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NATIONAL

Stains and Indicators

Partial List of Dry Stains Manufactured In Our Laboratories Since Publication of Price List, June 1, 1920:

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Biological Stains and Indicators of Highest Quality-Made in U. S. A.

National Stain and Reagent Co.

NORWOOD, OHIO

National Products Are Carried In Stock By:

CENTRAL SCIENTIFIC CO., Chicago, Ill.

ARTHUR H. THOMAS COMPANY, Philadelphia, Pa.
BRAUN-KNECHT-HEIMANN CO., San Francisco, Cal.

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FREAS ELECTRIC INCUBATOR

THE TEST

IN OUR STOCK FOR IMMEDIATE SHIPMENT

OF SERVICE

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Freas Electric Incubators are recommended for their ease and certainty of We carry them in stock in five sizes, of whi durable construction and safety.

shown above is the largest.

20897. Freas Electric Incubator No. 40, inside dimensions 22 x 32 x 18 inches

volts

20897a. ditto, for 220 volts..

Prices subject to change without notice

ARTHUR H. THOMAS

COMPANY

WHOLESALE, RETAIL AND EXPORT MERCHANTS

LABORATORY APPARATUS AND REAGENTS

WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE

PHILADELPHIA,

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THE PUBLIC HEALTH WORK OF PR FESSOR SEDGWICK1

WILLIAM THOMPSON SEDGWICK, son of W liam and Anne Thompson Sedgwick, was b at West Hartford, Connecticut, December 1855. His colonial ancestor was Robert Se wick, who settled in Boston in 1636. He st ied at the Sheffield Scientific School, the Y Medical School, and Johns Hopkins Univ sity. On his twenty-sixth birthday he marr Mary Katrine Rice, at New Haven, Conne cut. In 1883 he came to Boston and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wh for thirty-eight years he was professor biology and public health. He died at Bost January 25, 1921, at the age of sixty-five.

These simple facts tell who Professor Se wick was. But what he was and what his meant to the people of Boston, to hundreds young students, to the science of public hea and to the Commonwealth of Massachus can not yet be told or even estimated. death is too recent and our thoughts are so touched with sadness that one can not quately picture his manifold activities or f a just appreciation of his life or his place history. But in the various eulogies alre written a few words stand out promine and must be regarded as characteristic of The words are service, public serv kindliness, serenity, inspiration, buoyant timism, love of young men. Let these suf They are eulogy enough for any man.

man.

I can not write about Professor Sedgwi work in public health without saying n about my own relations to it than is becom on such an occasion—but it is characteristi his work that it was not done in the seclu 1 A memorial address delivered at Unity H Boston, February 6, 1921, by Professor Georg Whipple, of Harvard University. Professor S wick was to have spoken at this meeting on subject of Child Welfare.

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172

of his study and laboratory, but involved all
those with whom he came in contact.

I first knew Professor Sedgwick when I was
a student of engineering and he professor of
biology at the Institute of Technology. He
was thirty-three and I was twenty-two. For
the first time (1888-89) he was giving a course
of lectures in bacteriology to civil engineers.
It was an innovation. Until then sanitary
engineering had leaned for its support on
chemistry, but here was a new science coming
to its aid. I have in my study the notes which
I took of Professor Sedgwick's weekly lec-
tures. They began as follows: "The sanitarian
needs a proper working theory." Then he
proceeded to develop the germ theory of dis-
ease as he had learned it from Pasteur and
other European scientists who were laying
the foundations of that science which has
done so much for the health of the world.
He showed how physicians and engineers had
been wrong, how they had groped in the
dark, and how, by applying the recently dis-
covered principles of biology, it was possible
to give to sanitary engineering new life. Of
course, Sedgwick was not the only American
to take up with the new ideas. There was
Dr. Welch at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Biggs in
New York, and others who were doing the
same thing. But these other men were in
medical schools; Sedgwick was in the Insti-
tute of Technology where the engineering
sciences predominated and therefore his in-
the
fluence on sanitary engineering was
greatest. Nor would it be right to ignore the
work of his colleagues in chemistry, such as
Professor William Ripley Nichols and Dr.
Thomas M. Drown. It was the combination
of chemistry and biology with engineering
which made the profession of sanitary engi-
neering what it is a profession which we are
proud to think has become more highly de-
veloped in America than in any other country.
It is important to keep in mind certain
dates in connection with the work of these
Louis Pasteur's
Massachusetts scientists.

1

pioneer work in bacteriology was done in the
seventies. In 1876 Robert Koch discovered the
germ of anthrax. In 1882 he suggested the use

of solid culture media and thus ma sible to consider bacteria in a quantit In 1880, Eberth found the bacillus c fever. In the same year Laveran h ered the malarial parasite. In 1883 and Löffler found the germ of dipht 1883 Koch found the cholera spirill it was in 1883 that Sedgwick und work in Boston. No wonder that great future for his beloved scienc ogy; no wonder that he gave up his of being a physician.

Sedgwick did not study bacteriolo rope, but I remember hearing him t received what was perhaps the firs Dr. Koch's sterilized nutrient gelat this country. Professor Nichols over and probably had not realized i properties, for it had melted, had the cotton plug of the flask, had had become infected and nauseatin about as far from having the rec terial purity of a culture medium a imagine. It was an inauspicious for bacteriology at the Institute. Nichols must have chuckled over that time he did not share Sedgwi ism in regard to the future of bacI remember those first lectures wick's. He would hold up a glas and talk for an hour about what it He would scare us to death by say contained enough germs of typho give the disease to a thousand 1 then go on to show how sanitary could make the water safe to dri

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He started his students off on bacteria. One of them studied t found in air-especially the air of for he was hunting for big gamethey devised a method for straini teria from the air-an aerobioscope still used. Another student help study water-not only its bacter other microscopic organisms-those recently caused the bad taste in supply of Boston, when for a few necessary to draw upon the old tuate supply. Another new meth

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One of his students took up the study of milk; another that of food; and to-day the Institute has an important department of industrial biology. Several studied sewage and its methods of treatment, and for years this continued to be a fruitful field of research. Another studied the bacteriology of ice; another the bacteriology of soil. Then there were studies of particular species of bacteria-the longevity of the typhoid bacillus, and so on. The reason for mentioning these things is to illustrate the breadth of the investigations and the fact that Sedgwick always worked with and through his students. He did very little scientific work alone and he generally gave to his students more than a fair share of the credit for the work done.

We hear much said to-day about research, about the advantages of organized research. In my opinion there is danger that research may be organized to death. The compilation of facts by committees of learned societies is all very well, tests by competent scientists in government bureaus are desirable, and research conducted by the experts of great corporations are necessary in order that modern science may be applied in the most economical way to human needs-but the highest type of research is that which takes place in a university laboratory where an inspired teacher and his mature students sit down side by side and in quiet study endeavor to search out the secrets of nature and the chemical, biological, and physical laws of God. Let the scientists of America not follow too much the method of organized research-let them give even greater weight to the individual method of Huxley and Pasteur and Sedgwick.

When, after a long experience as a practising engineer, I came to Harvard to teach, I had many talks with Sedgwick about methods of teaching. He was no longer thirty-three years old, but fifty-five. He had been teaching for twenty-five years and he gave from his experience. He said, "I keep three things in mind-the past, the present, and the future. First, I teach by the historical method. That

has two advantages: my students learn w has been done, and my lectures don't have be written over every year. Second, I te of what is going on now." His pres day students knew well his habit of rush into the lecture-room with a clipping f the morning paper or a copy of the Med Journal and talking about something wh somebody had discovered in Chicago or Fiji Islands, or about some new engineer project. All kinds of fish were caught in net, and he believed that the students sho study these fish while they were a Thirdly, he said, "I try to teach of wha likely to happen in the future. I try to m the students see the problems they will be against." History, present problems, and search-these were his three principles.

His teaching was far from being ex Sedgwick did not have a mathematical m His lectures were never formally prepared as he grew older they became less method He cared for general principles more than details. The opening sentence of his lecture to engineers, which I have alre quoted, shows what he wanted most to imp upon his students. "The sanitarian nee proper working theory." But it was ch his personal magnetism and his inspira which told on his students, and this n failed him. His optimism was as stron sixty-five as it was at thirty-five.

Sedgwick will be remembered first foremost as a great teacher-yes, even teacher of teachers-because his enthusi was contagious and others followed in steps. One has only to mention Dr. Call of Columbia; Dr. Jordan, of Chicago; Winslow, of Yale; Professor Gunn, and c names, now well known, to realize the ex of Sedgwick's influence as a teacher teachers. But among his pupils are san engineers, bacteriologists, health officers, oratory workers in many fields, Red C officials, physicians, nurses, manufactu teachers of domestic science, housewives— and women, a great company of enthusi followers who recognized him as "Chie Soon after Sedgwick came to Boston

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