SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
It is to be anticipated that future progress, both in preventive and 
curative medicine, will be based necessarily on minute investigation of 
a purely chemical kind. All the diverse branches of modern medicine, 
whether curative or preventive, are rapidly changing and reappearing 
as highly specialized and very intricate sections of organic chemistry. 
The attack upon syphilis, which until recently was one of the several 
diseases generally regarded as practically hopeless, consists in intro- 
ducing an arsenical compound into the blood-stream for the purpose of 
eradicating the organism by simple chemical poisoning, before killing 
the patient. The modern treatment of diphtheria, which has reduced 
this previously very fatal malady to comparative triviality, depends 
upon the application of the well-known doctrine of chemical equili- 
brium, in which a chemical reaction, slowly progressing, is inhibited 
by introducing into the reacting system a considerable quantity of one 
of the products of the reaction. Methods of treatment, based entirely 
upon a sound appreciation of chemical science, have gradually and 
furtively taken their place in clinical work; they provide a foundation 
for further progress on the same lines, and we may look forward to a 
time when all the great scourges of the human race—influenza, phthisis, 
cancer, and syphilis—will have lost their horrors. From an Imperial 
point of view, it is impossible to overrate the importance attaching to 
the intensive cultivation of this branch of chemical science in au 
Empire such as ours, which has to administer vast tropical colonies in 
which malaria, sleeping sickness, cholera, and a host of other indi- 
genous diseases have in the past impeded colonization. 
The pursuit of new scientific knowledge labours under one very 
grave disadvantage. It is impossible to select for study any branch 
of experimental science without being convinced that, no matter how 
remote from human interest the subject may be, sooner or later the 
results obtained will find practical application. The discovery of the 
radio-active element, radium—with all its potent consequences in re- 
volutionizing our fundamental conceptions of matter and energy—a 
discovery which began with Crookes and Becquerel, was brought to 
fruition by Madame Ourie, and has yielded most portentous results at 
the hands of ‘Thomson and Rutherford—has involved us more rapidly 
and more deeply in the subtle details of the constitution of the Universe 
than any other made throughout the whole history of science; yet many 
people already carry watches which can be read in the dark with the 
aid of figuring done in radium paint. The element helium was dis- 
covered by Lockyer in 1868 as existing in the outer atmosphere of the 
sun with the aid of the spectroscope; the statement by Lockyer that 
he had discovered this light gaseous element in the sun’s chromosphere 
aroused merely academic interest, and until a few years ago helium 
had not been found on our earth. An inquiry initiated by the British 
Admiralty showed that large quantities of helium are obtainable on the 
earth’s surface, and, had the war continued for another six months, 
our uninflammable airships, filled with helium, would have been drop- 
ping bombs on Berlin. Many instances similar to these may be quoted 
to show that every great advance in experimental science made in the 
past has rendered unexpected but nevertheless invaluable service in 
connexion with practical affairs; all experimental scientific discovery, 
in fact, savours of the shop, and sooner or later becomes an adjunct to 
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