Science: German Renaissance

Ten thousand German scientists tumbled into smoky Dösseldorf last week for the 89th congress of the Society of German Natural Philosophers and Physicians.* Whether they came in lace-ornamented first class coaches or in clattering fourth class vans, whether with leather portmanteaux or wicker lunch cases, whether smartly frocked or draggedly trousered—the ten thousand meant this congress to be the renaissance of a German culture, without the patina of which, in the years before the War, no student anywhere felt himself raised above shambling mediocrity.

But, zealous as were these men, none said anything deemed worthy of cable transmission, that had not already been said at least in substanceby his compeers in the U. S., Great Britain, France, Italy or Japan.

Bumke of Munich said that the U. S. methods of sterilizing insane and subnormal persons were “senseless.” Doubtless he did not know that in the U. S. (in spite of permissive laws passed last year in Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon and Utah) sterilization, to prevent transmission of mental insufficiency from parent to offspring, is not favored. Top little is yet known about eugenics, U. S. physicians feel, to incur the legal risk of controlling procreation. They feel also that promiscuous sterilization would induce prostitution among women, baser vices among men. Professor Bumke’s arguments against such operations duplicated the U. S. attitude. He did, however, supply a new and quaint observation. “There are,” he said, “too many lunatics at large in the world for wholesale castration.”

Straub of Munich, with good knowledge of cool München Brau, remarked: “Alcohol is the oldest pleasure poison known to man. . . . It is the taking of wrong amounts of alcohol by those whose systems are not properly adjusted which has caused all the trouble with drink since Noah.”*

Ebbecke of Bonn pointed put that, contrary to vulgar belief, white hands might be warm, red hands cold. Temperature depends upon the amount of blood in circulation. Tint depends upon the location of the capillaries through which the blood seeps.

Stepp of Jena commended U. S. Experimenters Hess and Steenbock for their experiments in stimulating the production of vitamins in vegetable oils by means of the ultraviolet rays (artificial sunshine) of mercury lamps. . . . Too much vitamin-potent food might injure patients.

De Quervain of Switzerland retold the well-known prophylactic use of iodine in common salt against goitre. It is less well-known that iodine as a preventive is effective only before adolescence. After puberty iodine may stimulate a latent goitre.

Ehrenhaft of Vienna again presented his hypothesis of electrical bodies smaller than electrons, of particles approximately one millionthof a yard in diameter. Practically none believed him.

Sioli of Diisseldorf and Muehlens of Hamburg offered their new drug plasmochin as a more effective specific against malaria than is the old stand-by quinine.

Wamoscher of Berlin described the micromanipulator, precision instrument that can operate on objects of microscopic size 1/1000 millimeter (about 1/250,000 in.) in diameter.

Zeiss microscope makers of Jena showed a cinema reel of unicellular life—isolated bacterium pneumococcus (pneumonia), bacterium streptococcus (pus), saccharomyces (yeast). It is possible to infect and kill an animal with a single germ. Such a germ proliferates to form a colony.

Bechhold of Frankfort retold of the goldplating of organisms too minute to be seen under the most powerful of microscopes—such as the bacteriophage of d’Herelle (TIME, Aug. 30). A solution known to contain or suspected of containing such organisms is mixed with a solution of gold chloride. The chlorine atoms are dragged away from those of the gold, leaving the gold to adhere to the ultramicroscopic organisms, like a fitted armor. Such golden cases may be counted, studied, and the nature of their petty contents learned by inference.

Binz and Raeth of Berlin asserted that they had sorted out from cancer pus a fat little, wand-shaped germ which they were able to breed. They could look at it under a microscope and believe it to be a parasite whose virus may cause some type of cancer.

*Founded in 1822 at Leipzig by learned Lorenz Oken (1779-1851) ; real name Ochenfuss, obstreperous editor of Isis, friend of Goethe. On the basis of Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) critical philosophy and with clues from Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) he created the systematic plans upon which modern scientific knowledge is ranged. Protean, he lectured, at Jena, on general natural history, zoology, comparative anatomy, human, animal and plant physiology.

*After the Flood: And Noah began to bea husbandman, and he planted a vineyard;And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent—GENESIS 9: 20-21. He was somewhat over 600 years old then.