THE ÆTIOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES.*
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GEORGE M. STERNBERG
IN a recent address before a medical audience I defined the term “infectious” as follows : “It is hardly necessary to say that by 'infectious diseases' we mean those diseases which result from the introduction into the body of some disease-producing agent.
IN our school days most of us were brought up to regard Asia as the mother of European peoples. We were told that an ideal race of men swarmed forth from the Himalayan highlands, disseminating culture right and left as they spread through the barbarous West.
VERY few persons ever visit the southern portion of the United States and become at all familiar with its woodland life without being captivated by that prince of singers, the mocking bird. Not only as a musician, but in general “smartness,” he is far and away ahead of anything else that flies.
SCIENCE, held under the ban through the long course of the middle ages, has now conquered its independence, by virtue of the services it has rendered to man. It has fulfilled the promises made in its name by the natural philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and has transformed since then, as it has indeed been doing from the beginning, the material and moral conditions of the lives of the people.
IN the great family of the backboned animals, to which we ourselves belong, many different kinds of feet and hands are to be found, their shape showing a very wonderful relation to the manner of life of their possessors. We are not going here to describe the fins of fishes, although many people believe that our feet and hands were developed from fins; we shall only deal with the true feet and hands found in animals higher than the fishes.
GENTLEMEN : Our medical faculty, as well as the whole University of Leipsic, were plunged in deep sorrow at the beginning of the term. In the course of a few days we lost Carl Ludwig and Carl Thiersch, two members of our academic association who for years past have been accounted among its ablest supporters.
ONE of the inevitable characteristics of a “general property tax” is the opportunity afforded for inflicting double taxation—i.e., taxation at one and the same time on the same person or property, or taxation of the same property a second time in the same year—an opportunity which the believers in this system vigorously defend, and its administrators as a rule gladly take advantage of to practically enforce.
SOME little interest having again been awakened in the outside world concerning the West Indian Islands, the question is occasionally asked, Had those islands any aborigines when discovered by Europeans? If there were natives, do any of them remain?
THE history of the United States, more than that of any other nation, is a history, not of wars and dynasties, but of the progress of a people. In the early days of British dependency the population of the thirteen original colonies comprised representatives of several diverse races, many of whom had sought the inhospitable shores of a new land to gain religious liberty, others to better their worldly condition, some under compulsion, yet all these heterogeneous elements became for a time amalgamated, animated with one desire and purpose—liberty, freedom from what they considered the unjust exactions of the English Government.
THE several tribes of Cainguá Indians are scattered through the immense forest region that extends from the Ygatini to the Monday, and from the central Cordillera of Paraguay to the banks of the upper Paraná. In the midst of those grand yerbales (forests containing the maté, or Paraguay tea plant), these children of the forest dispute for their hunting grounds with the “Tupi,” or refugee braves from Brazilian hostility.
FRANCIS LIEBER fled to our shores a political exile, but he afterward became one of the greatest publicists of the world, and shed glory on American scholarship by expounding the principles of liberty. He accomplished in two of our colleges the work on which his fame will rest.
SIR: To one interested in observing the action of light under unusual circumstances, a very pretty display of colors can be seen in the amalgam room of the Ojo de Agua Silver Mill at San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, Mexico. This room is twelve feet wide by twenty long, with whitewashed walls.
THE warfare of science with theology has been amply and impressively related by such writers as Buckle, Draper, and President Andrew White; and many have supposed that science, having accomplished this warfare and come out victorious, had no other foe to fear. There are not wanting signs, however, that complete confidence on this point may be somewhat premature.
THE purpose of Mr. Israel C. Russell's Volcanoes of North America * is to make clear the principal features of volcanoes in general, and to place in the hands of students a concise account of the leading facts thus far discovered concerning the physical features of North America which can be traced directly to the influence of volcanic action.
THE chapter in American history relating to the cowboy, says the editor of The Story of the West Series, introducing Mr. Hough’s account of that singular character of the plains,* “demands preservation for reasons aesthetic and practical alike.”
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Proceedings. April to September, 1897. Pp. 176, with plates. Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Ohio: No. 85. Strawberries. By W. J. Green. Pp. 24; No. 86. The Story of the Lives of a Butterfly and a Moth.
Chinese White Wax : a Curious Industry. —George F. Smithers, consul at Chung-king, China, is authority for the following : In the Chien-ch’ang Valley, and especially in the neighborhood of Chung-king, which is the chief wax-producing country, perhaps the most prominent tree is the Ligustrum lucidum, or “insect tree.”
THE last bulletin of the Hatch Experiment Station gives some interesting information regarding the nitrogen germ fertilizer. Hellriegel and his colaborers have established by careful observation the fact that leguminous plants, like clovers, beans, vetches, lupines, etc , with the assistance of certain root bacteria found in the soil, can utilize the nitrogen of the air for the formation of nitrogen plant food fit for the support of their growth.
TILL about two years ago all the fuller’s earth used in this country was imported. About that time deposits were discovered in Florida. After these, a paper by Mr. Heinrich Ries says the most extensive beds so far found have been in South Dakota.