No such mortality as this has ever before been recorded for any epidemic in this country since registration commenced, except in the case of the cholera epidemic in 1849, when the mortality from that cause rose to 3,033 per 1,000,000 population. None of the previous outbreaks of influenza can compare in mortality with that of 1918-19. During the 46 weeks, June 23-May 10, the total deaths allocated to the disease were 151,446, including 140,989 of civilians, the corresponding civilian death-rate for these 46 weeks being at the annual rate of 4,774 per 1,000,000 population.

It is pointed out that the mortality attributed to influenza does not represent the whole of that caused by it. The entries under other headings, especially those of respiratory disease, were always bound to increase during an epidemic, and though that did not occur in 1918 to the same extent as in other recent outbreaks, allowance must be made for these increases in mortality, allocated to other causes but really attributable to influenza, in endeavoring to measure the loss of life caused by the epidemic.

With regard to the deaths of females, when pneumonia, bronchitis, heart disease and phthisis are included, the deaths attributable to the epidemic during the third quarter of 1918 were 7,741, and during the fourth quarter 62,240. The figures for males for the same quarters were 8,088 and 51,359, respectively.

In earlier years influenza was less important under 55 years and more so above that period. In 1918-19 this position was suddenly and violently reversed. Those under 35 died in appalling number; those over 55 seemed to be relatively safe. The report says:

It may be doubted whether so sudden and so complete a change of incidence can be paralleled in the history of any other disease, yet all the weight of medical testimony goes to show that the influenza of 1918 was essentially the same as that of former years. Attempts have been made to explain the change as due to alteration in the circumstances of the population. Thus it has been suggested that aggregation of young women in munition works in 1918 may partly account for their specially heavy mortality. No simple expla nation on these lines is possible. The alteration in age incidence accompanying the increased prevalence and fatality of the disease in 1918 seems to

be more easily explained by a sudden change in the infecting organism than in the soil provided for its growth.

THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ACT1

DURING the last few years the people of the United States have been given a very material amount of protection against those swindlers who sophisticate the foodstuffs and drug supplies of the country. Especially good work has been done in obtaining convictions against "patent medicine" fakers who have made false and fraudulent claims for their nostrums. This protection has been given through the enforcement of the federal Food and Drugs Act. The administration of this law rests with the Department of Agriculture, which acting through its Bureau of chemistry, collects evidence and lays the groundwork for the legal machinery of the government to proceed against the offender. The activity of the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture has, of course, aroused the strongest antagonism on the part of the nostrum interests. These interests may well rejoice in the recent action of congress in cutting down the appropriations for the Department of Agriculture. Even under the appropriation given for the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, 1920, the department was greatly hampered in its work of enforcing the Food and Drugs Act. Under the plea of economy, Congress has reduced the appropriation for the enforcement of this act by thirty thousand dollars. The Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter, a highgrade and conservative publication, well states the fact, in commenting on this disgraceful condition of affairs, when it says:

Under the reduced amount provided for next year, it will be impossible to supervise the regulation of the Food and Drugs Act as it should be supervised. This portends a rich harvest for those who misbrand and adulterate medicinal, pharmaceutical, disinfectant and other preparations. The vast public, which daily purchases and consumes 1 From the Journal of the American Medical Association.

these products, will be the chief sufferer. At a time when the act requires enforcement of the most rigorous nature the Congress has succeeded in hamstringing it.

At a time, then, when in all lines of industry the spirit of exploitation is rife, Congress, under the specious plea of economy, practically nullifies the protective power of one of the most useful pieces of federal legislation ever enacted.

ALASKA SURVEYS AND INVESTIGATIONS
IN 1920

UNDER the appropriation of $75,000 made for the investigation of the mineral resources of Alaska, the Geological Survey has dispatched seven field parties. The work to be done is that of extending the surveys and investigations which were begun in 1898.

G. H. Canfield is continuing investigations of the water powers of southeastern Alaska in cooperation with the Forest Service. The water powers are important not only to mining but to the wood-pulp industry.

In July L. G. Westgate will make a geologic reconnaissance of the region adjacent to Hyder, on Portland Canal, where gold and silver bearing lodes have been found.

F. H. Moffit, geologist, with H. Insley as assistant and C. P. McKinley, topographic engineer, are making reconnaissance surveys on the west side of Cook Inlet between Iliamna Bay and Snug Harbor. Their special mission is to survey the Iniskin oil field.

J. R. Eakin is making topographic reconnaissance surveys in the headwater regions of Susitna River, in order to complete as soon as possible the mapping of the region tributary to the government railroad.

P. S. Smith is making a geologic reconnaissance of the placer districts tributary to Richardson, on Tanana River. This region has long been a producer of placer gold in a small way. Promising deposits of auriferous gravels have been reported in it during the last two

years.

Alfred H. Brooks accompanied Secretary Payne to Alaska in July, the objective being the Alaska Railroad and the Matanuska coal

field. Later Mr. Brooks, in company with Arthur E. Wells, metallurgist of the Bureau of Mines, will visit some of the copper-bearing districts of the Pacific seaboard of Alaska.

G. C. Martin is on the way to McGrath, on Kuskokwim River, to investigate the mineral resources in that vicinity. This district produces considerable placer gold and contains some promising gold-bearing lodes.

The geologic and topographic reconnaissance surveys of Seward Peninsula were completed some years ago, but a detailed study of its mineral deposits must still be made, and this study has been assigned to S. H. Cathcart. Mr. Cathcart began work at Nome about July 1 and will continue until the end of the field

season.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

Ar its commencement exercises Harvard University conferred its doctorate of laws on Professor Roscoe Pound, dean of the Harvard Law School, whom President Lowell characterized as "lawyer and botanist; judge, teacher and writer, protean in interest; vindicator of the expansive power of the common law, who has also taken all jurisprudence as his privince and mastered it." In conferring degrees of doctor of science President Lowell said: "William Williams Keen: a surgical officer in the Civil War, the Spanish War and the World Wara man whose career in his profession has been one of long and ever rising distinction; the dean of American surgery." "Hermann Michael Biggs: Pathologist and physician; guardian of the public health; who, by his combat with tuberculosis in New York, has rescued countless lives."

COLONEL RICHARD P. STRONG, of Harvard University, chief medical director of the League of Red Cross Societies, has been elected to honorary membership in the Serbian Medical Society as an expression of admiration for his scientific achievements, and as a mark of appreciation for the great sympathy which he showed to the Serbian people.

DR. J. S. FLETT, F.R.S., at present assistant to the director in Scotland, has been appointed

to be director of the British Geological Survey and Museum. Dr. Flett succeeds Sir Aubrey Strahan, who retires when Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, F.R.S., assistant to the director in England, also retires.

MR. E. A. MILNE, B.A., Trinity College, has been appointed assistant director of the Solar Physics Observatory, Cambridge.

THE David Syme prize, with medal, for the year 1920, has been awarded to Mr. Frederick Chapman, paleontologist to the National Museum and lecturer in paleontology in the University of Melbourne.

THE president of the French republic has conferred the honor of officer of the Legion of Honor on Dr. Aldo Castellani, of the London School of Tropical Medicine, for his method of combined typhoid-paratyphoid and typhoidcholera vaccination.

THE ninetieth birthday of John Jacob Bausch, of Rochester, founder of the Bausch and Lomb Optical Company, was celebrated on July 25.

WE learn from the Journal of the American Medical Association that Professor Luigi Pagliani, of the chair of hygiene in the University of Turin, reaches the age limit this year, and it is also the fiftieth anniversary of his professional career. He was the pioneer in organizing the public health service in Italy, in directing legislation and in controlling and preventing epidemics. A committee consisting of the incumbents of all the chairs of hygiene in the country has been formed to collect funds to found an annual prize, the Pagliani prize.

JULIUS C. JENSEN, of the Weather Bureau, has been appointed vice-consul at Copenhagen, Denmark, and has sailed from the United States.

PROFESSOR H. C. LITTLE, of Colby College, has been appointed executive secretary to the Division of Geology and Geography of the National Research Council.

A LABORATORY for research on dyestuffs and explosives has been established at George Washington University. The laboratory which

is under the general supervision of Professor H. C. McNeil, will be in charge of Mr. G. W. Phillips, formerly of the Chemical Warfare Service. Dr. C. E. Munroe, of the National Research Council, will be consulting chemist of the laboratory.

DR. A. C. TROWBRIDGE, professor of geology at the University of Iowa, has been offered a position with a New York Company to carry geological work in South America next year,

but has declined and will remain at the state

university. At present Professor Trowbridge is in Texas working for the United States geological survey.

DR. HARVEY BASSLER, formerly paleontologist with the U. S. Geological Survey, is now engaged in exploratory work for the Standard Oil Company in South America.

MR. R. M. OVERBECK has returned from Bolivia and has resumed work in Alaska for the U. S. Geological Survey.

DR. JACOB SOBEL has been designated assistant director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene of the New York City Department of Health.

DR. HELEN MACMURCHY, Toronto, has been appointed to take active charge of the division of child welfare in the federal department of health, Ottawa.

DR. HARLAN I. SMITH, of the Canadian Geological Survey, has left Ottawa to carry on an archeological reconnaissance in the Bella Coola Valley of British Columbia.

MR. CHARLES M. Hoy is collecting for the Smithsonian Institution in Australia.

PROFESSOR WARREN D. SMITH is taking a leave of absence for one year from the University of Oregon to go to the Philippines as chief of the Division of Mines of the Bureau of Science in order to rehabilitate the work of that department. En route to the Philippines he will attend the Pan-Pacific Scientific Congress in Honolulu, August 2-20, as delegate from the University of Oregon. He expects to return to the University of Oregon in October, 1921.

ROALD AMUNDSEN, the Norwegian explorer, arrived in Nome on July 23, having made the voyage from Norway through the waters north

of Europe and Asia. In 1906 Amundsen followed the northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific around North America.

THE Committee which plans to erect an Osler Institute of General Pathology and Preventive Medicine in Oxford to commemorate the distinguished services of Sir William Osler in Canada, in the United States and in England, is about to issue an appeal for funds. The general committee contains representatives of the universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh,

Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Sheffield and Wales, and also of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians, of the Faraday Society, of the British Association, and of the British Academy.

THE death is announced of Professor Alexander Supan, chief of the Geographical Institute of Breslau, in his seventy-third year.

THE death is announced of William Schallmayer, one of the best-known German students of eugenics.

ARTHUR J. ELLIS, geologist on the U. S. Geological Survey, died July 22, following an operation for appendicitis. A correspondent writes: "Born in Kansas January 6, 1885, he spent his boyhood in Illinois and in 1908 married Orrel Everett, who, with their daughter, survives him. He received the degrees of B.A. in 1908 and M.A. in 1911 from the University of Illinois. After an experience of several seasons on the Illinois Geological Survey, he was appointed to the U. S. Geological Survey in 1911 and was assigned to work on the Ground Water Division, in which he rose to the position of assistant chief. He is the author of reports on the ground waters of Connecticut, the geology and ground waters of San Diego county, California, and several unpublished manuscripts, a number of which are reports on water supplies for military purposes made during the war. His most widely read publication is a 'History of the Divining Rod.' The survey has lost a valuable member and the profession a young man whose painstaking work pointed to a useful future. His

friends appreciate that they have known a rare spirit, which rose above the difficulties and sacrifices of a life devoted to science."

Ar a recent Cambridge meeting of the British Medical Association it was decided to increase the annual subscription from two to three guineas. The reason for the increase was not only the great increase in the cost of producing the Journal in all directions, but also the need for adequate funds to carry on the forward policy of the association.

THE hospital installed by Brazilians in Vaugirard, France, at a cost of $2,000,000 has been offered by the government of Brazil to France and has been accepted by the Paris Faculty of Medicine.

Ir is announced that the Swedish parliament has appropriated 50,000 crowns for the yearly maintenance of the Institute for the Study of Heredity at Upsala, of which Professor H. Lindborg is in charge.

A RESEARCH association for the cutlery industry has been approved by the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The secretary of the committee engaged in the establishment of the association is Mr. W. H. Bolton, Sheffield.

THE Bureau of Mines has completed arrangements for a cooperative research on the carbonization of lignite. $200,000 is to be supplied by private parties for the erection of a plant at New Salem, North Dakota. The bureau will be in charge of the technical and experimental side of the investigation.

WE learn from Nature that the Marshall herbarium, comprising 23,000 sheets of British plants contained in dustproof oak cases, has been bequeathed to the university by the late Rev. E. S. Marshall.

By the will of the late Dr. Rudolph Messel, the Royal Institution of London receives £5,000.

THE new library building of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association, opposite the Memorial House and Observatory, Nantucket, Mass., was dedicated on July 15. This is a scientific library free to all interested in astronomy or any of the natural sciences. It is

planned that the increased space for books will meet all demands of nature lovers. The library is open: 10 to 12 A.M. and 2 to 5 P.M., from June 15 to September 15 each year, and during the winter two afternoons of each week from 2 to 4

GEO. P. GRAY has resigned his position as assistant professor of entomology and chemist, insecticide laboratory at the University of California to become chief of the division of chemistry of the State of California Department of Agriculture, with headquarters at Sacramento. The Department of Agriculture established at the last session of the California legislature was fostered by Governor Stephens as an economy and efficiency measure, and correlates under Director G. H. Hecke, several boards and commissions formerly charged with the enforcement of various laws pertaining to agriculture. The work of the department is organized into three divisions: Plant Industry, Animal Industry and Chemistry. The Division of Chemistry, under Professor Gray, is to handle the official analysis and testing of materials incidental to the administration of the state laws regulating the manufacture and sale of insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers and dairy products and the fruit and vegetable standardization laws.

Ir is stated in Nature that the British Medical Research Council has recently established at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine a national collection of type cultures from which biologists in general, and bacteriologists in particular, may obtain authenic strains of recognized bacteria and protozoa for use in scientific work. The scheme is under the general direction of Dr. J. C. G. Ledingham, while Dr. R. St. John Brooks has been appointed to the post of curator of the collection and Miss Mabel Rhodes to that of assistant curator. It is proposed to collect and maintain bacterial strains from all departments of bacteriology, human, veterinary and economic, and already considerable work has been done towards the formation of a representative collection on these lines. The efforts of the staff are, how

ever, at present particularly directed towards the securing of fully authenticated strains responsible for or associated with disease in man and animals. The bureau proposes to supply cultures on demand to all workers at home and abroad, and, as a rule, a nominal charge per culture will be made to defray postage and media. Strains sent for identification and maintenance should be accompanied by particulars as to source, date of isolation, etc. In due course a catalogue will be prepared for publication.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

A PLAN for securing within five years $10,000,000 to meet the urgent needs of the University of Chicago is now being carried out. For salary increases already made or authorized the sum of $4,000,000 as additional endowment is needed. The new plans involve also the formation of certain institutes within the graduate school for conducting such research and training in pure science as has an immediate bearing on the application of the sciences to industry. The institutes proposed are those of physics and chemistry, plant agriculture, mining and the science of education.

PROFESSOR O. M. LELAND, formerly of Cornell University, but recently of the J. G. White Engineering Corporation, New York City, has been elected dean of the colleges of engineering, architecture and chemistry in the University of Minnesota. During the war, Professor Leland was lieutenant colonel of engineers in the 78 and 89 Divisions and saw active service in France and Germany. Up to a few months ago, he had been a member of the Cornell faculty since 1903.

DR. O. E. JENNINGS, curator of botany at the Carnegie Museum and for several years in charge of the work in botany at the University of Pittsburgh, has been given the rank of professor of botany at the latter institution.

DR. CLAUDE S. MCGINNIS has joined the faculty of Temple University, Philadelphia, as professor in the department of physics. Dr.