Science: Savants

Women’s barber shops call themselves beauty parlors. Drug stores call themselves ice cream parlors. Clerks call themselves salesmen. Politicians call themselves statesmen. Flappers call themselves young ladies. But scientists call themselves scientists, and only newspapers call them savants.

But the word “savants” has been spread in the headlines of newspapers for the greater part of the week. What this signified was that some 2,000 hardworking men of science were assembled at Toronto at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Association, which makes a practice of meeting everywhere save in London—in order to stimulate interest elsewhere—gathered to its meeting more than 500 British scientists, about the same number each of Canadians and Americans, and a scattering number from the rest of the world. The presence of Americans was, indeed, due to the fact that the British Association very thoughtfully gave the members of the American Association of the same name membership in the British Association for the purpose of the meeting.

¶ The meeting was opened at Toronto University by Major-General Sir David Bruce, President of the Association. During the War he served in the British Army. At present he is Chairman of the Governing Body of Lister Institute* of Preventive Medicine. He argued that medicine must change its tactics, take the offensive against disease, instead of waiting for ‘disease to attack. He was enthusiastic about the work of the Rockefeller Foundation in attacking the sources of the hookworm disease, yellow fever and malaria. He told how sleeping sickness had been eliminated in Uganda by control of the tsetse fly, and how nagana, or Texas fever, had been similarly controlled in Zululand, when it was found that the same fly was the carrier.

¶ John W. Gregory, President of the Geographical Section of the Association, spoke on the “Color” problem of the earth, in which the white race, com posed of some 520,000,000 out of a total population of about 1,700,000,000, controls eight-ninths of the habitable earth. He suggested that there were four possible solutions of the color problem: 1) amalgamation by miscegenation; 2) coresidence without fu sion; 3) ‘disfranchisement of the col ored population; 4) segregation into separate communities. He inclined to the belief that the last will be the solution, and foresaw that in 100 years or so, by natural processes, a sort of free state of Negroes would develop in the Southern U. S. C Dr. Frank C. Shrubsall, President of the Anthropological Section of the As sociation, declared that there has been no deterioration of human physique during the historical period, that, furthermore, man’s expectation of life has grown by leaps and bounds. A child of five in ancient Egypt might expect to live to be 35; a child of five in Rome of the Caesars might expect to live to be 29; a child of five in London today may expect to live to be 64.

¶ Dr. Henry H. Dale, President of the Physiology Section, spoke on chemotherapy, the treatment of dis ease by the administration of chemicals. He said that recent studies have shown that these chemicals, such as “Bayer 205,” used for sleeping sickness, do not directly attack the disease organism, and in fact have no effect on it when human blood is not present. Their effects, under study, are very curious, and a good deal of mystery still surrounds them.

¶ Sir Richard Paget analysed the processes of human speech and came to the conclusion that speech had developed first from grunts, supplemented with grimaces; that then it was discovered that by blowing air through the mouth while grimacing, sounds resulted. In this way, the nonvocal or whistled “s” and whispered “f” and “th” (as in “thigh”) were discovered. When a humming, or vocal sound was added, these nonvocal sounds became respectively “z,” “v” and “th” (as in “thy”).

¶ Professor William A. Bone told of a new laboratory method which he had discovered for fixing nitrogen from the air. He mixes air and carbon monoxide inside a steel bomb, and then explodes them under high pressure. The nitrogen then unites with the carbon. ¶ Professor Reginald A. Daly, of Harvard, read a paper to show that the substructure of the earth is plastic. He cited as evidence the fact that the Labrador and Keewatin ice sheets depressed the land which they covered, but that this is gradually rising into place again.

¶ A. D. Peacock told of parthenogenesis* in saw-flies. Although these insects naturally exist in both sexes, the females reproduce freely without males, and the mating instinct seems to be disappearing.

¶ Three scientists from the University of Chicago furnished a paper embracing researches with results contrary to the theory that food injected into the stomach sends out “hormones” or “chemical messengers” which activate the gastric glands. They found that merely by distending the stomachs of dogs, gastric juice could be made to appear.

¶ Sir Charles W. Kimmins, of London University, told of his researches in regard to the sense of humor. He studied over 10,000 jokes of children. In children of seven years and under he found that the visual joke, the slapstick comedy, the outlandish hat, have the greatest appeal.

¶ Sir William H. Bragg discoursed on the formation of molecules by atoms as he has studied them by X-rays, especially the carbon atom, which forms into two groupings, one the diamond, the other black lead, not very different in organization but entirely different in properties.

¶ Dr. Robert Chambers, of Cornell, (Continued on Page 30) (Continued from Page 20) gave a demonstration of his apparatus for dissecting microorganisms with a glass needle, made by drawing out a glass tube into a very fine point, much finer than any steel needle.

¶ Professor William McDougall discussed scientific materialism, which he believed was passing. Said he: “Atoms are gone, matter has resolved itself into energy; and what energy is no man can tell, beyond saying it is the possibility of change, of further evolution.”

¶ Professor Frederick G. Donnan, of London, suggested that as a future source of fuel we may use waterpower to obtain chlorine from salt, the gas to be used as a fuel. Jerome Alexander countered with a proposition to use waterpower to break up water into hydrogen and oxygen for use as fuel. By these means it is proposed to make great savings in transmitting power.

¶ Professor William W. Watts, President of the Geology section, declared that we are probably passing our peak of oil production. He suggested that in the future we may tap the internal heat of the earth as well as coal and waterpower. This may be done by deep mines or by taking heated gases from volcanic areas as is now being tried in Italy.

¶ Professor Herbert E. Roaf expressed his belief that it will be possible to correct colorblindness or “hypochromatic vision” by wearing over one eye a color filter or colored eyeglass.

¶ Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the National Museum at Washington, read a paper arguing that human beings first came to this continent about 10,000 years ago across Bering Strait. He asserted that they were of yellow-brown races, and believes that the first to come were ancestors of the Mayas, Toltecs and early Peruvian tribes, these being followed in turn by Aztecs, Shoshone-Algonquins, and Atabascans.

¶ Sir William H. Beveridge told that the birthrate of Europe, aside from Russia, had fallen off about 20% since 1880, although no falling-off was known in the human race prior to that period. He declared that this was no gradual trend toward decreased fertility, but the result of an increase in birth-control knowledge. He declared that the decline of the birthrate coupled with the decline of the deathrate would change the complexion of England by 1940, because much older people would dominate the country. Incidentally, he asserted that coincident with the growth of birth-control the number of marriages is decreasing.

*Named, like Listerine, after the famous surgeon, Sir Joseph Lister, originator of the Listerian treatment for the septic infection of wounds.

*Virgin birth—reproduction by females without intercourse with males.