having direction of the experimental plant at Thompson, Nevada. In connection with this work, Mr. Weidlein developed a process for the use of sulphur dioxide in hydrometallurgy. In 1916 Mr. Weidlein went to the Mellon Institute as assistant director and was later appointed associate director. He became acting director in 1918, during the leave of absence of Colonel Raymond F. Bacon as chief of the Technical Division of the Chemical Warfare Service. In 1918 Mr. Weidlein was appointed chemical expert for the war Industries Board. The forty-eight industrial fellowships for scientific investigations of problems of manufacturing in operation at the Mellon Institute cover a wide range of problems in chemical and mechanical technology, and Mr. Weidlein maintains a constantly active supervision over these researches. SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS DR. SIMON FLEXNER, the director of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, was elected honorary foreign member of the Academie Royal de Médicine in Brussels, Belgium, on June 25. Ar a meeting of the board of directors of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, held on September 26, Rear Admiral William C. Braisted, former Surgeon General of the U. S. Navy, and formerly president of the American Medical Association, was reelected president of the college. AT the meeting of the Rochester Medical Association, held on October 3, at Rochester, under the presidency of Dr. Loron W. Howk, Dr. George H. Whipple, dean of the new medical school, University of Rochester, was entertained at dinner. In his speech he outlined the plan of the new school which was made possible by the gifts of the Rockefeller Foundation and of Mr. George Eastman. DR. L. L. CAMPBELL, head of the physics department of Simmons College, Boston, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. DR. A. D. BEVAN, past president of the American Medical Association, has received the title of Officer of the Legion of Honor for services rendered to medical science and education and as president of the American Medical Association during the war. DR. ETTORE MARCHIAVA, known for his researches on malaria, has been nominated an emeritus professor at Rome. THE Sultan of Egypt has conferred the Order of the Nile (second class) upon Mr. Owen Richards, director of the School of Medicine, Cairo, in recognition of valuable services rendered. DR. NORMAN MACLEOD HARRIS, formerly assistant professor of hygiene and bacteriology in the University of Chicago, has accepted the position of chief of the division of medical research in the Department of Health of the Dominion of Canada, at Ottawa. DR. WILLIAM C. KENDALL, Scientific assistant and ichthyologist of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries at Washington, has resigned his position after thirty-three years of service, to accept the position of ichthyologist in the Roosevelt Wild Life Forest Experiment Station of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse. He takes the position made vacant by Professor T. L. Hankinson, who has accepted an appointment in the Michigan State Normal College, Ypsilanti. H. L. RUSSELL, dean of the college of agriculture in the University of Wisconsin and director of the Wisconsin Experiment Station and Agricultural Extension Service, has been appointed a member of the committee to manage the agricultural loan agency of the district for the War Finance corporation. DR. JOHN DEWEY, professor of philosophy in Columbia University, has returned to New York after having spent three years in the Orient, having been occupied as educational adviser to the Chinese government. DR. ALBERT H. WRIGHT, of the department of zoology of Cornell University, spent a large part of the summer making a study of the animals, birds, and fishes in the Okeefinokee Swamp, lying between Georgia and Florida. DR. JAMES E. ACKERT, parasitologist at Kansas State Agricultural College Experiment Station, has resumed his work at Manhattan, after spending four months in hookworm investigations in Trinidad as a member of the expedition of the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. DR. N. J. VAVILOV, professor of farm crops in the Petrograd Agricultural College and director of the bureau of applied botany and plant breeding is now in the United States on leave of absence to study methods followed in his field of work by American colleges and universities. J. W. RICHARDS, professor of metallurgy at Lehigh University, died suddenly on October 12, at the age of fifty-seven years. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS A BEQUEST of $200,000 to Harvard University, the income to be devoted to the investigation of the origin and cure of cancer, is contained in the will of the late Hiram F. Mills, the hydraulic engineer of Hingham, Mass. After numerous public and private bequests, including $10,000 each to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the residue of the estate is to be used to establish a fund for charitable purposes among mill workers in Lawrence and Lowell. THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that the foundations have been laid for the new University of Jerusalem, to which the Jewish physicians in the United States are giving $1,000,000 to build the medical college, of which the inside will be furnished in accord with American standards, with white tiled operating rooms, while the exterior will conform to the general plan of the university. Dr. Albert Einstein will be dean of the university, and an American surgeon, assisted by an American staff, will be at the head of the medical department. Patrick Geddes, professor of botany of the University of Edinburgh, has drawn up the plans for the building, which will be open to students from all countries. DR. LAURENCE J. EARLY has been appointed associate professor in bacteriology, and Dr. Percy Lawrence DeNoyelles assistant professor in pathology at the Albany Medical College. DR. LESTER S. HILL, of the University of Montana, has been appointed associate professor of mathematics in the University of Maine. G. Ross ROBERTSON has completed his graduate study at the University of Chicago and has been appointed instructor in the Southern Branch of the University of California, at Los Angeles. While in Chicago Mr. Robertson also assisted Dr. Stieglitz in his Public Health Service work, as junior chemist. MR. C. A. GUNNS, formerly zoological technician with the late Professor Sedgwick, of Cambridge University and the Imperial College of Science, London, and for the past five years in the same position with Professor McBride of the latter institution, has become zoological technician in the Department of Zoology, Kansas State Agricultural College. DR. DAVID HEPBURN, professor of anatomy and dean of the medical faculty, University College, Cardiff, has been appointed dean of the faculty of medicine in the University of Wales. PROFESSOR O. NÄGELI has succeeded Professor Eichhorst in the chair of clinical medicine at Zürich. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE AN IDEAL HOST TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: The following observation on the symbiotic relation between a large hammerhead shark and a shark sucker (Ramora) seems worthy of record. On July 5, 1911, a hammerhead shark ten feet two inches long and two feet seven inches across the head was taken in the Bureau of Fisheries trap in Buzzards Bay at Woods Hole, Mass. The shark was towed by the tail to the stone shark pool at the Fisheries wharf. After this strenuous trip from the trap my curiosity was aroused at seeing a small ramora about sixteen inches long clinging to the side of the shark. So far as I could discover no one had seen the ramora either in the trap or in the shark pool. Mr. Vinal Edwards tried to catch the ramora with a dip net whereupon, to our surprise, it swam quickly towards the shark's head and, with a peculiar twist of the tail, entered the posterior gill slit on the right side of the head and disappeared, presumably into the shark's mouth. It seems possible that the ramora made the trip from the trap in the same way. In this case therefore the shark offered free transportation, food and shelter, making him practically an ideal host. WOODS HOLE, Mass. REYNOLD A. SPAETH A REMEDY FOR MANGE IN WHITE RATS EVERYONE who has kept a colony of white rats under laboratory conditions has doubtless been confronted with the necessity of dealing with the mange-like skin disease which affects the edges of the ears, the nose, tail and the skin of the body. The organism is one of the species of Notoedres, the itch and scab mite. The conventional remedy in this laboratory has been a mixture of sulfur and vaseline but I have had no success with it. Recently, Kennedy1 reported the use of cedar oil for this disease but cautioned care because of its anesthetic properties. I have had satisfactory results with a 2 per cent. solution of chloramine-T. The crusty scabs on the ears, tail and among the hair on the shoulders are rubbed vigorously with cotton soaked in the solution and usually yield to such daily treatment in less than a week. The peculiar long horny growths on the nose are best treated by cutting close with a sharp scissors and treating the resulting lesion daily with the antiseptic. Routine sterilization of cages is desirable in any case. After surgical operations the rats often insist on removing the sutures with their teeth. Treatment of the wound twice daily with chloramine-T solution will give satisfactory closure in a very short time. ARTHUR H. SMITH QUOTATIONS THE TECHNICIANS IN INDUSTRY THE Society of Technical Engineers has just published a journal in which its position and policy are for the first time clearly defined. This society represents a movement of great interest, which has for some time been quietly advancing, but has attracted very little attention, either general or official. It has not escaped the notice of employers or of trade unions, who regard it with mingled feelings, and intelligent students of industrial affairs have carefully noted its rise; but since it has made no stir the public have heard nothing of it and official circles have turned a blind eye on it. Yet it marks a large change in the evolution of industry. The technicians, as represented by the Society of Technical Engineers, are not only engaged in industry, but are an essential factor in its largest branches, and one continually and rapidly advancing in importance with the development of applied science. More than any other element, they hold the key to the economic future in the field of practical operations. In a sense, this has been recognized by the immense amount of attention devoted to technical education in recent years. The backward state of technology in this country and the wonderful superiority of our industrial rivals were incessantly pressed upon British manufacturers before the war, but the importance attached to technical training was not extended to those who receive and apply it in practice. They have been taken for granted as part of the industrial apparatus. This was conspicuously shown during the war. Employers and labor leaders were constantly taken into council, and distinctions have been lavished on both, but the technicians, who had far more to do with the actual business of producing munitions than either, were wholly ignored. So, too, they are habitually overlooked in industrial inquiries, conferences, disputes and conciliation machinery. In the discussion of industrial relations and economic problems the old categories of Capital and Labour, never adequate and now quite out of date, are still used. It is not perceived that a class has arisen which fits into neither, but is equally important, and, indeed, less easily replaced than either. It is overlooked because it has not asserted itself. Now that this society has given a lead by settling its policy and position, the movement may be accelerated. It has decided not to join either employers or trade unions, but to occupy an independent and intermediate position, and, while protecting its own interests, to cooperate with both in promoting the advancement of British engineering industries. This decision is of great interest from several points of view. It will not please employers or trade unions, but we believe that it is sound and to the public advantage. An independent organization, powerful from the indispensable part in industry played by its members, and standing between employers and workmen, in intimate touch with both, may come to possess a decisive influence in holding the balance between them. The engineers, in particular, have a unique position which differentiates them from the clerical blackcoats, who do not come in contact with the manual workers. At the Engineering Conference held last July Mr. John Brodie, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, referred to this in connection with industrial disputes, and suggested that the engineers, as a technical body, were peculiarly fitted by their knowledge of workmen and impartial standpoint for the investigation and judicial treatment of differences. This is a promising line of development.The London Times. SCIENTIFIC BOOKS History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration in its Relation to Anatomic Science and the Graphic Arts. By LUDWIG CHOULANT. Translated and edited, with notes and a biography, by MORTIMER FRANK, B.S., M.D. With a biographical sketch of the translator and two additional sections by Fielding H. Garrison, M.D., and Edward C. Streeter, M.D. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. xxvii, 435 pages. In 1852 Dr. Ludwig Choulant published his indispensable history of anatomical illustration. Although neither an anatomist nor artist, being a professor of medicine addicted to bibliography, he made both anatomy and art his debtor, even at the cost of some impairment of character. For, adoring the antique, he became the outspoken opponent of new doctrines in medicine, ridiculing the sound methods of physical examination, and was, in the words of his biographer," the foe of progress." Although like all before him he deprecated book-wisdom and authority-worship in others, yet his own career shows the danger of these siren studies -of regarding, for example, the thirteenth the greatest of centuries, or of unwisely inquiring, "What is the cause that the former days were better than these?" However, Dr. Choulant does not extol the past in his impassionate historical record, and it is quite possible that his biographers, from whom we have quoted, have dealt with him unkindly. In the preface he sets the limits of his work. It is not intended to be a history of anatomy, or of anatomists, or even of anatomical discovery, but merely of anatomical illustration, following two lines-that of scientific anatomy and that of artistic anatomy. The study is further restricted to the anatomy of man in its most obvious features. Many of the illustrations are of the human skeleton, and most of the others show the superficial muscles or general disposition of the viscera, so that the frontier of anatomy alone is entered. From Choulant's viewpoint, perhaps, Dr. Garrison writes that "anatomical illustration was neglected through the growth of histology, morphology, and embryology." The author proceeds, in a historical introduction, to define three stages and seven periods of anatomical drawing. Although this chapter contains much interesting exposition, the proposed stages and periods are chiefly of academic interest. It is followed by a very brief account of ancient and mediæval illustrations, with a superb chromo-lithographic reproduction of miniatures from a manuscript of Galen's Opera varia. After this the anatomist-artists and artist-anatomists together are presented chrono logically, with terse comments and compact data on as much of their work as is relevant. This involves tireless research and great bibliographic resources, and is an instance of what we like to regard as typical German scholarship. The illustrations were supplied by a publisher, Rudolph Weigel, personally devoted to the graphic arts, who came to love this enterprise." They are well executed woodcuts, copied from important and generally rare originals, and since the pages are usually foxed, the book itself, though not old, has the flavor of antiquity. That it would suffer from an artistic standpoint in an American edition would be expected, and such is indeed the case. The miniatures in color and the red-chalk drawing are replaced by gray half-tones, many more of which with their muddy backgrounds and occasional obscurity of essential details have been introduced. The woodcut facsimiles in Chou lant appear as "process" line-drawings, since it was recognized that this would give better results than photographic copies from worn and library-stamped originals. Dr. Mortimer Frank has made a very able translation, rendering into English not only the German text, but Latin, Italian and other quotations. He has expanded greatly the accounts of certain authors, increasing that of Mondino, for example, by seven pages; and owing to Sudhoff's researches he could supplement Choulant's brief treatment of early manuscript illustrations by a large and separate chapter, which becomes discursive and quite different from Choulant's work. It raises the question whether the Alexandrian school of anatomy produced anatomical drawings, now lost, which were the source of the crude figures found in Provençal, Persian and Thibetan manuscripts. These figures have in common, among other things, a sitting or straddling posture; all of them may have come, according to Cowdry's recent publication, from still earlier Chinese sources, but the drawings which he has found to substantiate this show little more of anatomy than a strange posture. It seems probable, however, that anatomical illustration had a long history before the renaissance, little of which may ever be known. The mediæval pictures show further that Jacobus Sylvius was not without some justification in making his great mistake, namely that because the physician must, as he said, view and handle the body, anatomical pictures would always be a hindrance "serving only to gratify the eyes of silly women." 1 Thus one very able anatomist lost a place in any history of anatomic art, but it seems unnecessarily severe to describe his pupil's achievements as tremendous and limitless"; nor should the anatomist Marc' Antonio Della Torre, who employed Leonardo for making illustrations, be lost in the effulgence, when Leonardo " steps to a place of intolerant central glory." Great anatomists who neither made pictures nor had them made for them, are rigidly debarred; whereas others of relatively slender attainments but given to pictorial illustration appear of magnified importance. None more so than Casserius, whose ornate drawings of the vocal organs of all creatures from sheep to crickets, in folio plates with floral festoons and turnip embellishments, mark the beginning of the "fourth period." Count is made, however, from his work on general human anatomy. Concerning the Casserian plate chosen by Dr. Frank to replace an immodest selection in Choulant, Dr. Garrison writes as follows: It represents an eviscerated female figure, of lovely proportions, apparently floating in mid-air, in the rapt, ecstatic attitude of some transfiguration scene of Raphael or Corregio. In sheer beauty, this figure is comparable with the robust goddesses in the Aurora Fresco of Guido Reni in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. A comely woman, surely, but one attached to earth though her feet are below the limit of the picture! On the whole we prefer the description of these plates by Holmes, written with his poetic license and abandon: In the giant folio of Spigelius lovely ladies display their viscera with a coquettish grace implying that it is rather a pleasure than otherwise to show the lace-like omentum, and hold up their appendices epiploicæ as if they were saying," these are our jewels.'' 1 Dr. Frank Baker, in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, Vol. XX., 1909, p. 332. |