Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/641

Rh science and humanity had sustained through the deaths of Huxley and Pasteur.

Pasteur's Successor.—We take the following note from the Practitioner: M. Émile Duclaux, who has just been appointed Director of the Pasteur Institute, in succession to M. Pasteur, was his former chief's oldest collaborator, and had held the post of sub-director under him since the foundation of the institute. He was born at Aurillac in 1840, and was Pasteur's assistant in the École Normale from 1862 to 1865. After teaching for a time in the Tours Lycée in 1865-'66, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Clermont in 1866, and afterward of Physics in the Lyons Faculty of Sciences in 1873. In 1878 he came back to Paris as Professor of Physics and Meteorology in the Institute Agronomique, and iu 1888 he was appointed Professor of Biological Chemistry in the Faculty of Science. M. Duclaux took the degree of Doctor of Science in 1862; but, like Pasteur himself, he is not a member of the medical profession, although in 1894 he was elected a member of the Academy of Medicine. He is the editor of the Annales de l'Institut Pasteur. Apart from his contributions to chemistry, silkworm culture, the phylloxera, etc., ha has done valuable work on ferments and their relation to disease, digestion, milk, and microbiology.

The Feeding of Infants.—The time when a bottle-fed baby was a rare thing is within the memory of all of the older physicians; but now it is the exception rather than the rule for a mother to suckle her child. Many a mother who really wants to nurse her baby, but because of her small supply of milk is prevented, might, by a little judicious advice as to diet and proper habits, be rendered perfectly competent. Instead of this, that convenient bottle is adopted, which is thus graphically described by Dr. Mary A. Willard: "When the poor, pinched, blue, weazened little creatures were brought to me in the dispensary in New York, where they used to come by the dozen, I would call for their nursing-bottles, take a whiff of their sour, putrid contents, swarming with bacteria, pull off the rubber nipple and the ivory guard, rip up the long tube with my penknife, and scrape off the green, poisonous matter, tyrotoxicon, and spread it out on my palm before the astonished mother." Combine with such a state of affairs in the bottle some one of the dry milk foods, or a diluted condensed milk, and the babies' chances are pretty slim. The dry milk powders, including malted milk, are, from their nature, deficient in fats and contain a large excess of sugar, which is harmful because of the readiness with which it undergoes fermentation. As for the condensed milks, during a recent examination of the milk supply of London, seventeen brands were examined; fourteen of these were found to have been prepared entirely from skimmed milk, and showed an average of only 0·72 per cent of fat. Genuine full-cream brands of condensed milk contain from ten to twelve per cent of fat. Considering the far-reaching and deplorable effects which reliance upon such foods must lead to, it is of the utmost importance that physicians and parents should understand the dangers of prepared-milk feeding.

Examinations.—From a recent address delivered by Jonathan Hutchinson, and published in the Lancet, we quote the following very pertinent passages: "Examinations should be made as little distasteful as possible. The candidate ought to feel throughout his studies that in presenting himself to an examiner he does that which is equivalent to placing himself on a weighing machine, and that the verdict recorded will be in exact relation to his deserts. . . . The personal element, that of the examiner, should be eliminated as far as possible. To this end viva-voce examinations should, as far as practicable, be avoided. I have heard a self-confident examiner allege that he could tell better what was in a man in five minutes' conversation than by reading any number of his written papers, and I did not doubt that he thought so. This judgment of men, as it were, by personal inspection is often most fallacious, and should be permitted only with the utmost circumspection. It by no means follows that the disuse of the viva voce would throw us back wholly on set verbal questions. There remains the extensive field of objective examination. . . . This kind of examination it is which conduces most of all to sound matter-of-fact objective teaching. It is perhaps the most important of all modes,