The significance of this law, as of 

 the intermittent appearance of influenza, probably is that this is in 

 Europe not an indigenous disease, but one imported from Asia. 

 Possibly we may some day track it to its original home in the East, 

 as the old plague and the modern cholera have been traced. 



As regards, however, the European distribution of influenza, it 

 has often been thought to depend upon the prevalence of easterly 

 and north-easterly winds. There are many reasons for thinking 

 that the contagium of this disease is borne through the air by winds 

 rather than by human intercourse. One reason for thinking so is 

 that it does not appear to travel along the lines of human com- 

 munications, and, as is seen in the infection of ships at sea, is 

 capable of making considerable leaps. The mode of transmission, 

 too, would explain the remarkable facts noticed above of the sud- 

 den outbreak of the disease in certain places, and its attacking so 

 many people simultaneously, which could hardly be the case if 

 the infection had to be transmitted from one person to another. 



Another important question, and one certain to be often asked, 

 is suggested by the last ; namely, whether influenza is contagious. 

 During former epidemics great care was taken to collect the ex- 



