Lancelot Hogben

The British Journal of Experimental Biology

THOUGH British workers have made some of the most signal contributions to the morphological aspects of zoology, and names like those of Romanes, Bateson, Doncaster, and Geoffrey Smith will always be distinguished for pioneer discoveries in the experimental field, Great Britain at the present moment compares very unfavourably with other countries in facilities for the publication of researches in experimental biology, especially on the zoological side. There is no single journal devoted wholly or mainly to the subject, with the exception of the Journal of Genetics, which of course only covers a portion of the field. We have in Great Britain nothing to compare, for example, with the Journal of Experimental Zoology, the Biological Bulletin, and the Journal of General Physiology in America, or with the Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik in Germany and the French Archives de morphologie expérimentale. Nor have we any biological journal which makes it a regular practice to publish articles of a general nature summarising and discussing critically recent additions to knowledge, as in the American Naturalist and the Referaten of several continental journals.

An Outline for Boys and Girls and their Parents

IF the plethora of encyclopædic outlines published during the past decade is a welcome indication of a growing demand for scientific knowledge, it is doubtful whether it shows a widespread understanding of what the scientific outlook is. It is still more doubtful whether many of their authors are capable of communicating the scientific outlook in the way which Kelvin, Tyndall and some of the foremost expositors of the nineteenth century attempted to do. The prevailing fashion in scientific exposition is to conduct a Cooks tour round the outer and most thinly peopled fringe of the universe of science, leaving the holiday-maker in complete ignorance of the populous cities and well charted roads of the older countries. The practice of doing so has partly arisen because scientific writers who are in a muddle themselves find it helpful to explain their difficulties to a sympathetic and appreciative, if somewhat bewildered, audience. The audience knowing nothing of the vast territory of experimental knowledge which lies behind the proliferation of contemporary hypotheses is fitly impressed. The man of science takes the place of the priest and the successful magician. Kelvins way was different. His addresses are no spectacular display of the latest and least digested marvels of science. He could be content to select a few of the more homely and firmly established truths of science, leading his audience up to the table and showing them that there is a real rabbit in a quite ordinary hat. As all conjurers know, mystification is more remunerative than straightforward explanation. Publishers have discovered the same truth. For those who enjoy the thrill of being mystified Mrs. Mitchisons collection of contributions from twenty-three authors will provide a powerful magic.An Outline for Boys and Girls and their Parents.Edited by Naomi Mitchison. Pp. xi + 916. (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1932.) 8s. 6d. net.

Birth, Poverty and Health

AMONG indexes of disease and death none offers a more inviting field for research in the field of vital statistics than the infant mortality-rate. Its distribution among different social classes and different communities has an extremely high dispersion, and the general level within a single composite social group has unique features. While chances of death at other ages declined steadily during the whole of the last three quarters of the nineteenth century, both in Britain and in Western Europe as a whole, the death-rate under one year of age fluctuated about the same figure-150 per thousand for England and Wales-until about 1899. From 1900 there has been a continuous and spectacular change. During the subsequent half-century the number of infant deaths per thousand in our own country has fallen by more than sixty per cent. This being so, it is surprising that contributory social agencies have attracted so little inquiry to date. One reason is a hangover from an ideology widely current in the period when evolutionary concepts furnished a convenient rationale for an economy of unrestricted private competition and colonial misgovernment. What Sir Henry Maine called the “beneficent private war which makes one man strive to climb on the shoulders of another and remain there” was the prevailing creed of the universities when the existence of differential mortality first forced itself on public discussion. Foremost among articles of the creed was the postulate that class mortality and morbidity differences have their origin in differences of genetic constitution.Birth, Poverty and HealthA Study of Infant Mortality. By Richard M. Titmuss. Pp. 118. (London: Hamish Hamilton, Medical Books, Ltd., 1943.) 7s. 6d. net.

A Short History of Biology: a General Introduction to the Study of Living Things

WRITERS on the history of science are too often addicted to anecdote, ancestor worship, and undue preoccupation with the blind alleys of scientific inquiry and speculation. Dr. Singers new book has none, of these defects. He has traced the elucidation of the problems of contemporary biology to their earliest beginnings, keeping the problems rather than individuals to the forefront. Consequently, his book will provide, for many readers with no previous biological knowledge and a predilection for historical studies, an attractive introduction to the science of living matter. In adopting this course, he necessarily discloses his own views on many controversial topics. His perspective is inevitably influenced by what he regards as the most significant contemporary issues. It would therefore be easy for a reviewer to single out many passages for adverse criticism. It would also be an ungrateful act to do so. Few readers will always share all Dr. Singers opinions. There can be no two opinions concerning Dr. Singers erudition, the usefulness of this book, and the desirability of making its contents accessible to a wide circle of readers.A Short History of Biology: a General Introduction to the Study of Living Things.By Charles Singer. Pp. xxxv + 572. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1931.) 18s. net.

Abel's Pituitary Tartrate

IN 1919, Abel and Kubota isolated from the pituitary gland a ‘single principle’ which they identified as (a) histamine, (b) the ‘plain muscle-stimulating and depressor constituent.’ This conclusion, which they upheld in 1920 and withdrew in 1921, implied that the pressor constituent was not the plain muscle- stimulating (oxytocic) or the depressor substance. In 1923, Abel, Rouiller, and Geiling prepared a tartrate from pituitary extracts 1250 times as active on the uterus as histamine acid phosphate. This tartrate, they asserted, contains a ‘single principle’ responsible for the pressor, oxytocic, diuretic, and depressor activities. About the same time Hogben and Schlapp, studying the inversion effect, that is, the depression following a second injection of cormmercial extracts in the cat, found that with alcoholic extraction the depressor activity of their own preparations gave a diminishing depressor response, so that, with a powder made from glands put in ice- cold acetone immediately after killing, extraction for forty-eight hours resulted in a preparation which, with undiminished pressor activity, elicited no depressor action when administered in quantities equivalent to one hundred times the threshold for the pressor effect.