About two decades ago one of the foremost surgeons of London, Mr. Erichsen, said, in a public address, that “surgery had reached its limits.” How short was his vision is shown by the fact that surgery at that time was just at the beginning of its most brilliant modern chapter.
We have reached, in many respects, apparently, the limits of our success, but just as anæsthesia and antisepsis and the Röntgen rays have opened new fields wholly unsuspected until they were proclaimed, so I have no doubt that the twentieth century will see means and methods devised which will put to shame the surgery of to-day as much as the surgery of to-day puts to shame that of thirty years ago, and still more of a century ago. The methods by which this will be attained will be by the more thorough and systematic study of disease and injury, so as to better our means of diagnosis, and so prepare us for immediate surgical interference, instead of delaying it, as we now do in many cases, for want of certain knowledge; by the use of new chemical and pharmaceutical means to perfect our antisepsis and possibly to introduce other methods of treatment; but, above all, we shall obtain progress by the exact experimental methods of the laboratory. We can never make progress except by trying new methods. New methods must be tried either on man or on animals, and as the former is not allowable, the only way remaining to us is to test all new methods, drugs, and applications first upon animals. He who restricts, and, still more, he who would abolish our present experiments upon animals, is, in my opinion, the worst foe to the human race, and to animals, as well, for they, as well as human beings, obtain the benefit derived from the method. He may prate of his humanity, but he is the most cruel man alive.
W. W. Keen.
ELECTRICITY
The great importance which electricity has attained in many departments of human activity is so constantly evident that we have difficulty in realizing how short is the time which has been occupied in its development. The latter half of the nineteenth century must ever remain memorable, not only for the great advances in nearly all the useful arts, but for the peculiarly rapid electric progress, and the profound effect which it has had upon the lives and business of the people. In the preceding century we find no evidences of the application of electricity to any useful purpose. Few of the more important principles of the science were then known. Franklin’s invention of the lightning-rod was not intended to utilize electric force, but to guard life and property from the perils of the thunder-storm. The numerous instructive experiments in frictional electricity, the first-known form of electric manifestation except lightning, made clear certain principles, such as conduction and insulation, and served to distinguish the two opposite electric conditions known as positive and negative. Franklin’s kite experiment confirmed the long-suspected identity of lightning and electric sparks. It was not, however, until the discovery by Alexander Volta, in 1799, of his pile, or battery, that electricity could take its place as an agent of practical value. Volta, when he made this great discovery, was following the work of Galvani, begun in 1786. But Galvani in his experiments mistook the effect for the cause, and so missed making the unique demonstration that two different metals immersed in a solution could set up an electric current. Volta, a professor in the University of Pavia and a foreign member of the Royal Society of England, communicated his discovery to the president of the society in March, 1800, and brought to the notice of the world the first means for obtaining a steady flow of electricity. Before this event electric energy had been known to the experimenter in pretty effects of attraction and repulsion of light objects, in fitful flashes of insignificant power, or, as it appeared in nature, in the fearful bursts of energy during a thunders-torm, uncontrolled and erratic. The analogous and closely related phenomena of magnetism had already found an important application in the navigator’s compass.
The simplest facts of electro-magnetism, upon which much of the later electrical developments depend, remained entirely unknown until near the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Magnetism itself, as exemplified in loadstone or in magnetized iron or steel, had long before been consistently studied by Dr. Gilbert, of Colchester, England, and in 1600 his great work, De Magnete, was published. It is a first example, and an excellent one, too, of the application of the inductive method, so fruitful in after-years. The restraints which a superstitious age had imposed upon nature study were gradually removed, and at the beginning of the century just past occasional decided encouragement began to be given to physical research. It was this condition which put into the hands of Humphry Davy, of the Royal Institution, in London, at the opening of the century, a voltaic battery of some 250 pairs of plates. With this a remarkably fruitful era of electric discovery began. In 1802 Davy first showed the electric arc or “arch” on a small scale between pieces of carbon. He also laid the foundation for future electro-chemical work by decomposing by the battery current potash and soda, and thus isolating the alkali metals, potassium and sodium, for the first time. This was in 1807, and the result was not only to greatly advance the youthful science of chemistry, but to attract the attention of the world to a new power in the hands of the scientific worker, electric current. A fund was soon subscribed by “a few zealous cultivators and patrons of science,” interested in the discovery of Davy, and he had at his service in 1801 no less than 2000 cells of voltaic battery. With the intense currents obtained from it he again demonstrated the wonderful and brilliant phenomenon of the electric arc, by first closing the circuit of the battery through terminals of hardwood charcoal and then separating them for a short distance. A magnificent arch of flame was maintained between the separated ends, and the light from the charcoal pieces was of dazzling splendor. Thus was born into the world the electric arc light, of which there are now many hundreds of thousands burning nightly in our own country alone.
Davy probably never imagined that his brilliant experiment would soon play so important a part in the future lighting of the world. He may never have regarded it as of any practical value. In fact, many years elapsed before any further attempt was made to utilize the light of the electric arc. The reason for this is not difficult to discover. The batteries in existence were crude and gave only their full power for a very short time after the circuit was closed. They were subject to the very serious defect of rapid polarization, whereby the activity was at once reduced. A long period elapsed before this defect was removed. Davy in his experiments had also noted the very intense heat of the electric arc, and found that but few substances escaped fusion or volatilization when placed in the heated stream between the carbon electrodes. Here again he was pioneer in very important and quite recent electric work, employing the electric furnace, which has already given rise to several new and valuable industries.
The conduction of electricity along wires naturally led to efforts to employ it in signalling. As early as 1774 attempts were made by Le Sage, of Geneva, to apply frictional electricity to telegraphy. His work was followed before the close of the century by other similar proposals. Volta’s discovery soon gave a renewed impetus to these efforts. It was easy enough to stop and start a current in a line of wire connecting two points, but something more than that was requisite. A good receiver, or means for recognizing the presence or absence of current in the wire or circuit, did not exist. The art had to wait for the discovery of the effects of electric current upon magnets and the production of magnetism by such currents. Curiously, even in 1802 the fact that a wire conveying a current would deflect a compass needle was observed by Romagnosi, of Trente, but it was afterwards forgotten, and not until 1819 was any real advance made.