1

2. The drop in 1919 is sharp in its angle and marked in its amount, the percentage coming down nearly to the 1916 figure-and this in spite of the very distressing conditions which prevailed in Vienna throughout 1919. It is not at all improbable, indeed rather it is probable that Vienna will in 1920 show a ratio under 100-that is, more births than deaths. If this happens she will have begun absolute natural increase again in only the second year after the cessation of hostilities, during the last year of which she had 2 persons die for every one born.

3. The war produced no effect upon the death-birth ratio in this country, as would have been expected. The influenza epidemic in 1918 raised the curve a little, but it promptly dropped back to normal in 1919.

4. In England and Wales the provisional fig

ure indicates that 1920 will show a lower vital index than that country has had for many years.

Altogether, these examples, which include the effects of the most destructive war known to modern man, and the most devastating epidemic since the Middle Ages, furnish a substantial demonstration of the fact that population growth is a highly self-regulated biological phenomenon. Those persons who see in war and pestilence any absolute solution of the world problem of population, as postulated by Malthus, are optimists indeed. As a matter of fact, all history definitely tells us, and recent history fairly shouts in its emphasis, that such events make the merest ephemeral flicker in the steady onward march of population growth.

RAYMOND PEARL

THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON

THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

THE Conference upon the History of Science, initiated by the American Historical Association at its annual meeting a year ago in Cleveland, proved such a success that the program committee devoted another session to the subject this December at Washington. Simultaneously the History of Science Section, which has recently been formed under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was meeting in Chicago, thus demonstrating the widespread interest in this promising field. This widespread interest was further evidenced at Washington by the variety of learned occupations represented by the speakers who included, in addition to professors of science and history, a librarian, a college president, and the head of an institution for research.

Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, presided as almost his last official act before retiring from his long tenure of that office. In his introductory remarks he welcomed the attitude of the American Historical Association towards the history of science, emphasized the need of breaking down the artificial barriers which divide learning into different departments, and recalled a scheme dating back to 1907 but never executed for a general history of the inductive sciences by a number of collaborators under the direction of the Carnegie Institution.

In a paper on "Recent Realignments in the History of Medieval Medicine and Science," Dr. Fielding H Garrison, librarian, Surgeon General's Office, warned against past exaggeration of medieval ecclesiastical hostility towards science, and against deriding the science of that period. In British libraries alone Mrs. Singer has found 30,000 scientific manuscripts from the medieval period, of which some 15,000 are medical. Dr. Garrison went on to compare the general character of medieval science and medicine with that of other periods including our own, and to appraise its relations to them. The rapid progress of scientific dis

covery in more recent times was convincingly illustrated by a paper on 66 Developments in Electro-Magnetism during the Past Hundred Years," by Professor Arthur E. Kennelly, of Harvard University, who traced the achievements of Ampère, Farraday, and others, and showed the far-reaching influence and enormous importance of developments in electromagnetics in well-nigh every other field whether of scientific theory or of applied science and practical invention: as, for example, the effect of the theory of electrons upon chemistry and the earlier atomic theory.

Professor James Harvey Robinson, of the New School for Social Research, discussed with characteristic satirical wit and literary force to the delight of the large audience "Free Thought, Yesterday and To-day," from the standpoint of the student of intellectual history, comparing more especially the ways of thinking of the Deists and other eighteenth century philosophers with our own, and bringing out how the rules and methods of “the intellectual game" had profited by the scientific advance of the last century.

Because of the lateness of the hour Lyon G. Tyler, president emeritus of the College of William and Mary, did not read his paper upon "Science in Virginia." It is to be hoped that not only it but also the other papers which were read may be speedily published and rendered available for a larger audience.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1921

CONTENTS

Dinner in Honor of Dr. Keen: DR. JOHN H. JOPSON

Address: DR. W. W. KEEN

The Relation of Mendelism and the Mutation Theory to Natural Selection: PROFESSOR C. C. NUTTING

Scientific Events:

Professor Calmette on a Vaccine for Tuberculosis; Awards of the Paris Academy of Sciences; The University of London's Physiological Laboratory; Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects at the California Academy of Sciences

Scientific Notes and News

University and Educational News

Discussion and Correspondence:

123

129

DINNER IN HONOR OF DR. KEEN

ON January 20, 1921, a dinner was tendered to Dr. William Williams Keen, the eminent Philadelphia surgeon, at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, in Philadelphia, in celebration of his eighty-fourth birthday. Dr. Keen had 124 recently returned from Europe, whither he had gone in the summer of 1920, to preside at the meeting in Paris, of the Société Internationale de Chirurgie, of which he had been elected president in 1914, and the meetings of which had been of necessity suspended during the war. Everywhere abroad he had been received with honors befitting his position as President of this Society, and as the leader and dean of American surgery. It was thought an appropriate time for the friends and admirers of Dr. Keen in this country, to show their appreciation of his many achievements as physician, scientist, educator, man of letters, and patriotic American. The occasion proved to be one of the most remarkable tributes ever tendered a private citizen in Philadelphia. Between five and six hundred subscribers, representing all parts of the country, and all of the learned professions, and the fields of diplomacy, industry, finance, and the public services, joined in honoring Dr. Keen.

131

134

137

The presiding officer and toastmaster was his close friend and colleague, Dr. George E. deSchweinitz, professor of ophthalmology in the University of Pennsylvania, and like Dr. Keen, a former president of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the premier medical society of the United States. The speakers, who dwelt on various phases of the activities of Dr. Keen's long and busy life, had all been closely associated with him in one or more of these fields of work. The list included the following gentlemen: Dr. J. Chalmers DaCosta, his one-time assistant, now Gross professor of surgery, in the Jeffer

son Medical College, in which chair he had succeeded Dr. Keen on the retirement of the latter from active teaching. Dr. William H. P. Faunce, president of Brown University, of which institution Dr. Keen is an alumnus, and of which he has been for many years a most active trustee. Dr. William H. Welch, professor of pathology in Johns Hopkins University, and like Keen a strong exponent and defender of the field of experimental investigation in medicine. The Hon. David Jayne Hill, former ambassador to Germany, who spoke of the interest and efforts of Dr. Keen in the large problems of civic and national welfare, and of his sturdy Americanism. The many letters of congratulation to the guest of the evening had been collected and bound in three volumes, and these were presented by Major General M. W. Ireland, surgeon general of the United States Army, who detailed Dr. Keen's connection with the Medical Department of the Army, beginning with his services in the field and in the hospitals during the Civil War, and down to, and including the World War, when he held a commission as a reserve officer, with the rank of major. A bronze bust, by Samuel Murray, of Dr. Keen in his uniform as an officer of the Medical Corps, U. S. Army, was presented to him on behalf of the subscribers to the dinner, by Dr. William J. Taylor, president of the College of Physicians, and for many years his private assistant.

Dr. Keen responded in happy vein, reviewing the many world changes transpiring during his long life, with special reference to the revolutionary advances in the sciences, and particularly in medicine and surgery, in many of which he had indeed played a leading part. His address is printed below. A reception to Dr. Keen followed the dinner.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

JOHN H. JOPSON

ADDRESS OF DR. KEEN

As I have listened to what I might call "oral photographs" of myself, I assure you that it has been with genuine humility, as I

realized how far short I had come of these fine ideals. I lay no claim to superlative virtues. I am only a loyal American, who, to the best of his ability, has tried to do his daily duty to his fellowmen, his dear country and his God. You have looked on my homely merits with more than kindly eyes, and have regarded my faults and my failings with more than friendly forgetfulness. I thank you again and again from the bottom of my heart.

This bust, the product of Mr. Murray's skill, I accept for myself and my descendants with special pleasure from you, Dr. Taylor, so long my able assistant, later my colleague and always my dear friend. It is the visible evidence of that precious, imponderable, yet all powerful force the affection of many friends.

What shall I say through you, General Ireland, my distinguished pupil, to the writers of these many letters in three stately volumes. They are generous libations poured out on the altar of Friendship. "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes was a valid warning in ancient Troy, but my gift-bearing Greeks I welcome with fearless and profound gratitude.

It may be a happy augury that we meet to-day rather than yesterday, the actual anniversary of my birth. By a little stretching of the imagination to-day, I can describe myself as "well along "- a phrase with a truthful indefiniteness-" well along on the way to my 85th birthday," and what is imagination for if not to stand by us when we need help? To-morrow, in spite of the terrible temptation you have held out to me to do otherwise, I promise you that I shall wear the same Stetson hat as heretofore. I hardly can call it the companion of my youth, but I do treasure it as an old acquaintance which still fits well.

My manner of life from my youth up has been known to you among whom I have lived for four score years and four. It is a source of sincere gratification to me that, in spite of all my faults and shortcomings, of which I am fully conscious, on the whole you seem to approve of it.

When one has reached the altitude of 84, it is natural that he should turn and scan the

far distant horizon and note the outstanding features of his long journey. A brief mention of a few of the more striking events which have occurred during my long life may, therefore, prove of some interest.

My ancestor, Jöran Kyn (George Keen), following the Mayflower pilgrims only 23 years later, left Sweden in the retinue of John Printz, the first Governor of New Sweden, and reached the Delaware River in 1643. He founded the nearby city of Chester. We, his descendants, I think may fairly claim to be truly Americans.

During my lifetime, the United States has (observe not have but has) grown from a small and isolated nation of only sixteen millions in 1837 to a nation rapidly approaching one hundred and sixteen millions. We have also spread from the Alleghanies to the Pacific. Instead of being isolated, we are bound to all the world by a splendid devotion to Liberty and Law. What a free Democracy can do, even across 3,000 miles of boisterous water, to aid in crushing a tyranny which threatened to engulf the whole world, is the most splendid episode in our entire national history.

Yet how short our life as a nation is may be better appreciated when compared with the life of a single citizen. From the date of my birth, January 19, 1837, back to July 4, 1776, is only 61 years and a half. From that same date to yesterday is 84 years!

One man links me to the first Napoleon, for, in 1862, I assisted the elder Gross in an operation on a Frenchman for a wound received in the Russian campaign of 1812. One woman, my maternal grandmother Budd, links me even with Washington himself. She often related to me how he used to caress her as a young girl, when seeking food and forage from my great-grandfather's farm just across the ridge from Valley Forge in that fearful winter of 1777.

The first six-weeks of my life were spent during the reign of that sturdy old patriot, Andrew Jackson. He and I had at least one thing in common-we were profoundly ignorant of each other's existence. In another

matter, our attitudes were miles apart. He was obsessed as to the removal of the deposits of the United States Treasury from that stately building at 4th and Chestnut Streets, while I well recall how utterly indifferent I felt about that exciting subject. But I made the air vibrant if my daily ration was too long delayed.

ac

Long since, I gave up the rather opprobrious phrase "Old Age" and have substituted for it the more seductive locution" cumulated years." The latter connotes a certain joy in continued acquisition, a sort of pride in adding one annual sparkling jewel after another to an already precious store.

I was asked recently how it was that I had managed to accumulate so many years, to which I promptly replied, "Nothing is simpler --don't stop. Just keep right along." Mix merry laughter with earnest labor. Always have some as yet unfinished, but not too urgent job waiting just outside your door. Then you will never know ennui. To "kill time" is murder in the first degree.

William Dean Howells, one of the privileged few who spell their names in the plural because they are such multiplied personalities, in his delightful essay on "Eighty Years and After," first pays his respects to several nonagenarians. He then turns upon those of us who have accumulated ten fewer years (he actually being also one of us) and says, to the Octogenarians, there is no end of them; they swarm, they get in one's way."

"As

I humbly crave pardon of any of you if I occupy a place in the sun to which you have a better right than I. Ultimately, no doubt, I shall get out of your way, but do not overlook the fact of my maliciously good health, and that a collateral forbear reached the mature age of 106. The prospect, therefore, of speedy relief, I regret to say, seems rather discouraging. I commend to you the philosophy of life of the woman who, when asked by her minister what passage of Scripture gave her the greatest comfort, promptly replied, "Grin and bear it' helps me most."

The development of industry, of commerce and of the material things which minister to