MARTYRS TO SCIENCE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9653, 5 January 1910, Page 6

MARTYRS TO SCIENCE.

The roll of the Illustrious martyrs to science has just been enriched by the name of Dr. J. H. Wells, who recently succumbed to glanders' in London, after eighteen mouths of suffering, heroically sustained for the cause of humanity and the advancement of medical knowledge. Martyrdom such as Dr. Weils faced occurs with startling frequency and pathetic regularity. Less than two years ago a patient in quarantine at Singapore died. Two Government medical officers volunteered to make a post-mortem examination, Doth men contracted plague. Both men died. A little earlier Dr. Allan Maofadyen, an eminent bacteriologist, succumbed to a combination of two diseases. He was conducting a series of experiments with the bacteria of typhoid and Malta fever with a view .of discovering a vaccine that would prevent the diseases. By an accident, it is believed, he contracted both, and his name was added to the list of martyrs of the laboratory. A few months later Dr. W. H. Brown, of Leeds, died from cancer, contracted whilst operating two years previously. Following close upon the heels of Dr. Brown’s demise came the death of Dr. Seneca Powell, one of the best-known professors of medicine in the United States. He paid the penalty of daring investigation into carbolic acid poisoning, after three years of torture. Professor Curie, who shared with his Wife in the distinction of having discovered radium, was spared the agony of a lingering death by a street accident in Paris. His experiments with the new element had scourged his hands and arms, which (almost completely paralysed) presented a horrifying sight. The Rontgen rays in the early part of the history of their application were responsible for the death of two men one, Dr. Wiegel, of New York, and the other Clarence Dally, chief assistant to Edison. Owing to exposure to the rays, a cancerous growth developed on Daily’s left arm, the lower part of which had to be amputated. The fingers of his right hand had next to be taken off, and the arm followed. But none of these expedients availed, and Daily died in 1904, after seven years of suffering. Dr. Maostier Pirrie made two expeditions along the course of the Nile to study tropical fevers. He : came home stricken with the disease he had sought to eradicate, and died, when the best years of his Jife should nave been before him, at the age of twenty-eight. Dr. Dutton, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicines, died from tick fever contracted during experiments; Dr. Giuseppe Bosso died at Turin from tuberculosis in a similar fashion, and during an outbreak of spotted fever in Rome. Dr. Zampagnanl, while attending some of the victims, was attacked by|the malady, and, with death staring him in the face, wrote a treatise on the fever which before long bora him off to a martyr’s grave.