Popular Science Monthly/Volume 65/July 1904/The Progress of Science

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.

THE SANITARIAN AND THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Sanitarian, established in 1873, and The Popular Science Monthly, established in 1872, are the two oldest journals in English devoted to the diffusion and popularization of science. When the Sanitarian was founded there was no journal occupied with sanitary science and public health, and the attention paid to these subjects was comparatively small. The Sanitarian has witnessed and promoted one of the most important movements of the nineteenth century. There is more accomplished now for the prevention of disease than for the cure of disease. The 'germ theory' and other discoveries of modern science have led to the forging of weapons more powerful than those used in any other warfare. The mortality of infancy and childhood has been reduced to one half. Infection and contagion are subject to control. The plague, malaria, yellow fever, even consumption, have lost their mysterious terror. We know their causes and can set bounds to their ravages.

The Sanitarian was established by Dr. A. N. Bell, and has been conducted by him for thirty-one years. Dr. Bell is now in his eighty-fourth year, and though vigorous in mind and body, he has earned the right to rest from the labor of conducting a monthly journal. As there are now in the country numerous medical and other journals which give adequate attention to sanitary service and preventive medicine, it has seemed to Dr. Bell that the cause which he lias served can be best advanced by merging the Sanitarian with The Popular Science Monthly. While the Monthly is concerned with all the sciences, it has always aimed to pay special attention to the important field of preventive medicine, and should do so more effectively in the future with the support of the editor, contributors and readers of the Sanitarian.

Dr. Bell has assured his reputation not only by the fifty-two volumes of the Sanitarian, but also by many other services tending to promote the health of the people. He was born in Virginia on August 3, 1820, and studied at the Harvard Medical School and the Jefferson Medical College. He became surgeon in the navy in 1847, and by services in the Gulf of Mexico, the West Indies and the coast of Africa he became familiar with yellow fever and other diseases. In 1847 he first used steam as a disinfectant, and he early urged the view that yellow fever is not directly contagious, thus greatly simplifying and improving quarantine regulations. As physician, as quarantine officer, as author and as editor, Dr. Bell has earned the gratitude and esteem of all who are interested in the health and welfare of the community.

 

THE JUBILEE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

The University of Wisconsin celebrated during the second week in June its fiftieth anniversary and at the same time President Van Hise was formally installed. Michigan, California and Wisconsin form a group of universities which almost rank with Harvard, Yale and Columbia. The great state universities are indeed the more distinctively American, and it is quite possible that the future belongs to them. Millionaires may become less liberal in their gifts, whereas the people of a state are likely to lake increasing

 

 

Charles R. Van Hise,
President of the University of Wisconsin.

pride in their university. As the alumni become prominent in public life the relations between the state and the university will be even more intimate. So long as a state University deserves support by the direct appeal it makes to the people there is no limit to its development. The milk-test invented by Professor Babcock, of the University of Wisconsin, saves the people of the state annually more than their university costs them. As soon as it is generally understood that a university is an asset, not a charge, our state universities may become the greatest existing centers for education and research.

The University of Wisconsin is as a matter of fact more than fifty years old. In 1838 an act was passed by the territorial legislature establishing the University of the Territory of Wisconsin. Practically nothing was done until the state was organized in 1848, when the university was established by the constitution. In 1866 the university was reorganized by act of the legislature, which also provided for uniting with the university the College of Agriculture, endowed with the proceeds of the agricultural college grant given by the United States in 1862. In 1867 the first annual appropriation (about $7,000) was made by the state. This appropriation has been gradually increased to about $300,000. The state has also provided a great group of fifteen or twenty buildings which are beautifully placed on the shore of Lake Mendota. The library building, used also by the State Historical Society and erected at a cost of over.$600,000, is the finest academic building of the kind except that of Columbia. The students number over 3,000, about as many as Yale, Oxford or Leipzig.

Over this great university one of its own graduates and professors will henceforth preside. Dr. Charles Richard Van Hise was born in Wisconsin in 1857 and has been connected with the university since he entered as a student nearly thirty years ago. He is one of the most eminent American geologists, in charge of the pre-Cambrian and metamorphic geology for the U. S. Geological Survey and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Some years since when Columbia and Pennsylvania elected business men to the presidency, it looked as though scholarship might be subordinated to wealth and commercial success in this office. But Stanford chose a zoologist, Chicago a Semitic scholar, Yale an economist, Princeton a historian, California a student of Greek, Johns Hopkins a chemist and Columbia a student of education. Now Wisconsin has selected a man of science, one whose interests and character are far removed from politics or commercialism, an ideal scholar.

 

THE CHICAGO SCHOOL OF EDUCATION.

The Emmons Blaine Hall of the School of Education of the University of Chicago was dedicated on May 14. This was an event of importance in the history of education and the extension of scientific methods, for it is a step toward making teaching a profession and education an applied science. The University of Chicago has now established a school of education ranking with the professional schools of law and medicine, the first school of this kind being the Teachers College of Columbia University. There are other schools of education and nearly all the larger universities have established departments of education, but Columbia and Chicago are the universities that are leading the way. The two schools had beginnings somewhat analogous. In both cases independent movements for manual training and the less formal education of children have been subsequently taken over by the universities and made into professional schools for teachers with model schools for children attached. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, now president of Columbia University, was the first president and practically the founder of Teachers College, now the Department of Education of Columbia University, and it is especially appropriate that he should have given the oration at the dedication of the Emmons Blaine Hall. Other addresses were made by President Harper, of the University of Chicago; Dr. Jackman, dean of the College of Education; Mr. Bentley, of the Chicago Institute trustees; President Downing, of the New York City Normal College, representing the normal schools of the country; Mrs. Blaine, the donor of the hall, and Professor Dewey, director of the School of Education and head of the Department of Philosophy and

 

Emmons Blaine Hall, School of Education, as seen from the University.

 

Emmons Blaine Hall from Scammon Court.

Education of the university. There were also additional addresses and departmental conferences in connection with the dedication of the building.

In their addresses President Harper and Dr. Jackman traced the history of the school, the former concluding with these words: "And so it has come about that in each case two agencies have united with each other; and that finally all six have been drawn together. These were Colonel Francis W. Parker with his faculty, and joined with them the sympathy and interest of Mrs. Emmons Blaine; the work of the Chicago Manual Training School under Mr. Belfield, and with it that of the South Side Academy, developed under the leadership of Mr. Owen; and, finally, the creative work of Mr. Dewey in his Laboratory School, and in connection with this the factor represented by the university itself. The history of these several movements and of their union with one another has been one of peculiar interest. Many difficulties have presented themselves from time to time, but one by one these difficulties have disappeared. What this school, made up thus of many elements, shall in the end contribute to the cause of education no man can predict. We may hope, however, that the results will be in proportion to the earnest effort thus far put forth by the many who have had at heart the sacredness of the cause. In so far as the school shall represent true ideals, it will help on the work. No more than this could be expected; no more than this could be asked for. The names of Colonel Parker, Mrs. Emmons Blaine, Mr. Belfield, Mr. Owen and Mr. Dewey are written in large letters on the foundation stones of this new structure."

Education and philosophy at Chicago suffer a serious loss by the removal of Professor Dewey to Columbia University. But the work that he has accomplished at Chicago remains; it has sufficient vitality to create its own leaders.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.

We record with regret the death of Professor E. J. Marey, the eminent French physiologist; of Dr. Wilhelm Hiss, professor of anatomy at Leipzig; of Mr. Robert McLachlan, the well-known British entomologist; of Dr. George Johnston Allman, professor of mathematics in Queen's College, Galway; of Wilhelm von Siemens, the German electrical engineer, and of Professor William Henry Pettee, professor of mineralogy, economic geology and mining at the Universty of Michigan.

At the jubilee celebrations of the University of Wisconsin the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on a number of delegates, including Henry Prentiss Armsby, director of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station; Thomas C. Chamberlin, professor of geology, Unversity of Chicago; Professor W. G. Farlow, professor of botany, Harvard University; Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Carnegie Institution; the Hon. James Wilson, secretary of agriculture; Robert S. Woodward, dean of the faculty of pure science, Columbia University; F. P. Mall, professor of anatomy, Johns Hopkins University; E. L. Mark, professor of anatomy, Harvard University, and S. L. Penfield, professor of mineralogy, Yale University.

Professor Charles S. Howe was inaugurated as president of Case School of Applied Science, at Cleveland, Ohio, on May 11. President Ira Remsen, of Johns Hopkins University, spoke on behalf of the universities; President H. S. Pritchett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on behalf of the technical schools; John R. Freeman, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, on behalf of the technical societies; and President Charles Franklin Thwing, of Western Reserve University, on behalf of the colleges of Ohio. President Howe's inaugural address followed. Mr. John D. Rockefeller has given the Case School $200,000 to be used for building and equipping laboratories for physics and mining engineering.

Columbia University has conferred its doctorate of science on Professor Hugo de Vries, the eminent botanist of the University of Amsterdam, whose work on the origin of species is described in the present number of the Monthly.—The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Rumford medal to Professor E. F. Nichols, of Columbia University, for his researches on radiation.—The Chemical Society of London has elected as foreign members Professor E. W. Morley, of the Western Reserve University; and Professor F. W. Clarke, of the U. S. Geological Survey.

The new medical laboratories of the University of Pennsylvania, erected at a cost of $700,000, were dedicated on June 10.—The New York legislature has appropriated $250,000 for the erection of a building for the College of Agriculture at Cornell University.—The main building of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y., was destroyed by fire on June 9.—The corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology voted that the executive committee ascertain whether any arrangement can be made with Harvard University for a combination of effort in technical education such as will substantially preserve the organization, control, traditions and name of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.