IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
21 
On such an occasion as this it seems almost a necessity to attempt some 
review of the progress made in the lines of work for which we stand but in 
addressing myself to this task I am more than ever impressed with the rapidity 
of this progress and my inability to discuss it. 
This Survey applies more especially to the last quarter century, as this is 
the period most familiar to me, and of which I can speak most intelligently. 
So many principles of fundamental importance in science have been dis- 
covered or elucidated during the quarter century that it makes a pretty 
full record if one wants to attempt to compass it. Among those of especial 
interest are the determinations concerning the kinetic theory of matter, the 
progress concerning certain phases of the theory of evolution, the newer as- 
pects of the theories for cosmic evolution, the application of Mendel’s law in 
the problems of heredity, the atomic theory of electricity, and of course 
numerous others which we need not stop to mention. In some of these there 
has been such a complete change of view that one who goes back to his school 
science of a quarter century ago must feel quite lost in the light of new dis- 
coveries or imagine himself to have been unconscious for a period and waked 
up in a new era. 
There is perhaps no field or phase of science in which the change of at- 
titude has been more prominent than in the application of science to the 
problems of everyday life. Science and human welfare as represented in 
industry, in public health and sanitation, in the betterment of social con- 
ditions, are being linked closer and closer together and the progress in the 
past quarter century has been more rapid than in any other period of the 
world’s history. 
To review the different branches of applied science and to show the details 
of progress in each would be an impossible task for one person in a brief 
address and, moreover, much of it is an oft-repeated and familiar tale. We all 
know something of the marvelous strides in medicine and surgery, one of 
the most conspicuous fields of science in relation to human welfare, though 
I doubt if any of us outside the body of active workers in this particular 
field realize the revolutionary changes that have taken place in surgical 
methods and therapeutic agencies as a result of the application of scientific 
discoveries in the realm of physiology and biology. Bacteriology alone, which 
has had practically its entire development within the quarter century, has 
changed the whole basis of treatment in hosts of diseases and given an en- 
tirely new foundation for preventive medicine and sanitation. Still more, 
recently Protozoology has entered the field with a prese.nt record of many 
most serious diseases determined as of protozoan basis, and a promise of 
solution for many more that have baffled medical science for centuries. 
In the field of industry the changes of the quarter century have been so 
enormous as to defy description, at least by one who has not followed the 
growth in detail. A complete metamorphosis, as a biologist might say, has 
occurred in many trades and manufacturing industries and practically all 
based on scientific discoveries and applications. Chemistry, physics, mechanics, 
biology, geology, and other branches of science have contributed their share 
in this evolution. 
In agriculture we see this process at present in one of its most active periods 
and we can only predict from rapidity of change what the future may bring. 
