288 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



M. Callas has examined the properties of the new drug resorcine, proclaimed 

 to be a sovereign remedy for rheumatism. It possesses the same properties as 

 phenic and salyciUc acids ; it is less toxical than the former, and is a stimulant 

 for the central nervous system. As an anti-rheumatic, it presents no special 

 claims. 



Madam Dr. Schipilofif attributes cadaverific rigidity to the acidification of the 

 fibre of muscles. This opinion, at one time current, is now abandoned, since 

 alkaline injections, that ought to neutralize acids, do not prevent that rigidity. 



MINING AND ENGINEERING. 



ENGINEERING : PAST AND PRESENT. 



ADDRESS OF ASHBEL WELCH, 



President of the American Society of Civil Engineers, at the Annual Convention at Washington, 



D. C, May i6, 1882. 



I do not propose this evening to undertake any general survey of the engi- 

 neering field. For such a survey, I refer you back to Mr. Chanute's address of 

 two years ago. I shall not attempt to glean after him. But I shall speak of 

 several disconnected subjects of present interest, and give some reminiscences 

 showing the contrasts between the past and the present; and in such reminiscences 

 I shall disinter the buried memories of some of the great engineers of the past. 



When we look around on the engineering works recently completed, or now 

 in progress or in contemplation, the first thing that strikes us is their extraordinary 

 magnitude. 



Prominent among them is the St. Gothard tunnel, passing for 48,900 feet, or 

 more than nine and a quarter miles, through the base of the great Alpine chain 

 which has hitherto been so formidable a barrier between southern and central 

 Europe, a thousand feet below the vale of Urseren and the villages of Andermatt 

 and Hospenthal, and 6, 500 feet, or a mile and a quarter, below the eternal snows 

 that cover the crest of the mountain. The cost was about $12,000,000, or nearly 

 $250 per foot lineal. This tunnel is nearly 9,000 feet, or a mile and two-thirds 

 longer than the Mt. Cenis tunnel, by far the longest previously built. 



Such stupendous works have been made practically possible by the com- 

 pressed air drill, and the high explosives now used. In my active engineering 

 days, rocks were drilled for blasting only by the power of human muscle, either 

 by one or two men churning a hole in the rock with a heavy rod some six feet 

 long, or by one man holding and slowly turning a short drill, and another man 

 driving it into the rock with a sledge hammer. Then came the steam rock drill, 

 then the compressed air drill. The compressed air not only does the work, but 



