Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/102

94 shapes competed with each other over extensive districts; iron came in contact with bronze, and both materials crowded upon the hard stone weapons of the earlier time. Steel had gained the predominance over bronze in all Southern Europe in the time of the Romans, and the last remains of stone-age civilization in that part of the world were extinguished in the early middle ages. Thus the same cycle of technical changes was completed in Europe as in the East. Still, considerable differences may be observed in the course of development in the two cases. The metal-working age begins much later in the West than in the East, Semitic civilization attained its highest development under the predominance of bronze, while the higher intellectual life of the Europeans is accompanied by that iron-working art which now rules over the whole earth. Roman iron mastered the East; but it has gained immensely greater victories of peace in the Western world within a century through the agency of iron roads and wagons, swift steamers, and skillfully built and mighty engines.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Deutsche Rundschau.



HE project recently initiated for establishing in New York on an adequate scale a hospital for the treatment of skin-diseases is of great importance to this community. It has been long understood that medical progress can only be best facilitated by the concentration of thought upon special groups of diseases, and that for this purpose special institutions are demanded. We have in New York four eye and ear hospitals, two for the ruptured and crippled, one for the throat, several for children's diseases, and the great Woman's Hospital known the world over for the advances in science made within its walls. But in regard to hospitals for the treatment of cutaneous affections we are not only behind the age and greatly deficient in this country, but in a condition of almost complete destitution. Something has been done in Philadelphia in this direction in a small way, but nowhere else until the beginning now made in this city. Students have been compelled to go abroad to find adequate facilities for the study of skin-diseases in the large hospitals of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, and other places; although cases of diseases of the skin and cancer are very common in this country, very many occurring among us of the most severe, distressing, and often destructive character.

In regard to the relative frequency of these diseases in this city and country it may be stated that the number of persons thus afflicted 