t be held at Washington, beginning on November 9. The conference is called for general discussion and consideration of matters affecting radio communication in the United States from the viewpoint of the public interest. The conference will include representatives of all interested commercially in any degree in radio activities. Representation will be accorded also to the Institute of Radio Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the National Electric Light Association and other bodies.

THE University of North Carolina, the oldest state university in the country, will celebrate on October 12 the semi-centennial of the reopening of the institution following the civil war. In the afternoon the dedication of the new chemistry building, recently completed at a cost of $400,000, will take place. Dr. P. P. Claxton, former United States commissioner of education, will deliver the principal address.

THE executive committee of the American Medical Library Association is making an investigation of the present high cost of German medical publications. It is hoped to determine whether or not concerted action on the part of medical libraries of America will cause German publishers to reduce the cost of their publications. In order to obtain some joint action in the matter, those willing to aid in the movement are asked to communicate with Miss Margaret Brinton, librarian, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

A PARTY of sixteen French engineers have arrived in this country, where they will conduct a six weeks' investigation of American power-plant practice.

AN international institute at Rome for the study and cure of malaria has been proposed at the International Anti-Malaria Congress in session there. The Italian government has promised support.

A NEW department of geophysics has been established by St. Louis University, to investigate problems relating to the dynamics of earth and its atmosphere. THE Bufalini Prize of 6,000 lire is offered for the best work presented on the subject of the necessity of the experimental method in study of all the sciences as opposed to a speculative and dogmatic philosophy-with a review of what this method has contributed to special sciences during the twenty years since the last awarding of the prize. The competing articles must be in Italian or Latin, with the name in a sealed envelope, and be received before July 30, 1926, addressed to the Segreteria della R. Universita, Piazza S. Marco, Florence.

ACCORDING to the Prague correspondent of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the chamber of deputies has passed the bill creating the institute of hygiene in Prague, by joint action of the

Czecho-Slovak government and the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. The institute, which will be under the ministry of health, will make investigations for the public health service, foster education in preventive medicine and take care of the education of the health personnel. The government may create branches of the institute in provincial cities, especially where there are medical faculties. The ministry of health will create a special advisory council to the institute of hygiene. It was pointed out to the parliament that a modern health organization needs the closest contact with scientific investigators in preventive medicine. The opposition, including the communists, voted for the bill, which passed the house of deputies unanimously. The bill will come before the senate in September, and there is no doubt that it will be accepted without any material change. The date for the official opening of the institute has been set for the end of September.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

ANNOUNCEMENT has been made that residents of Baltimore have contributed half of the $1,500,000 which is being sought as this city's share of the $10,890,000 fund for development of the Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE, at Lubbock, a state institution with an initial appropriation of $1,000,000 for buildings, opened its doors formally with 742 students on October 1. Its program includes arts and sciences, engineering, agriculture and home economics. During the first year only freshmen and sophomores are admitted, the junior and senior courses to be added in 1926. Among the faculty are included the following: A. H. Leidigh, dean, W. L. Stangel and C. H. Mahoney in agriculture; R. A. Studhalter in biology; W. T. Read, W. L. Ray and F. D. Galbraith in chemistry; Wm. J. Miller, dean, and E. W. Camp in engineering; L. T. Patton in geology; Miss Margaret Weeks, dean, Miss Johnnie McCrery and Miss Dorothy McFarlane in home economics; J. N. Michie, D. A. Flanders, W. M. Whyburn and Miss Elizabeth S. Stafford in mathematics, and E. F. George and C. S. Mast in physics.

THE two new positions of assistant professor of epidemiology and assistant professor of industrial hygiene in medicine have recently been filled in the Institute of Public Health of the School of Medicine of Columbia University. Dr. Alton S. Pope, on completion of studies on scarlet fever carried out chiefly at Providence, R. I., under the guidance of Dr. Charles V. Chapin, has assumed the duties of assistant professor of epidemiology; Dr. Frank G. Pedley,

having resigned as physician at the Cheney Silk Mills at South Manchester, Conn., is the new assistant professor of industrial hygiene now engaged in the development of an occupational disease class at the Vanderbilt Clinic.

AT the University of Pennsylvania the following promotions are announced in the mathematics department: Dr. M. J. Babb from assistant professor to professor; Dr. J. D. Eshleman from instructor to assistant professor, and N. E. Rutt from assistant to instructor. New appointments are: Dr. P. A. Caris, assistant professor; W. A. Bristol, instructor; H. M. Lufkin, instructor, and M. Brooks and L. Zippin, assistants.

AT Yale University Dr. William Clark Trow, associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Cincinnati, has been appointed visiting professor of educational psychology; Edward A. Bott, associate professor of psychology in the University of Toronto, visiting associate professor of psychology, and Dr. Barnett Fred Dodge, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, assistant professor of chemical engineering.

DR. HAROLD HIBBERT, professor of industrial chemistry at Yale University, has been appointed to the professorship of cellulose chemistry at McGill University, Montreal.

DR. L. R. CLEVELAND, National Research Council fellow in zoology at the Johns Hopkins University, has been appointed assistant professor of protozoology in the department of tropical medicine at the Harvard Medical School.

DR. HARLEY E. FRENCH, formerly professor of anatomy and dean of the school of medicine of the University of North Dakota, has been appointed assistant professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

DR. ALEXANDER Low, reader in embryology, attached to the anatomy department, Aberdeen University, has been appointed Regius Professor of Anatomy in that university in place of Professor Reid, resigned.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

TRYPARSAMIDE

A RECENT issue of SCIENCE (September 18, 1925, lxii, 251) contained an article by Professor Chauncey D. Leake, of the University of Wisconsin, in which he relates the history of a cooperative organization composed of members of the faculties of the University of Wisconsin and Northwestern University and others associated with them. Referring to the achievements

of this organization, Professor Leake mentions (page 255) "the finding that tryparsamide . . . is of great value in the treatment of syphilis of the central nervous system" as "the most important achievement of this cooperative research which has been published to date." He prefaces his account of this achievement by saying that it "has been heralded as the greatest advance in the therapy of syphilis since Ehrlich introduced salvarsan." In recounting "the steps leading up to this discovery" Professor Leake makes the unqualified statement that "Ehrlich's preparations (arsphenamine and neo-arsphenamine) are of no value in neuro-syphilis" and he makes it appear that the "finding" referred to above was the result of chance studies of drugs that "had been discarded for use in general types of syphilitic infections" based on certain theoretical conceptions of Professor Loevenhart and Professor Lorenz and refers to tryparsamide specifically as "among such substances."

For the benefit of the readers of SCIENCE, it should be pointed out that the statements made by Professor Leake concerning the importance of tryparsamide and the value of the arsphenamines in neuro-syphilis are not representative of current medical opinion; furthermore, his version of the events leading to the discovery of the therapeutic value of tryparsamide in neuro-syphilis is a novel one and does not agree at all with the brief but clear statement given in the first four paragraphs of the paper by Lorenz, Loevenhart and their associates1 or with the more detailed account given by Brown and Pearce,2 who studied the action of tryparsamide in animals and conducted the preliminary clinical investigations which formed the basis of its application to neuro-syphilis as stated by Lorenz, Loevenhart, Bleckwenn and Hodges.

There are few, if any, syphilologists who would subscribe to Professor Leake's statement concerning the lack of value of the arsphenamines in neuro-syphilis. On the contrary, these drugs are generally regarded as the most effective therapeutic agents that are available for the treatment of most forms of neuro-syphilis and as of some value in all forms of the disease.

Tryparsamide is still used less extensively than the arsphenamines and its usefulness in neuro-syphilis appears to be more restricted. In the present state of our knowledge, no final judgment of its value can be made, but the consensus of opinion among those who have investigated this subject is that tryparsamide is of great value in properly selected cases and

1 Lorenz, W. F., Loevenhart, A. S., Bleckwenn, W. J., and Hodges, F. J., J. A. M. A., 1923, May 26, lxxx, No. 21, 1497-1502.

2 Brown, Wade H., and Pearce, Louise, J. A. M. A., 1924, Jan. 5, lxxxii, 5–9.

even now it occupies an important position among the remedies that are available for the treatment of neuro-syphilis. Professor Leake's enthusiastic estimate of its value may be prophetic but can not be accepted as an accomplished fact.

Finally, there is some doubt as to whether one would be justified in referring to the results of the clinical investigations carried out at the University of Wisconsin as an "achievement of this cooperative research." All the work on which the application of tryparsamide to the treatment of neuro-syphilis ♪ was based was done by an independent group of workers; the study of tryparsamide by Lorenz, Loevenhart and their associates was not in any sense a chance study of "arsenical compounds which had been discarded for use in the general types of syphilitic infection," but this study was undertaken in response to a specific suggestion based on the results of laboratory and preliminary clinical investigations. The connection of the Wisconsin group of workers with the development of tryparsamide was, therefore, essentially the same as that of Alt and other clinicians with the development of salvarsan in that they were given the opportunity of carrying out one phase of the clinical investigations necessary to the determination of the probable therapeutic value of tryparsamide.

ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH

WADE H. BROWN

IMMUNITY TO TUBERCULOSIS BY THE INJECTION OF EXTRACT OF HEART MUSCLE

THE article by Professor Elliott C. Prentiss in the issue of SCIENCE for July 31 prompts me to make a brief report of some experimental work undertaken a goodly number of years ago, but for various extraneous reasons never carried to completion. In my work as pathologist to the Philadelphia General Hospital and to the University Hospital, I was struck by the rarity, in fact, the virtual non-occurrence, of tuberculosis of the heart muscle. This seemed to me to have but one of two explanations: (a) that the activity of the intracardiac circulation was such that the tubercle bacillus had no chance to lodge; (b) that the immunity of the myocardium was due to a biologic property, to some antituberculous substance in the muscle. Assuming that the latter was the more probable reason, I undertook a series of experiments in which I made extracts of beef's heart and mixed the filtrate obtained with virulent tubercle bacilli and injected the suspension into guinea pigs. In this work I had the help of Dr. Karl F. Meyer, now of California. It seemed to me that the material had a dis

tinct inhibitory influence. Unfortunately, Dr. Meyer left Philadelphia for his new field, while my own work in clinical medicine and teaching came to absorb nearly all my time. I have proposed a repetition of the experiments to several men whose facilities and opportunities for research of this character were greater than my own, but so far no one has begun to work actively upon the problem.

If the immunity of the heart muscle and of the skeletal muscles is, as I believe, biological rather than mechanical, then it may be possible to extract an active agent by suitable means. In my own experiments pieces of heart muscle were cut up into small fragments under aseptic conditions and the fragments put into a grinding machine with china balls. The juice was then pressed out under great pressure and finally filtered through a Berkefeld filter. The filtrate, golden colored liquid, was then used for the experiments. It is highly probable that the procedure could now be greatly simplified.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

DAVID RIESMAN

A COMBINED CULTURE MEDIUM AND INDICATOR FOR PARAMOECIUM

IN the April 10, 1925, issue of SCIENCE, Bragg and Hulpieu describe the effect of a stain obtained from red cabbage leaves as an indicator of the acidity of the food vacuoles of Paramoecium. I have been unable to secure similar satisfactory results with the races I am using, but have found that a dilute infusion of red cabbage leaves (about 30 grams to one liter of water) is an excellent medium in which the animals not only reproduce rapidly but at the same time the color of the infusion indicates the chemical condition of the culture. When fresh, the cabbage leaf culture medium is light reddish purple in color, but about twenty-four hours after being seeded with Paramoecium, it turns red, indicating the formation of acid. In four or five days to two weeks, as the paramecia increase in number, the medium gradually becomes alkaline, as is shown by its change of color to green.

The culture, as far as quantity of paramecia is concerned, is at its height when it becomes a brilliant green and has lost its early turbidity. The behavior of the cultures can be varied considerably by adding a trace of sodium bicarbonate or a weak acid. In from one to two months, the culture becomes the color of an old hay infusion, fails to react to acids or alkalies and the paramecia have either wholly or almost wholly died off.

ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH

ROBERT T. HANCE

AN UNUSUAL METEOR WHILE riding in the fields about two miles east of Wolf, Wyoming, post office, on August 20, we observed a very interesting and unusual meteor. It entered the atmosphere about northwest of the point of observation, and about 60° above the horizon. Its illuminated path was perhaps seven degrees when it disappeared without reaching the earth. After the brilliant ball of light had disappeared an illuminated spiral remained and continued stationary in the sky for at least five minutes. This spiral was about one

and a half turns and extended for about three degrees. The effect was much like a fiery serpent, the head being a ball more brilliant than the rest of the spiral, and the last part to disappear. The light from the meteor proper was the usual white, and almost sufficient to cast a shadow. It probably Iwould have cast a shadow if it had been later in the evening (time 7:30 P.M., mountain time). The spiral was at first a light orange and very distinct in the twilight sky and gradually changed to a red, perhaps a little lighter than cherry, when it gradually disappeared. The spiral remained distinct for at least five minutes.

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA

JAMES J. KLINE

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

Food Products. By HENRY C. SHERMAN, Ph.D., Sc.D., professor of food chemistry, Columbia University. Second Edition Revised and Enlarged. THIS valuable contribution to the knowledge of our foods has been rewritten in view of the great progress made in the knowledge of nutrition during the past ten years. In his preface he says:

In order to put the user of the book in touch with recent advances in all phases of knowledge of food products without making the descriptive text unduly voluminous, many of the publications of the past ten years which are chiefly significant as extending our descriptive knowledge or as developing certain topics more fully than is feasible in a book of this size, are included by title in the lists of references at the ends of the chapters, so that by selection from these the teacher may develop the course, or the individual reader may extend his reading, as fully and in such direction as may be desired in each

case.

As a result of this principle the references are inclusive and contain citations to all literature which any one wishing to secure further information may need to consult. This feature of the book is extremely valuable.

The book is descriptively chemical. It, however, is

not written for the chemist alone but for the general reader as well. It particularly contains most valuable information which will be extremely helpful to the housewife in all her problems connected with the feeding of her family. As food is the most insistent need of humanity it should receive first consideration at the hands of those interested in human welfare and particularly the women who direct the domestic affairs in this country. It is a book, therefore, that can be read by every intelligent person and with great advantage to those who are seeking further knowledge as to the character of our foods and what they do to us.

I will not take time to describe the book in detail, but will mention only those important features which appeal to me as being of the greatest interest and value. First of all, of course, the housewife will read the articles on milk and its products. Butter is not considered in this article, but has first place in the chapters on edible oils. As milk is the most important of our foods, I want to call particular attention to the fine way in which the subject is presented and to the stress that is laid upon its importance in our dietary.

The feature which is most striking to me is the description of the use of sour milk, which is so palatable and has such wonderful helpful effects in many of the diseases of the digestive system. The new lactic acid ferment, bacillus acidophilous, is described, and the methods by which it does its work is set out in detail. The use of milk sugar in connection with the milk soured by the above ferment is explained in detail, and some hope is offered to those who wish to change to a certain extent the bacterial flora of the lower intestinal digestive organs. The importance of adding milk to bread, taking the place of water in the dough, is properly stressed. The importance of sanitation in the milk supply is duly pointed out.

The article on butter is full of valuable information. The progress in the manufacture of butter has resulted in the gradual increase of water in butter in the last few years, and particularly since the advent of the creamery. A few years ago the average content of butter fat in butter in 221 samples from fiftyfive creameries in different parts of Iowa was 84 per cent. and the average content of moisture 12.73 per cent. In 1902 the United States Department of Agriculture analyzed eight hundred samples of butter from four hundred creameries in eighteen states, and the average of all the samples in moisture was 11.78 per cent. Gradually, under the insistent demands of the creameries, the standard for butter fat has been finally reduced to 80 per cent., a loss of 4 per cent. in the course of twenty or twenty-five years.

There is one feature of butter manufacture, however, that Sherman fails to mention. At the present time at least 75 per cent. of the creameries of the United States use what is known as the neutralizing process of making butter. This "neutralizing" is euphemistic for treating cream, which is so far decayed as to be unfit, in such a way as to make it usable. Neutralizing consists in adding some kind of alkali, usually lime, to reduce the acidity and thus make cream workable which otherwise would be unfit for manufacture.

In addition to this, under the influence of the creameries the Congress of the United States has passed a bill in which the moisture requirement of not to exceed 16 per cent. has been abolished, so that it is possible to make butter now legally which contains no salt and yet may contain almost or quite 19 per cent. of moisture. Thus, it is seen that one feature of progress in butter-making has really been a progress in selling more water and less butter to the consumer. This is not good for the reputation of the dairy industry and is a fraud on the consumer. asmuch as economy is almost as important in our food supply as purity and excellence, this omission is regrettable.

In

He

Sherman stresses the point that cereal grains are, as far as economy is concerned, the most important factors in our food supply. He dwells at length on the damage done to our grains by the milling process and touches briefly upon the additional factor of bleaching an already much too white product. quotes the old data issued many years ago by the Department of Agriculture as to the higher digestibility of white flour as compared with whole wheat flour. These data show that the digestibility of protein in standard patent flour is 88.6 and in graham flour 79.4 per cent. As regards the starch or carbohydrate element, the digestibility of standard patent flour is 97.7 per cent. and of graham flour 89.2 per cent.

In another part of the book, however, he calls attention to the fact that recent work indicates that the

in its mineral and vitamin content and in the nature of its proteins. In the amount of protein actually absorbed from the digestive tract, and in energy value, the difference between equal weights of whole wheat and patent flours is practically negligible. But a bushel of grain will make more pounds of the actual, or even of the so-called, whole wheat flour than of patent flour, so that, even from the standpoint of protein and energy, the best economy demands the milling of as high a percentage as seems practicable of the whole wheat kernel into human food, and from the vitamin standpoint this is also true and in much more striking degree.

Further on, Sherman pays his respects to the very common practice of those who are promoting the white flour industry in referring to those who, like Sherman, believe in the whole wheat industry, as "faddists," in the following language:

Some writers and teachers treat the losses incurred in the ordinary milling processes as a matter of indifference or even object to any serious discussion of the problem, calling it a "fad" on the ground that with the mixed dietary prevalent in the United States there is no danger of "deficiency disease" from any mode of milling the grains. This is probably true as regards the pronounced diseases such as beriberi, but it is also true that many American family dietaries show little margin of safety as regards iron, phosphorus and calcium, which makes it only reasonable that we should wish to include in the products used for human food as much as is practicable of those parts of the grain which are rich in these elements.

Sherman calls attention to the fact that the body probably absorbs from a pound of genuine whole wheat bread at least twice as much phosphorus, iron and calcium compounds as from a pound of white bread. He also calls attention to the experiments with rats Bunge made as long ago as 1898. The rats receiving the whole wheat bread grew much better than those fed on white bread and were found to contain at the end of the experiment both a larger number of red corpuscles and a higher percentage of hemo

He need not have gone so far afield for an illustration, as only a few years ago the scientists in the Public Health Service made a very striking experiment in feeding fowls on whole wheat and white flour bread. Fowls are much more sensitive to beriberi than rats. In thirty-five days all the fowls that were fed white flour had died of or were suffering from beriberi, while those that had been eating whole wheat bread were apparently in perfect health and vigor and were growing normally.

The vitamins of cereals reside chiefly in the germ, while the minerals reside chiefly in the bran; thus, both bran and germ, in the proportions in which they