TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2087, 23 July 1901, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

—_o— - [From the Dtjnedin Evext.no Star.]

LONDON, June 7, SOMEONE HAD BLUNDERED."

The Committee of Public Accounts, which scrutinises the nation's bill every year and calls attention to charges that are unauthorised or the result of carelessness or extravagance, drops heavily on to the case of the Dreadnought. This vessel "was an old ship m 1895,' and yet £99,521 has been spent, on her. almost enough to build and tit out a third class cruiser. The Committee sav that in ail such cases an estimate of the probable total cost should be presented to Parliament before the repair and refit of an old ship is decided on. The Committee also have a word to say. en that costly failure the new Royal yacht, which seems likely, in spite of all her botching, never to take the water. The excess of expenditure over the estimate was due mainly to inexperience in building ships of this kind, and the Committee recommend that H.M. Dock Yards should not in future undertake work of this kind. The figures speak for themselves: Original Cost up Estimate. to Date. Labor £109,200 £202,430 Materials £104,248 £140,590 Machinery (contract) £113,192 £122,763 Incidentals £26,997 £46,251 ' £353,637 £512,034 £353,637 Extra tost to date £158,397 The building and fitting out of a second class cruiser would cost very little more than the difference between' the original estimate and the cost up to date of the King's yacht. THI/AIMS OF THE NATIONAL " LAB.'' The National Physical Laboratory is likely to be referred to frequently in the near* future, and therefore the lecture ;.t the Royal Institution by its principal (Mr R. T. Glazebrook) on the aims of the institution should be of interest. The institution. Mr Glazebrook explained, first made in Germany, where between 1883 and 1887 the Physikalisch-Teclmische Reichsanstalt was founded in Berlin by the labors of Werner, Von Siemens, and Von Helmholt/. Dr Lodge outlined a similar scheme for England in the last decade, Sir Douglas Galton called attention to it in 1895, and a Treasury Committee, with Lord Rayleigh as chairman, reported unanimously that a public institution should be founded for standardising and verifying instruments, for testing materials, and for the determination of physical constants. The aim of Ihe laboratory is to make the forces of science available' for the nation, to unite science and industry. In Germany the close connection between science and industry was illustrated by the history of aniline dye manufacture and artificial indigo, and by the growth of the German scientific apparatus industry, which was mainly due to the influence of the Reichsanstalt. The English laboratory is to be located at Bushey House. Teddi'ngton. Kew Observatory remaining as the observatory department. Although the laboratory is only a seventh of the size (if the Anstalt, there is a danger of its starvation, as £14.000 will not build and equip the "Lab.." or £4,000 a year maintain it properly. America is just going to spend £60,000 on establishing its "lab.," and £6,000 a year in maintaining it. Mr Glazebrook appealed to some English Crcesus to come to the rescue. Cui bono? some materially-minded people may ask. Mr Glazebrook answered their question by referring to the problems of industry already solved by toe application of science, such as glass'for optical purposes, and then to the problems to which the National " Lab." hopes to find a solutionalloys, wind pressure on bridges, the exact determination of the relations between Ihe scales of the mercury, hydrogen and electrical resistance thermometers, the magnetic testing of specimens of iron and steel, the standardisation and calibration of various scientific instruments.

LAST YEAR'S VIVISECTIONS.—INOCULATION EXPERIMENTS OF GREAT VALUE.

The anti-vivisectionists make such violent statements as to the tortures to which animals are subjected at the hands of those doctors who practise vivisection that the parliamentary return showing the experiments performed last year on living animals, distinguishing painless from painful experiments, with the report from Mr Thane, inspector under the Cruelty to Animals Act, will come as a relief to those who wish for a plain, straightforward statement of the extent of these experiments. The number of experiments was: With anaesthetics, 1.885 ; without anaesthetics, 8,954 ; total. 10.839. Few of these experiments, says Mr Thane, had been in any&erious degree painful. Of the 1.885 with anesthetics, the 1,229 performed under license alone, or in illustration of lectures, were painless, because the animal was under an anaesthetic the whole of the experiment, and hud to be killed before it came to if pain were likely to continue, or if it had been seriously injured. The remaining 586 operations were'performed aseptieally under anesthetics, from the influence of winch the animals were allowed to revive, The healing of the wounds, as a rule, took place without pain. These operations are now seldom, if ever, followed by pain, and Mr Thane reports that he had seen numerous animals on which serious operations had been performed- removal of organs and t a like—which were clearly not in pain. I he 8.954 experiments performed without anesthetics were mostly inoculations. A few

were feeding experiments, or the administration of various substances by the mouth. "In a large proportion of these inoculations," says Mr Thane, " the result is negative. The animal does not exhibit any ill effects, and therefore does not suffer any pain. This is especially the case with many inoculations for purposes of diagnosis, with the great majority of the inoculations performed for the testing of articles of food, and with many of the inoculations made for the purpose of standardising antitoxic serum —namely, those cases in which the antitoxin is sufficiently powerful to neutralise the amount of toxin injected, so that the latter!has no action. It is only a small proportion of the inoculations practised that are followed by disease or poisoning. In some of these cases, such as the injection of certain drugs, or of tetanus toxin, the effect produced is without doubt painful; but in the two most frequently employed proceedings of this kind—viz., inoculation for the diagnosis of tuberculosis and for the standardisation of diphtheria antitoxin —there is some difference of opinion amongst those who have had most experience as to whether the effects produced are attended by pain or not. T'here is, however, strong reason for holding that the gradual development of tuberculosis and the poisoning by diphtheria toxin resulting from such inoculations, although they may not be accompanied by acute suffering, are conditions which bung these proceedings within the category of ' experiments calculated to give pain.' In the event of pain ensuing as the result of an inoculation, a condition attached to the license requires that the animal should be killed under anaesthetics as soon as the main result of the experiment has been attained. It will be seen, therefore, that in a very large number of instances, especially in the case of experiments performed without the use of anaesthetics, the experiments are entirely painless." To the argument advanced by anti-vivi-sectionists that the experiments have no scientific value, Mr Thane gives ;i decided refutation. The large increase in the number of these inoculation experiments without anaesthetics is, he says, " mainly due to the growing appreciation of their great value as a means of detecting, curing, and preventing disease. Inoculations for the purpose of diagnosis are now part of the routine of medical practice. During the year 1900 2,230 inoculations were made by three licensees for the purpose of standardising antitoxins, and over 1,500 inoculations,were made by two licensees for the testing of milk. The appearance of bubonic plague in this country has afforded an illustration of the value of the experimental method in diagnosis. It is of the greatest importance that this disease should be recognised as earlv as possible. This can only be done with certainty with the aid of inoculations into animals. * Two fresh places were registered, and two new licenses were granted during 1900, expressly to allow of the necessary experiments being performed in localities where infection was apprehended.'* The report states that licenses and certificates have been granted, and allowed only upon the recommendation of persons of high scientific standing ; the are persons who, by their training and education, are fitted to undertake experimental work and to profit by it; and all experimental work has been conducted in suitable places. The net result, therefore, seems to be that the Government exercises an effective supervision over vivisections ; that the majority of experiments are attended by either no pain at all or only a small amount; that in a small number of- cases the animals do undoubtedly suffer, but every effort is made to minimise the time and the extent of the suffering; and that these experiments are of undoubted value as a means of detecting, curing, and preventing disease in human beings and animals alike.