Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1896.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXX, Issue 292, 10 December 1896, Page 2

Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1896.

How much further will science go towards mastering the mysteries of nature and making the hidden forces around us subserve the ends of man ? Has science discovered nearly all the cosmic agents, or is it merely at the beginning of a new cv* which, in a hundred years or bo, 'will enable human life and human achievement to approach some degree of modern perfection . The speculative mind halts puzzled between these two extremes, bm it has ceased to be astonished at anything, We live in an age of telephones, war balloons, electricity, motor cars, and Ron .gen rays. Men of very ordinary modem intelligence do aa a matter of course things whioh less than two centuries ago wonld have led to their destruction by flames as wizards and magicians. The striking of a lucifer maloh to obtain fire ; the indifferent unhooking of a receiver whioh will enable one to speak to another miles away ; the touching of a koy whioh will strike a needle ■.cross three continents and two oceans ; the application of a spray which will remove all sense of feeling while the surgeon hacks into our flesh : What necromanoer of the dark ages would have dared as much in public . What would even our great-grandfaihers have thought in soared amaze at these awful miraoles or deviltries . But to-day we acoept everything as possible and watoh for further development, A few years ago the discovery of an antidote to the poison of small-pox convulsed the world : towards tbe end of 1896 the discovery of a property of light which pierces opacity and exposes the anatomy of man through its oovering of flesh creates interest, but little astonishment,

At a reoent meeting of the British Association Sir Joseph Lister gavo a striking illustration of the mastery of Boience over nature, which had wrested services to mankind from hidden and refractory natural forces ; and were we not so vory modern and beyond being astonished we should feel afiaid and quaver that the age of miraoles was returning as a portent of the end of the world. He showed that in the course of a generation the discovery of anesthetics had robbed surgery of tho terror of suffering, and with rare modesty he gave a history (which he had himself helped to make, afier a hint by Pasteur,) of the discoveries in antiseptics. Under the old treatment a man with a broken leg was often as directly poisoned by the ferment of putrefaction, says the Melbourne " Argus," as if he had taken a doae of strychnine. Sir Joseph Lister's discovery, how oveiyrobbed surgeiy of its worst foe. Not long ago a great hospital was the germ of gangrene. In the Munich hospital 80 per cont of all woundß were so affected. On a given day, however, all the cases there were dressed with tho antiseptio preparation, and from that hour not a single, case of hospital gangrene has been known in the institution, and pycemia aud erysipelas have vanished as exorcised ghosts. But to mark the

change in public astonishment at scientific progress, Jenner's name is known to every school child as the victor of small-pox, while to-day fairly educated men pause to ask "Who is Hir Joseph Lister ?" Sir Joseph Lister is, however, one of the nineteenth century angels of mercy, and to such as he the world owes more than to princes and standing armies, hir Joseph is now experimenting witb the Botitgen rays to further utilise th_m in medical and surgical prao-< tice. He holds that the skin, if long exposed to their action develops a sort of "aggravated sunburn," and he therefore hopes by theso means to transmit a healthy stimulus to internal organs. Thus we have three curativo forces against sioknesß, suffering, and death brought into action within a generation — anesthetics, antiseptics, and Rontgen rays.

While Sir Joseph Lister is using microscopes to master the earth's secrets, Camille Flammarion is applying photography to the disclosure of the seorets of the sky. He, wiih the federated astronomers of the world, has beeu photographing the heavens since 1887. " A star chart is being constructed, in whioh the image of 30,000,000 stars will be captured atid pm on permanent record." Of sixteen observatories, each will photograph two degrees squaro of the sky, the time ot exposure ranging from five minutes to au honr, so that all stars up to the 14th degree of magnitude will be pictured. It wiil take 11,027 of these plates to cover the heavens, and the work will hardly be completed till the 20th century is no longer young. " The first general ohart, indeed, which is to inolude 2,600,000 starß, will not be catalogued before ihe end ofthis century, though the iask was begun five years ago ; and the eyes of astronomers yet unborn will grow dim beforo the catalogue of 30,000,000 siars is complete." bcience is making of pho'ography a new and gigantic Eye wherewi h io explore the depths of infinite space. In his own lyric phraaes blammarion says : — " 'Worlds, un.verses, creations,' now lost in far-off space, wih wheel into sight and be translated into ' catalogues.' In the thousandth part of a second this now Eye not only sees, it fixes as an enduring record ' the sun — its spots, its vortices, its fires,' and turns it all, indeed, into a mere document whioh can be studied in oold security and at leisure."

What more is there left to do ? It is the natural question arising from man's conceit ; but, af.er all, man is finite. Lord Kelvin, the famous .-coltish scientist, summed up that liniteness at his Jubilee : — " One word," he said, " characterises the most strenuous of the efl'ur s for the advancement of science that L have made during lifty-Dve years ; that word is— failure ! I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or oi the relation between ether, electricity, and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than 1 knew, and tried to teach to my students, fifty years ago ! "