POPULAR SCIENCE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLI, Issue 9291, 12 August 1920, Page 2

POPULAR SCIENCE.

(By ■"Heraclitus.")

Sir Ronald Ross has recently given us, in his usual racy style, a review of his efforts for the reduction of malaria in British dominions. This work has occupied an important part of. the life of an exceptionally busy man since about 1890. His summary of his work is a trenchant indictment of government and municipal attitudes towards .scientific matters. By 1899 Ross's investigations had been so far. advanced that he could say authoritatively: " A word from the head governments — from the dozens of. commissioners, administrators, governors, and other well-paid ' pro-consuls' from the India Office, the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office —could set the whole machinery in motion within a few months. In a few more months, perhaps in a year, or in two years, the death-dealing pests would begin to fall under control, would begin to diminish, even to disappear entirely in favourable spots; and ; with them, slowly, ■ the übiquitous malady would fly/from ' the face of civilisation.'' Practically nothing was done. "But in 1901 the Americans discovered that yellow fever also is carried by mosquitoes, and, v unlike the plantigrade British, immediately attacked the insects in Havana, with the result that that disease was- entirely banished there and malaria was largely reduced.

" In 1904 I went to Panama in order to advise the Americans regarding the Canal, which was then being started— and the subsequent work under Sur-geon-GTeneral Gorgas is famous." In spite of this and other work we read: "In 1911 I attended a medical congress at Bombay, where a number of smart young men proved to me with some contumely that the reduction of mosauitoes is always an impossibility. . . . To learn what fools men may be, show them how to save our lives. . .Well, at last I determined -to make a final appeal to the head of the India Office in London himself. I spent an hour alone with him pleading my cause on behalf of the million people who are said to die of malaria, every year in India alone, and of the million's more, mostly children, who suffer from it. He sat before me like an ox, with divergent eyes, answering and asking nothing. Of course, he did nothing. He was the personification of • the British nation in .the presence of a new idea."

Sir Ronald is a true poet, as well as' n physician and a scientist, and one of his poems, written before the solution ■of the malaria question was in his hands, may be quoted here: In this, O Nature, yield, I.pray, tome. , I pace and pace, and think and think, and take The fever'd hands, and note down all I see, That some dim, distant light may t haply break.

The painful faces ask, Can we not cure? We answer, No, not yet; we seek the laws. ■ O God, reveal thro' all this thing obscure The unseen, small, but millionmurdering cause.

The need for giving to the general public the fruits of science in a clear yet authoritative way has been borne in upon scientific workers the world over. We have had recently such splendid efforts to bring the value of science home to the man in the street as is to be seen in " Science and the Nation," published by the Cambridge University Press; "Industrial Chemistry," by Clerk Ranken; in Jack's The People's Books," the new journal " Discovery," and various other publications. Well worthy to be ranked with these is the symposium " Animal Life and Human Progress," edited by Professor Arthur Dendy, of King's College, London, and one-time professor in the University of Otago. A few extracts will.give an-Idea of the contents of this most interesting book.

Dealing with "" Man's Account with the Lower Animals," Dendy says: "Not the "least of the debts which we owe to the lower animals is the liberal education which they offer to those who choose to avail themselves of it, and this education may have a practical bearing iipon human affairs. How many inventions of the human mind have been unconsciously anticipated by the lower animals in the construction of their own bodies ? What is the photographic camera but an imperfect imitation of the eye as it occurs in every typical vertebrate ? The electric telegraph is little more than an extension, beyond the limits of the body, of the infinitely more perfect system of nerves and ganglia within the body itself. I should not be in the least surprised to learn that something like wireless telegraphy is practical amongst the lower animals, if only we could recognise the apparatus by means of which it is carried on.".

J. A. Thomson writes interestingly, as always, on his favourite topic—the web of life. "Some of the most striking, linkages are those concerned in various diseases of man and his stock/ lie says. " Malaria is due to, a minute animal which lives in the red blood corpuscles of man; it passes into a mosquito that sucks man's blood; after complicated changes in the mosquito, the microbe passes into the blood of another man whom the insect bites. As the larvae mosquito lives in pools and breathes at the surface, it can be. suffocated by a floating film of paraffin; or it will, disappear if the pools are drained, or filled up, or poisoned. But is it not a fine instancy of the web of life that the importation of top-minnows into infested waters is_ one of the 1 surest ways of getting rid of mosquitoes and thus of malaria ? Eleven species of Indian fishes are of proved value as mosquitodestroyers, and some might well be used in city tanks."

R. T. Leiper, to whom modern medicine owes, muoh; writes of "some inhabitants of man yand tlheir. migrations." American novels and political

works have made familial 1 to us the "poor white trash" of the Southern United States. It is now known that this degeneracy is due mainly to the ravages of the hookworm. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission found that more than two million people in the Southern States were infected with hookworm, involving vast suffering, partial arrest of physical, mental and moral growth, great loss of life,' and noticeable decrease in economic efficiency over vast regions. Thanks to the beneficence of Rockefeller, by 1915 nearly one and a-haJf million people had been examined, and of these dyer 590,000 had been treated, and now the examination is being, extended and treatment given where' needed. Over 80 per cent, cf those. ,treated are cured, and the good work'is being extended to other regions .and conntries where the disease" has played havoc.

In the latest number of the "N.Z. Farmer," Dr. Freeman, the newlyappomted editor, publishes an address he delivered to the recent Farm School ■at Ruakura. Early on he makes tfliis statement: "It is rarely that ons meets a farmer -who can'discuss iiitellligently the manuring of crops." "Heraolitus'' in such intercourse, .as he hah had with farmers, must admit that non-intelligence k the last term he would apply to them. Perhaps he has been specially fortunate. At the'samo time there would seem room for a. .presentment of the essentials in mch form .as the non-technical reader could assimilate without trouble. lectures are all very well in their way. but the lecturer is prone to" cnvor too -vide a field and to cover it too quickly for the average person to become well acquainted witlh 'what he has to sa.^. Sh-iuld evidence be forthcoming +" \t such a series of artioler is desire' 1 hv of the "Guardian," he vrouid be laappj to cojatributc them..