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THAT

HAT the twentieth century may see the supremacy of the novel as an art form seriously challenged by the drama is a suggestion advanced by Mr. Brander Matthews, professor of dramatic literature in Columbia University. As we glance down the long history of literature, writes Professor Matthews, we can not but notice that different literary forms have, at different times, achieved a sweeping popularity, absorbing at such times talents to which they were not naturally congenial. Thus at the beginning of the sixteenth century in England the drama was dominant. Two hundred years later the essay gained ascendency, to be supplanted in turn by the novel, which still holds the field. Of the way in which the novel came to its own, and of the wide scope it has permitted itself, Professor Matthews, writing in The North American Review, says:

Altho the art of fiction must be almost as old as mankind itself, the prose novel, as we know it now, is a thing of yesterday only. It is not yet a hundred years since it established itself and claimed equality with the other forms of literature. Novelists there had been, no doubt, and of the highest rank; but it was not until after 'Waverley' and its successors swept across Europe, triumphant and overwhelming, that a fiction in prose was admitted to full citizenship in the republic of letters. Nowadays, we are so accustomed to the novel and so familiar with its luxuriance in every modern language that we often forget its comparative youth. Yet we know that no one of the Muses of old was assigned to the fostering of prose-fiction, a form of literary endeavor which the Greeks did not foresee. If we accept Fielding's contention that the history of 'Tom Jones' must be considered as a prose-epic, we are justified in the belief that the muse of the epic is not now without fit occupation.

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'Indeed, the modern novel is not only the heir of the epic, it has also despoiled the drama, the lyric, and the oration of part of their inheritance. "The Scarlet Letter,' for example, has not a little of the lofty largeness and of the stately movement of true tragedy; 'Paul and Virginia,' again, abounds in a passionate selfrevelation which is essentially lyric; and many a novel-with-apurpose, needless to name here, displays its author's readiness to avail himself of all the devices of the orator. In fact, the novel is now so various and so many-sided that its hospitality is limitless. It welcomes alike the exotic eroticism of Mr. Pierre Loti and the cryptic cleverness of Mr. Henry James, the accumulated adventures of Dumas and the inexorable veracity of Tolstoy. It has tempted many a man who had no native endowment for it; Motley and Parkman and Froude risked themselves in imaginative fiction, as well as in the sterner history which was their real birthright. And so did Brougham, far more unfitted for prose-fiction than Johnson was for the graceful eighteenth-century essay or Peele and Greene for the acted drama. Perhaps it is a consequence of this variety of method, which lets it proffer itself to every passerby, that we recognize in the Victorian novel the plasticity of form and the laxity of structure which we have discovered to be characteristic of the Elizabethan drama."

Nevertheless, says Professor Matthews, the drama, "the most democratic of the arts," has always had a powerful fascination for the novelists," who are forever casting longing eyes on the stage." We read further:

"Mr. James himself has tried it, and Mr. Howells and Mark Twain also. Balzac believed that he was destined to make his fortune in the theater; and one of Thackeray's stories was made over out of a comedy acted only by amateurs. Charles Reade called himself a dramatist forced to be a novelist by bad laws.

Flaubert and the Goncourts, Zola and Daudet wrote original plays, without ever achieving the success which befell their efforts in prose-fiction. And now, in the opening years of the twentieth century, we see Mr. Barrie in London and Mr. Hervieu in Paris abandoning the novel in which they have triumphed for the far more precarious drama. Nor is it without significance that the professional playwrights seem to feel little or no temptation to turn story-tellers. Apparently the dramatic form is the more attractive and the more satisfactory, in spite of its greater difficulty and its greater danger.

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'Perhaps, indeed, we may discover in this difficulty and danger one reason why the drama is more interesting than prose-fiction. A true artist can not but tire of a form that is too facile; and he is ever yearning for a grapple with stubborn resistance. He delights in technic for its own sake, girding himself joyfully to vanquish its necessities. He is aware that an art which does not demand a severe apprenticeship for the slow mastery of its secrets will fail to call forth his full strength. He knows that it is bad for the art and unwholesome for the artist himself, when the conditions are so relaxed that he can take it carelessly.

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In other words, the novel is too easy to be wholly satisfactory to an artist in literature. It is a loose form of hybrid ancestry; it may be of any length; and it may be told in any manner-in letters, as an autobiography or as a narrative. It may gain praise by the possession of the mere externals of literature, by sheer style. It may seek to please by description of scenery, or by dissection of motive. It may be empty of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in its license of digression- -as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it is too varied, too negligent, too lax to spur its writer to his utmost effort, to that stern struggle with technic which is a true artist's never-failing tonic."

Sidney Lanier asserted that the novel was a finer form than the drama because there were subtleties of feeling which Shakespeare could not make plain

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and George Eliot could. But Professor Matthews answers:

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Is there no rich variety of self-analysis in 'Macbeth,' one may ask, and in 'Hamlet'? Did any novelist of the seventeenth century lay bare the palpitations of the female heart more delicately than Racine? Did any novelist of the eighteenth century reveal a subtler insight into the hidden recesses of feminine psychology than Marivaux? It may the nineteenth century, be true enough that, in prose-fiction has been more fortunate than the drama, and that the novelists have achieved triumphs of insight and of subtlety denied to the dramatists. But who shall say that this immediate inferiority of the play to the novel is inherent in the form itself? Who will deny that it may be merely the defect of the playwrights of our time? Who will assert that a more accomplished dramatist may not come forward in the twentieth century to prove that the drama is a fit instrument for emotional dissection?

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PROF. BRANDER MATTHEWS.

He suggests that "the supremacy of the novel may be challenged by the drama more swiftly than now seems likely."

The art of the dramatist is not yet at its richest; but it bristles with difficulties such as a strong man joys in overcoming. In this sharper difficulty is its most obvious advantage over the art of the novelist; and here is its chief attraction for the story-teller, weary of a method almost too easy to be worth while. Here is a reason why one may venture a doubt whether the novel, which has been dominant, not to say domineering, in the second half of the nine

teenth century, may not have to face a more acute rivalry of the drama in the first half of the twentieth century. The vogue of the novel is not likely to wane speedily; but its supremacy may be challenged by the drama more swiftly than now seems likely."

A SUICIDE EPIDEMIC ON THE FRENCH

SINCE

STAGE.

INCE the first novelties of the Paris dramatic season were referred to in these pages, a curious and remarkable phenomenon has occurred on the stage of the French capital. It is nothing less than a suicide epidemic. The playwrights have become pessimistic, morbid, not to say bloodthirsty, the Parisian critics say, and they think it time to call a halt. Last year optimism prevailedsweetness and light reigned, and every complication was happily solved by the dramatists. Whence the sudden change in the outlook and temper? it is asked on all sides. A tragic ending," says the critic of Le Figaro, "has become the rule" at this time, and the correspondent of The Pall Mall Gazette (London) wonders at this "species of fury against the human race," which "slays at the least provocation." The latter goes on to say in commenting on the newest French plays:

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"It is very largely a question of temperament, no doubt, but it may be asked whether the brutal verities of life do not find too large a place at this moment upon the French stage. It is a fashion that has only grown up of quite recent years; it was the first breakaway from the romanticism and the earlier classicism that, up to that moment, bound the theater in bands of steel. In the early days of Victorien Sardou the theater was a 'closed' profession. It needed, no doubt, some heroic efforts to break through the old and hidebound usage; but the ground being now clear and the last remaining prejudice swept away, why not return to the older, more wholesome and sweeter traditions of the stage? Indeed, I but express a current opinion here when I say that the world is sick of the horribles in four acts and awaits some new prophet of the reaction."

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These and similar comments refer to Leon Grandillot's Vers l'Amour" (literally, "Toward Love") Henri Bernstein's "La Rafale " ("The Squall"), Henri Bataille's "Marche Nuptiale" ("The Wedding March "), and Jules I.pmaître's "Bertrade."

All these plays are praised as literature and criticized as art. They are not thesisplays, but studies of situations and characters, and the playwrights are accused of making their pictures too dark and too painful-darker than the reality.

The plots of the plays named may be briefly narrated:

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the Mercure de France is impressed with the skill of the construction, the fine dialogue and the seriousness of the whole drama, which "profoundly moves the spectator."

Bernstein's "La Rafale" is a variation upon a stale and disagreeable French theme. It tells the painful story of a woman who leaves an uncongenial husband and follows another man, whom she loves and with whom she expects to be happy in a union condemned by the law and public opinion. It ends in a tragedy-the woman's suicide, and illustrates the truth that the wages of sin is death. The play is strong and dramatic, but presents no new feature of modern life or morals. Bataille's " Marche Nuptiale" is in á different category. In outline the plot is as follows:

Mlle. Grace de Plersans is a young girl of a noble and distinguished provincial family. She is ardent, somewhat mystical, and capable of self-sacrifice and enthusiasm. She falls in love with her music teacher, a poor, awkward, socially inferior young man. She follows the music teacher to Paris and enters with him upon a sordid, hard, miserable existence. He can scarcely make a living, but Grace is heroic, devoted, high-minded, and there is something maternal in her affection for her insignificant husband. She finds it necessary to ask the husband of a former school friend of hers to give Marillot some employment, and that person no sooner does her this favor than he insults her by advances of an infamous character. These she repels with great dignity and the man humbly apologizes and promises to so conduct himself as to deserve her full pardon.

After a time Grace visits Mme. Lechâtelier, her friend, and in the course of her new experiences she realizes that she no longer loves her husband and does love her friend's husband. The discovery startles and profoundly agitates her. Too loyal and sincere to act a base part, she knows that her fatal marriage means life-long misery. Her new love is reciprocated, and she is passionately urged by Lechâtelier to yield to her heart and seek happiness with one worthy of her. This being, for her, a degrading alternative, she commits suicide.

The character-drawing in this drama is subjected to much criticism, and various inconsistencies and improbabilities are pointed out in the plot. In spite of these, the play is effective and moving.

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JULES LEMAÎTRE,

The most widely known of the French playwrights who have contributed to the "epidemic of suicide" on the Parisian stage this

In Vers l'Armour," a brilliant and popular young painter, Jacques Martel, meets a girl, Blanche, who works as a dress model in a store. He falls in love with her, but he does not treat the affair seriously. He soon abandons her and consents to marry a society girl, Yvonne. Accident brings him and Blanche face to face again, and as a result the projected marriage is declared off. Some years pass; Jacques once more meets Blanche, who is married to an old, austere, and correct officer. She is not happy with her husband, but grateful for the position he has given her in society. Jacques is more in love with her than ever; she has merely a passing fancy for him. It is he who is the sufferer now, and it is Blanche who neglects him and treats his passion lightly. Her indifference troubles and exasperates him, and at last, vainly yearning for love, he determines to commit suicide. We leave him gazing at a lake into which he is presently to throw himself.

season.

The critics are divided as to the qualities of this play. That of

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Finally, Jules Lemaître's "Bertrade," which is called a comedy, imposes a death sentence on a proud duke who, in these commercial days, can not save or preserve his honor in any other way. This is the story in brief:

The Duke de Mauferrand is a ruined aristocrat of the "old school." He has squandered his sister's fortune as well as his own, but he refuses for a long time to trouble himself about vulgar money matters. He is pressed by his creditors, however, and some means of escape must be found. His only daughter, Bertrade, who has been brought up away from home and has not known any parental affection, can solve the problem by marrying a self-made millionaire who has asked for her hand. She loves another, and firmly declines to sell herself. Even the prospect of her father's bankruptcy and disgrace fails to move her. There is another way out-the widow of a wealthy Austrian baron, a former actress with whom he had had an intrigue in his wild-oats period, wants to marry him. She purchases all his debts, and he practically consents to accept her offer, notwithstanding

her past, but too well known to him. Bertrade interferes, however, and by an appeal to his sense of self-respect and decency upsets the arrangement. What solution remains? Ruin can not be averted honorably, and so the duke shoots himself.

This is Lemaître's second play since he withdrew from political and nationalist agitation and resumed literary activity. Last year he produced a delightful comedy of artist life which had

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THE

FAILURE.

HE work of that widely popular French painter, W. A. Bouguereau, who was discussed at some length in these columns at the time of his death, moves Mr. Frank Fowler to some interesting remarks on the futility of great technical gifts when divorced from artistic sincerity. As a corollary to this Mr. Fowler suggests that a uniform suavity of expression, such as Bouguereau's art exemplifies, is incompatible with any deeply felt message or emotion on the part of the artist. Artists of unflinching purpose," he writes, have wrought persistently, humbly, but have found no ready and prescribed method by which to interpret noble moments and aspects of nature." Such artists have eventually acquired "a language by which to express themselves," but " this medium has been freighted with too stirring messages to admit of a uniform suavity of utterance." Of Bouguereau, on the other hand, Mr. Fowler says: "In the whole range of painting we have yet to discover so even a performance as Bouguereau has left to the world." He continues (in Scribner's Magazine, December):

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which were felt as human situations humanly observed. A peasant was to him a pretty object placed in a pretty scene, not a human being of the soil and living on the fruit of his labor. No ardent sun has tanned this creature's skin, nor has toil indurated and distorted his form. No feelings are evoked in regarding this presentation but those of superficial pleasure at the conventional skill displayed by correct drawing and fluent brush-work.

"In mythological, ecclesiastical, religious, or genre subjects it is the same—a pictorial portrayal of a given theme, not an interpretation of a situation, a page of life. And as the end is merely pictorial, there was little need of Bouguereau exhausting himself on intense preoccupation and study of the myriad aspects of the natural world under varying conditions. We all know of a painter who has passed years in interpreting a single scene at different hours of the day-steeping his soul and the soul of the beholder in mysteries of light. Our present painter, with a perfect pencilstudy of his composition and his forms, might have dispensed with further reference to the outside world than that already made by him and still complete his pictured theme. He is perfectly

MR. FRANK FOWLER, N. A.

Bouguereau's paintings, he argues, emphasize the futility of technic without temperament.

"Feeble Gainsboroughs, slipshod Sir Joshuas, tentative Rembrandts, indifferent Van Dykes, tight and unsupple pictures by Velásquez are not unknown to us; but who can point to a moment when Bouguereau is not entirely master of himself and of his technic? No false note (from his premises), no searching, no hesitation here! Not for him the emotions, the agitations, the wrestlings that have disturbed so many workers in the field of painting for the past thirty years, during which experimental period much light has been thrown on the various aspects of nature and the very manipulation of paint as a means of interpreting them."

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Yet Bouguereau consistently falls short, says Mr. Fowler, of that mysterious quality which stands for high art"-a quality which has at times been achieved by "rare natures which could neither draw nor paint in the conventionally accepted meaning of such competency." The gist of Mr. Fowler's contention would seem to be that technic without temperament is even more futile than is temperament without technic. We read further:

"Rubinstein, who, in his impassioned playing, could be guilty of a false note, so thrilled his hearers beyond the impeccable performance of a virtuoso that he was readily forgiven; for at his touch meadows smiled, brooks murmured, larks sang and soared away. Suggestion, feeling, emotion, all those elements of our nature which, when stirred, provoke a glow that is healthful and sane, were called up by the master, and we were correspondingly grateful. This indeed is the function of the artist-this it is to create-to furnish a means of recreation in others. There are many ways of doing this, but to be potent, it must spring from the source of a truly artistic temperament."

In further explanation of Bouguereau's failure to impress other artists, Mr. Fowler suggests that he " felt life pictorially, not really.". On this point he goes on to say:

"He made pictures of things, not characteristic impressions

equipped to do this, has been almost from the beginning; and it is this faculty which has caused us to allude to him as of one of arrested outlook. Given technical proficiency and an incuriousness concerning the subtle beauties and charms of the surrounding world, and one may produce readily, prodigiously, prodigally, and in the sequel please readily and prodigiously those who have not been trained to see finely and to exact keenly those qualities in art which stand for distinction."

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Bouguereau's failure to win the approval of his contemporaries in art, says Mr. Fowler, throws some light on "the value of an artist's naive and earnest attitude in the presence of nature and on the futility of great science and skill if unaccompanied by this personal equation of sincerity." Here was a man of superlative technical competence" who appeared unstirred by nature and who was content to employ his unquestioned skill upon themes unwarmed by a spontaneous emotion." 'Nowhere," exclaims Mr. Fowler, do we feel that this painter has been stirred by one subject more than by another."

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The lesson of Bouguereau's artistic failure, says Mr. Fowler, is applicable to literature as well as to painting. "Literature," we read, "is another art that through too fluent production threatens, in many instances, to stultify the taste and blunt the judgment of the very audience it should illuminate and instruct." Fluency of speech in this particular, he asserts, seems in inverse ratio to the importance of the statement made. He quotes a recent writer who, in speaking of "easy producers" in the field of literature and the fate they finally meet with, says that "this may very well be the revenge that time takes upon them to make up for the amount of space they happen immediately to occupy."

NOTES.

By some inadvertence, credit was omitted from an article in last week's issue entitled "Where Man Fails as a Novelist." This was condensed from "Women's Clothes in Men's Books," in The Critic.

AN interesting feature of the notable Shakespearean revival that the present dramatic season is witnessing is the production of "King Lear" by Robert Mantell at the Garden Theater, New York city. This play, we are told, has not been seen in New York for seventeen years.

ACCORDING to Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes), who is now lecturing in this country, there would be some excuse, in England at least, for a "a professorship of satire" at each of the principal seats of learning. The understanding of irony, she says, seems to have suffered an eclipse during the last half century. As illustrative of this particular phase of obtuseness she cites the way Plato has been taught in the English schools. She says: "The most ironical utterances of Plato and satires on Paganism more overwhelming than the hardest cynicism toward Christianity in the works of Voltaire or Anatole France, have been preached in seriousness as tho the very evils he satirized were admirable, and the very moral he conveyed was immoral."

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lights the new Williamsburg Bridge over the East River and also heats the neighboring public schools in winter, is described in Electricity (New York, November 15) by Irving Thomson. Says this writer:

"Both plants make a point of consuming rubbish collected from the streets. This rubbish might be described as consisting of the following: Paper of all descriptions, including cardboard; wood, including old furniture with its stuffing, barrels, boxes, etc.

"The plant illustrated was started up on October 30. It is situated directly under the new Williamsburg Bridge at Delancey Street and the East River. The equipment is contained within two buildings, one housing the furnaces and boilers, the other providing accommodations for the generating plant. The first building covers an area approximately 150 feet by 70 feet, and is 30 feet in height. In it the rubbish is received on the lower floor, and is dumped directly from the street wagons on to an endless conveyor, which carries it up an incline to a platform above the furnaces. This conveyor travels at the rate of 60 feet a minute, and, as it carries the waste material upward, a gang of sorters pick out the material which in their experience would interfere with combustion. Several men and boys are stationed on either side of the conveyor, making the final sorting process a means of eliminating such unwieldy articles as would be likely to clog the chutes leading to the furnaces or limit the intensity of the active combustion.

"When the matter reaches the top of this conveyor it falls on a sheet-iron platform containing openings which lead into three of the four furnaces. Through these three separate chutes the rubbish is pushed down by men with shovels. Owing to the draft · caused by the chimney, built in connection with this plant, of a height of at least 80 feet, there is no possibility of the heat or flames coming up through these chutes and affecting the workers above. Back draft in this construction has been entirely eliminated, thus supplying an indispensable element of safety in conjunction with this class of work.

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Such material as large pieces of lumber, entire barrels, old : sofas and chairs, etc., which could not be dropped down through the chutes are thrown directly into the furnaces through the firing doors on the lower floor. The light and highly combustible nature of the material consumed, in conjunction with the heavy draft

caused by the chimney, prevents any unusual waste of heat when the furnace doors are opened."

A novel feature is the direct separation of the furnaces from. the boilers, resulting not only in complete combustion and consequent absence of smoke, but also in the possible use of the furnaces simply as rubbish crematories, when it is not desired to generate steam. When steam is to be made, furnaces and boilers are joined by opening dampers in a series of short flues. To quote further:

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Calculation

would tend to show that every wagon-load of 1,000 pounds of rubbish dumped into the furnaces would develop 125 horse-power hours. An estimate of the number of horse-power hours required in the form of electrical energy to do the lighting of the bridge would be a means of calculating the number of wagon-loads of rubbish necessary to provide an adequate supply. of heat energy. On the basis established, derived from the figures given, about fourteen 16 candle-power incandescents, or two enclosed arcs, could be lit one hour from the heat obtained by thecombustion of eight pounds of rubbish. Both the labor bill and the rate of depreciation must be included in any calculations giving rise to practical data on the subject."

The furnaces consume material that the city used to pay to get rid of, and this now not only produces valuable light and heat but also residues of combustion that are sold as fertilizers. Tobaccogrowers find this quality of ash of particular service to them in their industry. In addition, much of it is placed on scows and used on the water front for filling. It should be noted that to make this kind of rubbish disposal profitable, it is necessary that householders should not mix their combustible and incombustible refuse. This separation was first required in New York by Colonel Waring, and to him are therefore due the thanks of the community for taking the first steps toward what appears to be a great piece of municipal economy.

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Vol. XXXI., No. 24]

THE LITERARY DIGEST

American channel, the greater depth of the Canadian channel has kept its fall in continuous operation. He says:

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"Mystery hangs over the Canadian channel. No bridge spans it. No boat has ever crossed it. None of the many unfortunates that have made its fatal descent has returned to describe its breakers. To-day its greater portion remains as unexplored as when Father Hennepin, in 1679, first saw that 'great and prodigious cadence of waters which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel.' In its course of 3,000 feet over the cascades above the Horseshoe Falls Niagara River descends fifty-five feet. With 222,000 cubic feet per second as the total normal discharge of the river, and with ninety per cent. of this discharge going down the Canadian channel, the volume there is 199,800 cubic feet per second. This volume of water falling fifty-five feet does work at a rate of somewhat more than 1,370,000 horse-power, or more than twice the ultimate capacity of all the electric plants under construction about the falls.

This great power is expended in breaking and grinding up the hard limestone of the river-bed. Results of this work of the water were exposed to view by the building of coffer-dams outside of the proposed intake works of the Ontario Power Company at the Dufferin islands, and of the Electrical Development Company a little farther down stream, near the shore of Queen Victoria Park. By the coffer-dam of the former company some twenty acres, and by that of the latter company about twelve acres of the river-bed were for the first time laid bare to the view of man. Not only was the bed-rock found to be much fissured and worn into peculiar hummocks and pot-holes, but great fragments of the limestone ledge, measuring one to several yards in each dimension, were found loose on the bottom, as may be seen from the views herewith. This quarrying by the water in the river-bed is pushing the rapids as well as the falls back toward Lake Erie."

By these operations, Mr. Adams tells us, the first accurate data as to the depth of water in the Canadian channel have been obtained. A ship drawing sixteen feet of water once went over Horseshoe Falls, but the construction of the coffer-dams has shown that this depth is much less than the maximum. To quote again : "From the head of Niagara River at Buffalo to within a mile of the falls the deepest part of the channel has about twenty feet of water. . . . In order to construct its works, the Electrical Development Company carried a crib coffer-dam with a length of 2,150 feet out into the river to a distance of more than 500 feet from the natural shore line in Queen Victoria Park. Near its outermost part this coffer-dam reached a depth of twenty-four feet of water, and a bed-rock level of 515 feet above tide. At this point the surface level of the river was thus about 539 feet, and the location was between the first and the second cascade. Below this cascade,

Courtesy of "The Electrical Review."

DR.

873

THE CLAIMS OF OSTEOPATHY. R. A. T. STILL, known as the "father of osteopathy," contributes to The Independent (New York, November 9), an account of the principles of that school of therapeutics. In the succeeding issue of the same paper this is answered by Dr. James J. Walsh of the editori

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al staff of The Medical News. Dr. Still believes that his method, which, he asserts, he evolved through many years of adjustment, involves nothing that science will deny and that, given the facts, his conclusions are inevitable. Dr. Walsh, on the other hand, asserts that all of Dr. Still's facts are known to every medical student at the end of his second year and that the cures effected by his method are due in great part to their effect on the patient's imagination.

Dr. Still's article is taken up largely with a description of the hu

DR. A. T. STILL, The "Father of Osteopathy."

man organism whose distinctive feature, as he looks upon it, is the bony skeleton, arranged on the best mechanical principles, with lubricated joints, elastic pads, etc., so as to withstand external forces in the most effective way. Attached to this skeleton are the muscles, which receive their energy from the blood, in connection with a system of organs whose function is to add to it or take from it certain substances. On the free supply of this fluid depend the life and activity of the tissues. Dr. Still goes on to say:

"Knowing that the death of any structure depended on the cessation of its blood stream and that death could not occur without this, I reasoned that disease, which is really a fractional death, must be due to a partial cessation of the blood-flow from some mechanical obstruction to the artery or vein of the organ primarily

VIEW OF THE BED OF NIAGARA RIVER LAID BARE BY COFFER-DAM.

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affected. Studying hundreds of post-mortem specimens', I found this to be true in every case: that is, there was some derangement of the blood supply, either causing or accompanying all disease processes. From this fact came the first postulate of osteopathy: 'An unobstructed, healthy flow of arterial blood is life.' With this in mind I began to treat my patients by manipulations, to stir up the blood supply of those organs, such as the liver and bowels, which were easily reached. I got some results, but realized that I was only on the first round of the ladder. I had not yet found the real underlying cause of disease.

"I knew that it was due to the comparative purity of the blood in three men who, when exposed to the same disease, one died, one recovered, and the third did not even become ill; but what was back of this condition of the blood?"

Further study, Dr. Still says, showed him that the selection and absorption of the food, and all the other activities that influence the blood, are controlled by the nervous system and that all the bodily functions are carried on by and have centers in the cord which gives off a pair of nerves between each pair of vertebræ. To quote further:

"These nerves passed out the out through very small openings, called foramina, and through these same openings between the vertebræ

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