IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
17 
ANNUAL ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. 
NEEDED CSANGES IN SCIENTIFIC METHODS.* 
BY H. W. NORRIS. 
We live in a period that sees wonderful attainments in sci- 
ence and art, so that in theory and jjractice many think the 
summum honum has been reached. It is pre-eminently the age of 
science and the application of scientific methods to all phases 
of human activity. The forces of nature have been made sub- 
ject to the will of man. The relations of man to his surround- 
ings have been carefully considered. The province of human 
intellect has been made the ground of scientific investigations. 
We now see scientific methods foremost and uppermost, and all 
human thought is more or less permeated and even molded by 
the new ways of looking at the facts of our experience and rea- 
son. But with all our enlightenment no other age has equaled 
ours in the prevalence of unblushing fraud and boasting 
duplicity. 
For every skilled specialist in surgery we have a dozen 
quacks, whose outrageous pretensions are only equaled by the 
astonishingly large patronage of the over-credulous. The rep- 
utable physician struggles along in his attempts to right the 
wrongs of the human body according to the best approved 
methods, and too frequently receives as his reward only non- 
bankable pronQises, while Dr. Humbug puts up at the best 
hotels, advertises to cure all the ills human flesh is heir to, and 
reaps a harvest of shekels. The name of Dr. X’s sarsaparilla 
is emblazoned a^ong every thoroughfare in the countrjr, and the 
* When this address was nearly completed a copy of a recent lecture by President 
J. M. Coulter, of Lake Forest University, was received, in which were expressed many 
ideas quite similar to some contained in this paper. Wherein the writer has inten- 
tionally borrowed from President Coulter, due credit has been given. 
The Botanical Outloo'k. An address delivered before the Botanical Seminary of the 
University of Nebraska, May 27, 1895. 
