progress is the pride of our time. We worship technology as
reared upon physics and chemistry. But what is our gain, in
this progress, so long as we continue to use one another as
targets? Would it not be wiser, more far-sighted, more humane,
more favorable to the development of universal peace and
brotherhood, to give a large share of our time and substance to
the search for the secrets of life? As compared with the
physical sciences, the biological departments of inquiry are,
in general, backward and ill-supported. Why? Because their
tremendous importance is not generally recognized, and, still
more, because the control of inanimate nature as promised by
physical discovery and its applications appeals irresistibly
both to our imagination and to our greed. We long for
peace--because we are afraid of war--we long for the perfecting
of individual and social life, but much more intensely and
effectively we long for wealth, power and pleasure.
What I have already said and now repeat in other words is that
if we really desired above anything attainable on earth the
lasting peace of nations, we should diligently foster and
tirelessly pursue the sciences of life and seek to perfect and
exalt the varied arts and technologies which should be based
upon them. Experimental zoology and genetics; physiology and
hygiene; genetic psychology and education; anthropology and
ethnology; sociology and economics, would be held in as high
esteem and as ardently furthered as are the various physical
sciences and their technologies.
Does it not seem reasonable to claim that human behavior may be
intelligently controlled or directed only in the light of
intimate and exhaustive knowledge of the organism, its
processes, and its relations to its environment? If this be
true, how pitiably, how shamefully, inadequate is our knowledge
even of ourselves! How few are those who have a sound, although
meager, knowledge of the laws of heredity, of the primary facts
of human physiology, of the principles of hygiene, of the chief
facts and laws of mental life, including the fundamental
emotions and their corresponding instinctive modes of action,
the modifiability or educability of the individual and the
important relations of varied sorts of experience and conduct,
the laws of habit, the nature and role of the sentiments, the
unnumbered varieties of memory and ideation, the chief facts of
social life and their relations to individual experience and
behavior. Not one person in a thousand has a knowledge of life
and its conditions equal in adequacy for practical demands to
his knowledge of those aspects of physical nature with which he
is concerned in earning a livelihood. Even those of us who have
dedicated our lives to the study of life are humble before our
ignorance. But with a faith which can not be shaken, because we
have seen visions and dreamed dreams, we insist that the
knowledge which we seek and daily find is absolutely essential
for the perfecting of educational methods; for the development
of effective systems of bodily and mental hygiene; for the
discovery, fostering and maintenance of increasingly profitable
social relations and organizations. In a word, we believe that
biology, of all sciences, can and must lead us in the path of
social as contrasted with merely material progress; can and
ultimately will so alter the relations of nations that war
shall be as impossible as is peace to-day.
Fortunately the biologist may depend, in his efforts to further
the study of all aspects of life, not upon faith and hope
alone, but also upon works, for already physiology and
psychology have transformed our educational practices; and the
medical sciences given us a great and steadily increasing
measure of control over disease.
At least two men, as different in intellectual equipment,
habits of mind, and methods of inquiry as well could be, the
one an American, the other an Englishman, have heralded the
broadly comparative and genetic study of mind and behavior--let
us call it Genetic Psychology--as the promise of a new era for
civilization, because the essential condition of the
intelligent and effective regulation of life.
The one of these prophets among biologists, President G.
Stanley Hall, has lived to see his faith in the practical
importance of the intensive study of childhood and adolescence
justified by radical reforms in school and home. Hall should be
revered by all lovers of youth as the apostle to adolescents.
The other, Professor William McDougall, has done much to
convince the thinking world that all of the social sciences and
technologies must be grounded upon an adequate genetic
psychology--a genetic psychology which shall take as full and
intelligent account of behavior as of experience; of the life
of the ant, monkey, ape as of that of man; of the savage as of
civilized man; of the infant, child, adolescent as of the
adult; of the moron, imbecile, idiot, insane, as of the normal
individual; of social groups as of isolated selves. It is to
McDougall we owe a most effective sketch--in his introduction
to Social Psychology of the primary human emotions in their
relations to instinctive modes of behavior.
Hall, McDougall and such sociologists--lamentably few, I
fear--as Graham Wallas would agree that for the attainment of
peace we must depend upon some primary human instinct. I
venture the prediction that no one of them would select fear as
the safe basis. Instead, they surely would unite upon sympathy.
Among animals preparedness for struggles is a conspicuous cause
of strife. The monkey who stalks about among his fellows with
muscles tense, tail erect, teeth bared, bespeaking expectancy
of and longing for a fight, usually provokes it. We may not
safely argue that lower animals prove the value of preparedness
for war as a preventive measure! Among them, as among human
groups, the only justification of militarism is protection and
aggression. Preparedness for strife is provocative rather than
preventive thereof.
As individual differences, and resulting struggles, are due to
ignorance, misunderstanding, lack of the basis for intelligent
appreciation of ideals, motives and sympathy, so among nations
knowledge of bodily and mental traits, of aims, aspirations,
and national ideals fosters the feeling of kinship and favors
the instinctive attitude of sympathetic cooperation.
Every student of living things knows that to understand the
structure, habits, instincts, of any creature is to feel for
and with it. Even the lowliest type of organism acquires
dignity and worth when one becomes familiar with its life.
Children in their ignorance and lack of understanding are
incredibly cruel. So, likewise, are nations. The treatment of
inferior by superior races throughout the ages has been
childishly cruel, unjust, stupid, inimical to the best
interests not only of the victims, but also of mankind. This
has been so, not so much by reason of bad intentions, although
selfishness has been at the root of immeasurable injustice, but
primarily because of the utter lack of understanding and
sympathy. To see a savage is to despise or fear him, to know
him intimately is to love him. The same law holds of social
groups, be they families, tribes, nations or races. They can
cooperate on terms of friendly helpfulness just in the measure
in which they know one another's physical, mental and social
traits and appreciate their values, for in precisely this
measure are they capable of understanding and sympathizing with
one another's ideals.
Selfishness, the essential condition of individualism and
nationalism, must be supplanted by the sympathy of an all
inclusive social consciousness and conscience if lasting peace
is to be attained.
To further the end of this transformation of man we should
become familiar with the inborn springs to action, those
fundamental tendencies which we call instincts, for we live
more largely than is generally supposed by instinct and less by
reason. All of the organic cravings, hungers, needs, should be
thoroughly understood so that they may be effectively used.
And, finally, the laws of intellect must be at our command if
we are to meet the endlessly varying and puzzling situations of
life profitably and with the measure of adequacy our reason
would seem to justify.
Clearly, then, the least, and the most, we can do in the
interest of peace is to provide for the study of life, but
especially for the shamefully neglected or imperfectly
described phenomena of behavior and mind, in the measure which
our national wealth, our intelligence and our technical skill
make possible. For one thing, it is open to us to establish
institutes for the thorough study of every aspect of behavior
and mind in relation to structure and environment, comparable
with such institutions for social progress as the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research. The primary function of such
centers for the solution of vital problems should be the
comparative study, from the genetic, developmental, historical,
point of view of every aspect of the functional life of living
things, to the end that human life may be better understood and
more successfully controlled. Facts of heredity, of behavior,
of mind, of social relations, should alike be gathered and
related, and thus by the observation of the most varied types,
developmental stages, and conditions of living creatures there
should be developed a science of behavior and consciousness
which should ultimately constitute a safe basis for the social
sciences, for all forms of social endeavor, and for universal
and permanent peace.
I submit that such centers of research as the psycho-biological
institute I have so imperfectly described are sorely needed.
For it is obvious that the future of our species depends in
large measure upon how we develop the biological sciences and
what use we make of our knowledge. I further submit, and
therewith I rest my case, that familiarity with living things
breeds sympathy not contempt, and that sympathy in turn
conditions justice.
May it be granted us to work intelligently, effectively,
tirelessly for world-wide peace and service. not by the
suppression of racial and national diversities, the leveling of
the mass to a deadly sameness, but through steadily increasing
appreciation of racial and national traits. May the world, even
sooner than we dare to hope, be ruled by sympathy instead of by
fear.
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
THE MISSOURI AND THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDENS
THE Missouri Botanical Garden has recently celebrated the
twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation and the New York
Botanical Garden its twentieth anniversary. Within these short
periods these gardens have taken rank among the leading
scientific institutions of the world. Botanical gardens were
among the first institutions to be established for scientific
research; indeed Parkinson, the "botanist royal" of England, on
the title page of his book of 1629, which we here reproduce,
depicts the Garden of Eden as the first botanical garden and
one which apparently engaged in scientific expeditions, for it
includes plants which must have been collected in America.
However this may be, publicly supported gardens for the
cultivation of plants of economic and esthetic value existed in
Egypt, Assyria, China and Mexico and beginning in the medieval
period had a large development in Europe there being at the
beginning of the seventeenth century botanical gardens devoted
to research in Bologna, Montpellier, Leyden, Paris, Upsala and
elsewhere. An interesting survey of the history of botanical
gardens is given in a paper by Dr. A W. Hill assistant director
of the Kew Gardens, prepared for the celebration of the
Missouri Garden, from which we have taken the illustration from
Parkinson and the pictures of Padua and Kew.
The papers presented at the celebration have been published in
a handsome volume. It includes addresses by a number of
distinguished botanists, though owing to the war several of the
foreign botanists were unable to be present. Dr. George T.
Moore, director of the garden, made in his address of welcome a
brief statement in regard to its origin in the private garden
and by the later endowment of Mr. Henry Shaw. Mr. Shaw came to
this country from England in 1818, and with a small stock of
hardware began business in one room which also served as
bedroom and kitchen. Within twenty years he had acquired a
fortune and retired from active business to devote the
remaining forty-nine years of his life to travel and to the
management of a garden surrounding his country-home on the
outskirts of St. Louis. In 1859 he erected a small museum and
library, and in 1866 Mr. James Gurney was brought to this
country as head gardener. Mr. Shaw died in 1889, leaving his
estate largely for the establishment of the Missouri Botanical
Garden, but providing also for the Henry Shaw School of Botany
of Washington University and a park for the city. With this
liberal endowment constantly increasing as the real estate
becomes more productive, Dr. William Trelease, the first
director, and Dr. George T. Moore, the present director, have
conducted an institution not only of value to the city of St.
Louis but largely contributing to the advance of botanical
science.
The New York Botanical Garden, largely through the efforts of
Dr. N. L. Britton, the present director was authorized by the
New York legislature in 1891. The act of incorporation provided
that when the corporation created should have secured by
subscription a sum not less than $250,000 the city was
authorized to set aside for the garden as much as 250 acres
from one of the public parks and to expend one half million
dollars for the construction and equipment of the necessary
buildings. The conditions were met in 1895, and the institution
has since grown in its land, and its buildings, in its
collections and in its herbaria, so that, in association with
the department of botany of Columbia University, it now rivals
in its material equipment and in the research work accomplished
any botanical institution in the world.
THE SECOND PAN-AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS
THERE will be held at Washington from Monday, December 27, to
Saturday, January 9, the second Pan-American Scientific
Congress, authorized by the first congress held in Santiago,
Chili, six years previously. This was one of the series of
congresses previously conducted by the republics of Latin
America. The Washington congress, which is under the auspices
of the government of the United States, with Mr. William
Phillips, third assistant secretary of state, as chairman of
the executive committee, will meet in nine sections, which,
with the chairmen, are as follows:
I. Anthropology, Wm. H. Holmes.
II. Astronomy, Meteorology, and Seismology, Robert S. Woodward.
III. Conservation of Natural Resources, Agriculture, Irrigation
and Forestry, George M. Rommel.
IV. Education, P. P. Claxton.
V. Engineering, W. H. Bixby.
VI. International Law, Public Law, and Jurisprudence, James
Brown Scott.
VII. Mining and Metallurgy, Economic Geology, and Applied
Chemistry, Hennen Jennings.
VIII. Public Health and Medical Science, Wm. C. Gorgas.
IX. Transportation, Commerce, Finance, and Taxation, L. S.
Rowe.
Each section is divided further into subsections, of which
there are forty-five, each with a special committee and
program. Several of the leading national associations of the
United States, concerned with the investigation of subjects of
pertinent interest to some of the sections of the congress,
have received and accepted invitations from the executive
committee of congress to meet in Washington at the same time
and hold one or more joint sessions with a section or
subsection of corresponding interest. Thus the nineteenth
International Congress of Americanists will meet in Washington
during the same week with the Pan-American Scientific Congress,
and joint conferences will be held for the discussion of
subjects of common interest to members of the two organizations
As an example of the wide scope of the congress we may quote
the ten subsections into which the section of education is
divided. Each of these subsections is under a committee of men
distinguished in educational work and men of eminence have been
invited to take part in the proceedings. The subjects proposed
for discussion by each of these sections are:
Elementary Education: To what extent should elementary
education be supported by local taxation, and to what extent by
state taxation? What should be the determining factors in the
distribution of support? Secondary Education: What should be
the primary and what the secondary purpose of high school
education? To what extent should courses of study in the high
school be determined by the requirements for admission to
college, and to what extent by the demands of industrial and
civic life? University Education: Should universities and
colleges supported by public funds be controlled by independent
and autonomous powers, or should they be controlled directly by
central state authority? Education of Women: To what extent is
coeducation desirable in elementary schools, high schools,
colleges and universities? Exchange of Professors and Students
between Countries: To what extent is an exchange of students
and professors between American republics desirable? What is
the most effective basis for a system of exchange? What plans
should be adopted in order to secure mutual recognition of
technical and professional degrees by American Republics?
Engineering Education: To what extent may college courses in
engineering be profitably supplemented by practical work in the
shop? To what extent may laboratory work in engineering be
replaced through cooperation with industrial plants? Medical
Education: What preparation should be required for admission to
medical schools? What should he the minimum requirements for
graduation? What portion of the faculty of a medical school
should be required to give all their time to teaching and
investigation? What instruction may best be given by physicians
engaged in medical practice? Agricultural Education: What
preparation should be required for admission to state and
national colleges of agriculture? To what extent should the
courses of study in the agricultural college be theoretical and
general, and to what extent practical and specific? To what
extent should the curriculum of any such college be determined
by local conditions? Industrial Education: What should be the
place of industrial education in the school system of the
American republics? Should it be supported by public taxation?
Should it be considered as a function of the public school
system? Should it be given in a separate system under separate
control? How and to what extent may industrial schools
cooperate with employers of labor, Commercial Education: How
can a nation prepare in the most effective manner its young men
for a business career that is to be pursued at home or in a
foreign country.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
WE record with regret the death at the age of ninety-two of
Henri Fabre, the distinguished French entomologist and author;
of William Henry Hoar Hudson, late professor of mathematics at
King's College, London; of Dr. Ugo Schiff, professor of
chemistry at Florence; of Susanna Phelps Gage, known for her
work on comparative anatomy; of Charles Frederick Holder, the
California naturalist, and of Dr. Austin Flint, a distinguished
physician and alienist of New York City.
DR. RAY LYMAN WILBUR, professor of medicine, has been elected
president of Leland Stanford Junior University. He will on
January 1 succeed Dr John Caspar Branner, who undertook to
accept the presidency for a limited period on the retirement of
Dr. David Starr Jordan, now chancellor of the university. Dr.
Wilbur graduated from the academic department of Stanford
University in 1896.
AT the Manchester meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, Sir Arthur J. Evans, F.R S., the
archeologist, honorary keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,
was elected president for next year's meeting, to be held at
Newcastle-on-Tyne. The meeting of 1917 will be held at
Bournemouth.
DR. MAX PLANCK, professor of physics at Berlin, and Professor
Hugo von Seeliger, director of the Munich Observatory, have
been made knights of the Prussian order pour le merite. Dr.
Ramon y Cajal, professor of histology at Madrid, and Dr. C. J.
Kapteyn, professor of astronomy at Groningen, have been
appointed foreign knights of this order.
MR. JACOB H. SCHIFF, a member of the board of trustees of
Barnard College and its first treasurer, has given $500,000 to
the college for a woman's building. It will include a library
and additional lecture halls as well as a gymnasium, a lunch
room and rooms for students' organizations.
BY the will of the late Dr. Dudley P. Allen, formerly professor
of surgery in the Western Reserve University, $200,000 has been
set aside as a permanent endowment fund for the Cleveland
Medical Library.
THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY
DECEMBER, 1915
THE INSIDE HISTORY OF A GREAT MEDICAL DISCOVERY
BY ARISTIDES AGRAMONTE, M.D., Sc.D. (HON.)
UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA.
THE construction of the Panama Canal was made possible because
it was shown that yellow fever, like malaria, could be spread
only by the bites of infected mosquitoes.
The same discovery, which has been repeatedly referred to as
the greatest medical achievement of the twentieth century, was
the means of stamping out the dreaded scourge in Cuba, as well
as in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Vera Cruz, Colon, Panama and
other Cities in America.
This article is intended to narrate the motives that led up to
the investigation and also the manner in which the work was
planned, executed and terminated. No names are withheld and the
date of every important event is given, so that an interested
reader may be enabled to follow closely upon the order of
things as they occurred and thus form a correct idea of the
importance of the undertaking, the risk entailed in its
accomplishment and how evenly divided was the work among those
who, in the faithful performance of their military duties,
contributed so much for the benefit of mankind; the magnitude
of their achievement is of such proportions, that it loses
nothing of its greatness when we tear away the halo of apparent
heroism that well-meaning but ignorant historians have thrown
about some of the investigators.
The whole series of events, tragic, pathetic, comical and
otherwise, took place upon a stage made particularly fit by
nature and the surrounding circumstances.
Columbia Barracks, a military reservation, garrisoned by some
fourteen hundred troops, distant about eight miles from the
city of Havana, the latter, suffering at the time from an
epidemic of yellow fever, which the application of all sanitary
measures had failed to check or ameliorate and finally, our
experimental camp (Camp Lazear), a few army tents, securely
hidden from the road leading to Marianao, and safeguarded
against intercourse with the outside world; the whole setting
portentously silent and gloriously bright in the glow of
tropical sunlight and the green of luxuriant vegetation.
Two members of a detachment of four medical officers of the
United States Army, on the morning of August 31, 1900, were
busily examining under microscopes several glass slides
containing blood from a fellow officer who, since the day
before, had shown symptoms of yellow fever; these men were Drs.
Jesse W. Lazear and myself; our sick colleague was Dr. James
Carroll, who presumably had been infected by one of our
"experiment mosquitoes."
It is very difficult to describe the feelings which assailed us
at that moment; a sense of exultation at our apparent success
no doubt animated us; regret, because the results had evidently
brought a dangerous illness upon our coworker and with it all
associated a thrill of uncertainty for the reason of the yet
insufficient testimony tending to prove the far-reaching truth
which we then hardly dared to realize.