SCIENCE REMAKING EVERYDAY LIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 59

SCIENCE REMAKING EVERYDAY LIFE.

By Enwix E. Slosson, in the World’s Work. Dieticians tell us nowadays that it is not sufficient to provide in our daily fare the proper amount of fats, carbohydrates and protein, but that we must also see to it that we have minute amounts of certain substances which they call vitamines. These vitamines are dietary wild cattle. They have never been-caught and branded. For lack of names they go by letters, A, B, C, D, and nobody knows how far down the alphabet they will reach in time. But it is known that they are in various ways necessary for health and growth and that they are found most abundantly in milk, eggs, fruit and leafy vegetables. Niow these axe the very things that commercial refrigeration has added to cur daily dietary all the year round. What that means for the vitality of the northern nations cannot be computed. What it means for the southern communities growing the fruits and vegetables for northern markets we may see for ourselves. Compare, for instance, in life and resulting habit of mind, a man in California, living off of an orange orchard of a few acres, with a sheen man in Scotland using aIO,OOO acre grazing ground that be mav not even own. To get unblemished fruit to a distant market requires united action, efficient organisation and scientific knowledge of such things as insect enemies, fertilisers, and meteorology. This leads to co-operative Hacking, grading, standardising, advertising and shipping—and compulsory conformity to eommunitv control. A sociologist should he able to tell iu advance what would in the course of a generation or two he the character of such a eommunitv ; what would be the politics, morals, architecture, religion and literary taste of its population. The New Dairying.— Da'rvm rr ”sed to lie confined to cool climates, but now bv thp aid of refrigeration cm be carried on in the south. Tt is a high-class industry, reouiring for its success considerable knowledge of chemrtrv, bacteriology, feeding and mechanics Two centrifugal machines, the Do Laval separator and the Babcock milk-tester, have brought dairying within the sphere of the amdied sciences. Pome eighteen pounds cf butter are now consumed per capita in the United States everv year. This is mostlv made possible bv the employment of artificial refrigeraj tiop in manufacture or storage or trnns- : portation. It is cheaper than ice in mo t creameries. Butter is 98 per cent, digestible. and has the advantage over vegetable and meat fats in that it contains v it. ami no A. Fresh milk contains all three vitamines, A, B. C. and perhaps others, of which a small but continuous supply is essential for health and growth. It is therefore advisable to include milk in everybody’s dietorv. hut this was impossible,' except in rural districts, until the discovery of

refrigeration. Now fresh milk is brought into the city of New York daily from a distance of four hundred miles about. Motor trucks run by petrol collect the milk from the farms and distribute it to the city homes. the use of milk is rapidly gaining throughout the nation. In 1921 the milk production of the United States rose to nearly one hundred billion pounds, which is about 107 gallons per capita. In the preceding year it was about one hundred gallons per capita. Some five thousand million pounds more milk was used for -ouscholj purposes in 1921 than in 1920.. What that means for child welfare cannot bo estimated. - Refrigeration.— How the dietary of a people can be changed by such an invention is siiown bv tile banana industry. In 1870, Captain Baker, coming back from .Jamaica with a schooner, brought to Boston a few bunches of bananas as curiosities. They attracted the attention of a. W. Preston, a fruit dealer of Boston, who, in 1885, started witii an investment of £4uo in the enterprises that became the United Fruit Company, which now runs a fleet of about a hundred steamers to the Caribbean and owns large plantations on the islands and in Central America. These localities have been transformed from a sanitary and industrial standpoint, and supply some 50,000,000 bunches of bananas a year. The bananas are picked green and delivered at various points of England and 1 United States in such a state as to ripen within two days from arrival. All the bananas have to be eaten within three weeks from the time of nicking in the West Indies. What refrigeration has done for the flower business we can see in any florist’s window. The sunny slopes of southern France, where blossoms acquire more perfume than elsewhere, send out nightly trains of cut flowers to adorn tables and bodies in the cities of northern Europe. Of late so many bunches of violets have been shipped away from Grasse that the perfumers have to resort to the synthetic scent, ionone, because the supply of the natural perfume has run low. A flower’s season of scent is short, and formerly much of this most costly essence was lost because the blossoms could not be nicked and extracted at the moment when they were richest in odour. Thus many a flower wasted its sweetness on the southern air. But now the flowers are picked at the best time and laid away in cold storage until they can be worked up. They are packed in cold grease which absorbs the perfume. This pomade is then extracted with gasolene and the solution cooled and filtered to free it from the surplus fats and resins. Afterwards the solvent is distilled off in a vacuum, so that the delicate odour may not be destroyed by heat. I’eonies are now shipped to France from China in large quantities and arrive unimpaired, although they have been three months on the voyage, for they have been kept at tho freezing point. Bv having cold as well as heat at his command, man is able to slow uu or accelerate the rate of livin'* in both the vegetable and the animal world. Silk cocoons are now kept in cold storage until the mulberry is in leaf, so the worms can be fed. Pieces of living flesh have been preserved in the cold for several years and oompletelv renewed many times to- feeding with nutritive solution. It is impossible to trace out completely the infinite ramifications of such an invention « refrigeration. I can only mention a few and leave the reader to follow in imagination the direct and indirect effects upon his daily life. For instance, paraffin is obtained from petroleum by cooling, when the paraffin crystallises out and is filtered off under nressure. How man*- are the uses of paraffin. For one thin", what a difference it has made in the homo preserving of fruit bv sealing the iars, and in turn what does that mean in the enrichment of the dietary a-nd in the saving cf fruit otherwise and formerly wasted. Ammonia refrigerating machines that work automaticallv—or are supposed to — have been adapted to the family ice chest, and this means less spoiled food and more vitamines. In the making of viscose. cotton is dissolved in caustic soda and carbon disulphide, and the solution kept at tho temperature of ice water for a month or two. so that it may ripen, puch “artificial silk” takes up the aniline dyes better than the natural, and lias put more colour into modern life in the form of sweaters, neckties, and stockings. Refrigeration is almost indispensable in the manufacture of chocolate, rubber, glue, dynamite, and photographic plates. What a difference it would make if any one of these things were dropped out of modern civilisation. Another minor application, but with considerable consequences. If air : s cooled before it is sent into the blast furnace, the moisture is eliminated. The dry air is then heated and sent into the blast. In this wav a great saving of fuel is effected. This means cheaper steel and the extension of its uses. Possibly in the future the air mav he liquefied and the nitrogen used for fertiliser and the oxygen used for the furnace. This would produce a greater heat and cut down the familiar tall chimney. In mining there are two great obstacles : water runs in from porous strata, and the heat gets higher as the shaft goes deeper, until it becomes unbearable. In overcoming both these difficulties refrigeration .can help. Bv freezing the surrounding soil or sand, shafts may be sunk through water-bearing strata (Poetsch process), and by supplying cool dry air to tho miners much greater depths can be reached. Now the deeper we can go the more metal we may get. Most of the metals in the surface layers of the earth have taken up oxygen from the a-ir, and it is difficult and expensive to free them from it. But it seems likely that the' interior of the earth is largely solid metal, possibly iron, which is rarely found free in the crust, for the earth as a whole is more than twice as heavy as

the average of the rocks we know. But whether or not there are metals within reach, we know that there is unlimited heat, and engineers are seriously considering the project of sinking a shaft deep enough to boll the water run down into it, and then bring it up in the form of steam for use in engines or heating houses, t hus our power oi using cold may become the means of getting neat, and what Bacon called "Nature s two hands” may help one another.