Science (journal)/Volume 5/No. 100/Comment and Criticism

COMMENT AND CRITICISM.

The award by the Royal society of London of the highest honor in its gift, the Copley medal, to Professor Carl Ludwig of Leipzig, has been the cause of much rejoicing among English physiologists. Since John Hunter received the medal nearly one hundred years ago (1787), no physiologist has so merited it by fruitful, lifelong devotion to the advancement of knowledge. Ludwig*s first research was published in 1844; and still every year important investigations, inspired, directed, and often personally executed by him, are published from his laboratory. His work extends over nearly every branch of physiology, but we can here refer only to one or two of his more epoch-marking works. In 1850, by the discovery of secretory nerves, he added a new territory to the domain of experimental physiology. That wonderful series of researches on the circulatory mechanism, which commenced in 1847 with a paper on the influence of the respiratory movements on the blood-flow in the aorta, has continued to this day, almost every year adding something from the master's hand. The introduction of the graphic method into physiological experimentation we also owe to Ludwig; and he who would ask what the value of this has been, may be referred to almost the whole of modern experimental physiology for his answer.

Nearly all of the present generation of British physiologists have been students in the Leipzig laboratory. While there, they could not fail to acquire a warm personal affection for its director. Simple, kindly, possessed of a genial humor which never wounds, enthusiastic in his work, and ever ready with aid and counsel, Ludwig must be beloved by those who work under him: hence, to their pleasure in a worthy bestowal of the Copley medal, English physiologists have the further joy of seeing a beloved master publicly honored. In both these respects they will have many warm sympathizers in the United States. For years the Leipzig laboratory has been the headquarters abroad of young American as well as English physiologists; and at present Ludwig is represented by pupils on the physiological staff of the Harvard medical school, of the University of Pennsylvania, of the Johns Hopkins university, of the University of Michigan, and probably of other American institutions. In fact, so far as physiology is now pursued and taught in this country as a definite independent science, and not as a mere body of more or less dubious dogmas which custom makes it necessary to include in the medical student's curriculum, it is, for the most part, pursued and taught by or under the direction of those who have been Ludwig's pupils. In their name we congratulate the master, and express the hope that he may yet be spared for many years to carry on his work.

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We have had occasion twice during the past year to remonstrate against the methods employed by certain book-dealers in bringing out quasi-scientific books. In June, mention was made of several volumes that appeared without date. In November it was the question of more sincere discrimination on the part of publishers in regard to the quality of the material that they recommend to the purchasing public. Now, the little book on meteorology mentioned in our notes provokes protest against the practice of borrowing illustrations and extracts without acknowledgment of their sources.

There are four plates in the first part of this book, the only pictures it contains; and they are all taken from the work on storms by Blasius. In the 'Scholia' of the second part, there are several papers by well-known meteorologists: some of them are credited to their original place of publication: but several others are appropriated, in a more or less condensed form, with their author's name at the head of each, as if, in distinction to the first, these were written expressly for this book. It may be that the omission of acknowledgment results simply from carelessness; but, in any case, it is not to be lightly excused. Why should not professors demand as much care in these matters from their publishers as from their students?