operation. This project will be further advanced at the Pan-Pacific Scientific Congress to be held in Honolulu from August 2 to 20. Notable features of the meeting were the presidential address by Dr. John C. Merriam who spoke on "The research spirit in the every-day affairs of the average man" and the address by Professor R. W. Brock, of the University of British Columbia, on "The last crusade under Allenby." On account of illness, Dr. Charles E. St. John, of Mount Wilson Observatory, was unable to give the Sigma XiPhi Beta Kappa lecture. His place was supplied by Dr. Paul W. Merrill, of Mount Wilson Observatory, who spoke on "The chemistry of the stars." Dr. William E. Ritter, director of the Scripps Institution for Biological Research, was elected president of the Pacific Division for the year 1920-21. Dr. William M. Dehn, professor of chemistry, University of Washington and Dr. E. P. Lewis, professor of physics, University of California, were elected members of the executive committee to serve five years and Dr. E. C. Franklin, professor of chemistry, Stanford University, was elected a member of the executive committee to fill the vacancy caused by the election of Dr. Ritter to the presidency. The officers of the Pacific Division for the coming year are accordingly as follows: Dr. William E. Ritter, president, Scripps Institution for Biological Research, La Jolla, Calif. Dr. Barton W. Evermann, vice-president and chairman of the executive committee, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, Calif. W. W. Sargeant, secretary-treasurer, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, Calif. MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Dr. Barton W. Evermann, chairman, California Dr. W. W. Campbell, Lick Observatory, Mount Dr. William M. Dehn, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. Dr. E. C. Franklin, Stanford University, Calif. Dr. C. E. Grunsky, Mechanics Institute Building, San Francisco, Calif. Dr. T. F. Hunt, University of California, Berkeley, Calif. Dr. E. P. Lewis, University of California, Berkeley, Calif. Dr. D. T. MacDougal, Desert Laboratory, Tucson, Arizona. An amendment to the constitution of the Pacific Division was proposed in executive session held Thursday evening June 17 to exclude Arizona and the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico from the territory of the division. This action was in conformity with that taken by the National Council which has caused these states to be included in a recently organized division of the American Association. As an encouraging sign that the purposes of the annual meeting are being in some measure fulfilled it is noted that considerable publicity was given to the meeting in the Seattle papers. At least two editorials appeared on topics related to the discussions and reports of the meetings were given in some detail. This would indicate that the public is becoming more generally interested in the progress of science and augurs well for the future support of scientific investigation. Announcement was made by the executive committee that the next annual meeting would be held in the San Francisco Bay region, the definite time and place to be determined later. This location will accommodate the largest number of members and should insure a good attendance for the 1921 meeting. FRIV, MICH. NEW SERIES SCIENCE VOL. LII, No. 1336 FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1920 SINGLE COPIES, 15 CTS. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $6.00 Physiologies by BurtOpitz General Library 3Jun21 University of Michigan Ann Arbor Mich A TEXT-BOOK ON PHYSIOLO resses the Dr. Burton-Opitz has produced a text-book of physiology Octavo of 1185 pages, illustrated. By RUSSELL Burton-Opitz, M.D., PH.D., Associate Professor of Physiology at ADVANCED LESSONS IN PRACTICAL PHYSIOLOGY This new work deals with the laboratory side of the subject and, in a sense, Octavo of 228 pages, illustrated. By RUSSEL BURTON-Opitz, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physiology at W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY Philadelphia and London NEW (3d) EDITION THE PRINCIPLES OF JUST READY HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY By ERNEST H. STARLING M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P. Jodrell Professor of Physiology in University Octavo, 1315 pages, with 579 Illustrations, 10 in colors. Cloth, $7.50, net HE BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL says: "In the third edition the student and medical practitioner will find a full and up-to-date account of the whole subject, clearly written, excellently illustrated and summarized by a practical physiologist of great knowledge and well-known originality. The first part of the volume deals with general physiology, or the structural, material and energetic bases of the body. In the second part the mechanisms of movement and sensation are described; a new feature in this edition is the introduction of chapters on vision by Dr. Hartridge, extending to over a hundred pages, in which the whole subject is very lucidly put before the reader. The third part describes the mechanisms of nutrition, including metabolism and the physiology of digestion, the part played by the circulating blood and lymph, respiration, renal excretion and other such subjects. (Publisher's Note.-Much new material has been inserted in the sections dealing with the internal secretions and ductless glands, the sense organs and the foregoing subjects.) The last part of the book is devoted to the subject of reproduction. Everywhere Professor Starling writes as a man of science interested primarily in the mechanics and chemistry of physiology, the concrete rather than the abstract, the practical reactions of the living body rather than the metaphysical conceptions or interpretations to which they may give rise." MEDICAL RESEARCH1 I HAVE said that I would not plunge with you this evening into the ocean of science; but if you are a little tired of hearing of the dependence of medicine upon science you may find refreshment or diversion in contemplating the debts of science to medicine. My old medical friend Mr. Meade, of Bradford, was almost the only man who knew much about flies at the time when Manson and Ross began to watch these little pests. Without medicine, bacteriology and the study of the cell would have made slow way; yet it is the study of the cells of bacteria, of algae, of protozoa-not of mandarins-which has brought us nearer to the secret of life. On the wonderful world of the cell I have spoken before. Professor Hopkins has lately described to us the almost incredible coexistence in it of different constitutions, phases, and events; though every change in any phase affects the equilibrium of the whole cell system. And every one of these is essential to the whole; "so long, for example, as a liver cell remains alive its glycogen constituent can not be wholly removed." If a cell be so ground up as to become more homogeneous, its reactions fall out at haphazard, and the cell dies by mutual destruction of its parts. This process of nature is illustrated on a mighty scale to-day in the disintegration of the Russian social organism. Some of the apparently simple cell constituents, hæmoglobin for instance, are incredibly complex; this substance is specific for every kind of animal; in allied species, if concordant, it is not identical. Of the chromosomes I need say nothing; except to hope that as X rays have analyzed crystalline structure some such rays may analyze nuclear constitutions. By another way, medicine has promoted research on organic syntheses; and conversely on 1 From the address of the president of the British Medical Association at the Cambridge meeting. the reduction of foods into the more complex amino-acids before being rewoven into the tissues of life. From medicine began our recognition of the plowman as the first parent of animals and man, and our fuller knowledge of "the green plant as the fundamental capitalist." Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they Finde their acquaintance there. In the dark soil the nitrifying bacteria live on inorganic matter; so in the light some inorganic colloidal systems can build up formaldehyde (B. Moore). Medicine has introduced the chemist to the domain of the hormones and chalones, themselves also bodies of the simpler chemical constitution-some crystallizable, all able to resist prolonged boiling blended into a wonderful physico-chemical coordinating system, secretly at work all the time under the diagrams of the innocent neurologist. We may suppose indeed that every active tissue of the body, or every cell, even of bone and skin, or of the substrate of mind itself, like every individual of a social organism, contributes some element to the organic whole, some inward production necessary for growths, or for signals. There may be a world of pathological (alien or perverted) hormones as yet unexplored. May the dive inwards of epithelial cells in cancer be due to some inversion of chemotaxis, possibly under the influence of an alien (parasitic?) enzyme? Within the body then all parts are the "environment" of each-so that we have both an inner and an outer "climate," an aspect of the microcosm not to be forgotten in the field of mental disease. Thus it is that "Each part may call the farthest, brother." And these agents have a field of action far beyond the body, as we see for example in the sexual hormones. If there be a migration hormone its sphere is the world. Again, is it not largely by medicine that the study of enzymes has thrown light upon the operations of catalysis which, like the rollers under a log or, as we now think, more by en gagement and disengagement like rack and pinion, is incessantly forwarding, by various intermediate series, and by reversible actions at points of concentrative equilibrium, the processes of nature? The vitamines may be of this kind, agents which have upset our cruder calculations of nutritive values; for instance, in the feeding of children, we no longer take cane sugar to be the vital equivalent of lactose, nor margarine of butter; not all the nitrogen of nutrition is included in protein, nor are phospho- and amino-lipins, nucleic acid, amino-acids, and so on, mutually convertible in the body. We must admit that the fundamental principles of nutrition have yet to be redetermined. Moreover the war has forced us to remember the mutual dependence of food kinds; that of course fats and carbohydrates are not wholly independent or equivalent; the carbohydrates can not make up any great lack of fats, nor can oxidation of fats proceed in the absence of carbohydrates. Another system of balances in the body, as of the reciprocal functions of lung and kidney, is more obviously .chemical. Medicine has taught us how the lung deals with the CO2 ions, the kidneys with sundry other acids, so that the blood reaction is maintained with extreme nicety; and that other systems-for example, the vasomotor-are probably little less sensitive, and that there are other subtle causes of anoxaemia besides the cardio-pulmonary (Haldane); so that in medicine it is of the first importance that in all abnormal conditions the oxygen tension of bloods should be systematically ascertained and compared. The hydrogen ion concentration is consistently higher upon flesh diet, lower upon vegetable diet; but I think we have not yet learned to discriminate so subtly as Charles Kean who is said to have chosen his viands according to the parts he had to play-pork for tyrants, beef for murderers, mutton for lovers. Next after the origin of life itself, from ancient times to this day no enigma has attracted and baffled the curious mind of man more than that of living "form." Many of our keenest minds-Haldane, D'Arcy Thompson, Osborn, Dendy, McBride, I mention a few |