Evening Star Newspaper, February 3, 1929, Page 82

Nansen, King of North, Made Obstacles Assi BY VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON, Noted Arctic Explorer, Scientist and Author. EVERAL travelers, including my- self, are used to being well known traveler is present) as the “greatest living explorer.” But when no potentially jealous ex- plorer is present and when men of in- formation and judgment in the matter are gathered together, the name is al- ways the same—that of Pridtjof Nan- sen, that citizen of the world, born in Norway, who has just landed in New York for a tour through the United States. There are several explorers living who are great in their own flelds, if you conceds greatness at all to & craft of this nature. But Nansen, so far as we can judge, would have been a great or 2t least a_ distinguished and outstand- ing man had he followed almost any other congenial occupation. And many occupations -are congenial to him, for he is & man of varied tastes and numerous talents. He did not win the Nobel prize, for instance, through any achievement in the line of explora-| tion or through work where his previ- ous distinctions helped him materially. He won it in the humanitarian task of marshaling the relief forces of the world against Russian famine. Nansen started in life as a biologlst. He had already won recoginition in this ficld and was curator of the Bergen Natural History Museum when only 21 years old. His interest in human life on the sea was natural, for he was a ‘descendant of those lords of the| northern ocean, the Vikings, who had dominated Europe through their ship- craft a-thousand years before. His interest in the animal life of the sea was equally natural, for the wealth of Norway today and her leading occu- tions are dependent to a great ex- m‘t on fisheries. The planis of the sea would interest him, too, for it is on them that the animals live and give occupation and wealth to the people. The temperatures and current and other physical conditions of the water must interest him as well, for upon these in the last analysis the plants depend. i BERGEN has been & seaport of con- sequence from the beginning of history. Everything conspired to in- terest’ Nansen in the ocean when once he had entered the biological fleld and had settled on Bergen as the place of his work. It was interest in the sea and knowl- edge of it that led Nansen to contribute eventually a new idea to the thought | 4 of the world. To develop a really new idea is greatness, or the foundation of eatness. “Men who can succeed in routine work are numerous. There are several, no doubt, who could have handled the Russian famine as well as Nansen, though he did handle it well enough to deserve the Nobel Prize. But there were few in Europe or anywhere, prob- ably none, who had at once the in- formation upon which Nansen based his new idea and the originality to synthesize that information and bring eut an idea from it. presented to audiences (where no other Somehow the publie is usually un-l able to perceive greatness in an ex- | | plorer or -imagine greatness in hlm; | unless he has really or supposedly per- | | formed some deed of physical prowess. | Nansen began his career with that | sort of prowess, which may have been | accident or diplomacy. No one had | crossed Greenland. Ordinary human | reascning goes no farther than to as- sume that what has not yet been done is either impossible, or at the least, | very difficult. | Abous Greenland, indeed, many had sald specifically that it could not he | crossed. Peary had climbed the west- | ern slopes; and it is easy to see now | | from analysis of his testimony that he | | foreshadowed the. crossing. Moreover, | he understood that it could be done and wanted to do it/ No one doubts today that he could have done it. even some reason to believe that Peary would have done it more easily than Nansen, for certainly he showed in his later career a genius for organization and for the development of new and good methods of snow and ice travel which Nansen hardly approached. In- deed, the technique of cold-weather living and the method of sledge travel | were always Nansen's weakest points. | The fact was, however, that Nansen startled the world by crossing Green- land. Thereby incidentally, certainly without premeditating 1it, probably | without realizing it, he broke, or would have broken had it been breakable, the heart of the other great explorer, the one serious competitor of his "active life, the American Peary. Peary had built so many hopes around crossing Greenland that he actually felt his 1ife in ruins about him when he read in the papers one morning that Nansen had done this “impossible” thing. * x % X 'HERE are perhaps, on the whole, few | royal roads to greatness; but they are numerous in the fleld of exploration. For where else do you discover so many achievements which the public believes to ible or superhuman, but which those on the inside know to be easy—so easy, indeed, that the heroes of those achievements can hardly keep a ht face when they meet? They are like the Roman soothsayers of old who kept long countenances before the blic, but who, as Cicero tells us, used wink at each other in passing. On this fortunate pecullarity of ex- ploration, the ease of its “difficult” achievements, is based, too, that system of ethics which makes it the unforgiv- able sin for an explorer to take the pub- lic into his confidence about how easy some of the heralded feats really were. 1t is safe by now, however, to tell the truth about the crossing of Greenland: for both of the contenders, Peary and There s | »« THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 3, 1929—PART Congquests in Polar Regions—New Domicile for Santa Claus—Flappers as Explorers. | i Nansen, have since risen to unassailable !he hts, recognized as leaders in their | craft as explorers as well as by the pub- {lie. Their reputations now rest safely on the doing of really great and funda- mentally important as well as difficult | things. 1t is the mood of children to kick at obstructions. The small and petulant try to conquer Nature and to bend her | forees to their will. They are driven to FRIDTJOF NANSEN. magic and make-believe and to thwart- ed struggles against the impossible. On the part of such children of a larger growth there had been, before Nansen's time, many high expressions of lofty but ineffectual purpose about “‘conquer- ing the Arctic.” There had been, too, advances by a few men of genius—by Eric the Red, by Parry, Rae, McClintock, and perhaps as many others as you can count on the fingers of two hands. Still none, even of these great ones, had done more than to stop fighting natural obstacles, to adapt themselves to conditions as they found them and to g0 ahead with their work on that basis. Nansen was the first to formulate and | carry out a plan by which the so-called hostility of the Arctic could be actually made fo co-operate in a plan for its | own subjugation. feated by the circumstance that the Polar Sea is not covered with one vast expanse of ice which you can treat as if it were solid land. but with multitudes of cakes of ice which offer a constant alternation between solid and liquid, and which are, moreover, in constant drif! constant only in that they are movin, but not in the direction of their motion. Nansen was the first to make planned use of this “difficulty.” There are predecessors to every in- there are steps in every dis- even in such great ones as Nansen's. The Tegetthof, under the Austrians, had drifted with the ice in 1872-74, shawln‘ that it could be done for & time at least with comparative safety and comfort. The Jeannette, financed by Bennett of the New York Herald, had drifted northwestward through what was really water, although it had been supposed to be land, and her commander, the American naval lleutenant DeLong, had even formu- lated some ‘rllm that could be based on that kind of drift. Perhaps had DeLong lived he might have been the originator of the rounded- out Nansen plan of building a ship that stocking her with wholesome ning to live aboard or near her an active open-air life through year after year, counting on fresh meat se- cured by hunting to maintain the health of the crew, and thus. as a well manned scientific laboratory, drifting across the Arctic Basin by setting the vessel fast in the ice on the side from which the pressures, food, her, when enough years had passed, to emerge at the opposite side. EE ANSEN studied all the facts and concluded that the drift across the Arctic Basin was from the side of Alaska, Bering Strait and Eastern Si- beria toward the side of the Atlantic, Norway and Iceland. He built the Fram and fce in 1893. She emer complete vindication of a theory and of a method that were not only demon- ut her in the in 1896 with view, but were so new from the acien- tific or lofl‘m point of view that most of the highest authorities in the world had called them everything from im- practical through visionary and suicidal to_insane. Nansen is a man of rounded character and balanced genius. His drift, accord- ingly, was no mere triumph of one theory, but carried with it the gather- ing of the largest body of accurate and | important knowledge that has ever been | brought together by a single Arctic ex- pedition. One sample from many will show how was peculiarly adapted to resisting ice | drift appeared to come and expecting | strably new from the historical point of | Career of Achievement in Many Fields Lies Behind Explorer Now Visiting America and Planning, at Age of 67, New | Before that time even scientists had commonly believed that the Arctic was | particularly stormy. Nansen accumu- | Jated a mass of data which enabled him | to show that in no area of equal siz> in | the world are storms so few and mild on the average. | How novel this view was when he set | it forth in 1897 you can convince your- self if you look over the various popu- | | lar books about the Arctic. For it is | doubtful that you will find more than |one or two of them, even 30 years later, that do not express or 1mp1{ the old belief in the prevalence of violent | storms, ignoring not only Nansen's con- clusion, itself based upon sufficient evi- | dence, but all the mass of eorroborative | testimony that has been published since then, including, for instance, the reports of my own expeditions which have cov- | ered an aggregate of more than 11 years | within the Arctic Circle. The time is just coming when the world is to make practical use of this Nansen finding. age mildness of storms in the Arctic is one of the corner stones in the program for use of the Arctic as an aerial hl&- way to fly by the shortest route - tween such populous centers of the north temperate zone as lie on Oppo- site sides of the Arctic from each other, as, for instance, Chicago and Stock- holm, Seattle and Berlin, New York and Pekin, London and Toklo. Nansen does not retire nor rest on his laurels. After becoming foremost among_explorers, he took part in win- ning for Norway her independence from Sweden, and later represented Norway as minister to London. He car- ried on his oceanographic work while he was & politician and diplomat. He carried it on, too, while, as & states- man representing the League of Na- | tions, he administered the famine re- lief in Russia. and at 67 is about to re-enter polar | exploration, though on a basis entirely different from his ploneer work of 35 years ago. He is doing now nothing that is revolutionary, but instead, ev- erything that the authorities agree is feasible and comparatively easy, but rich in promise of results. There is a broad scientific foundation for his plan to engage the German airship Graf Zeppelin and to make with it several crossings of the Arctic during the lat- ter part of next Winter. * ok ox HATEVER the sclentific results of this journey may really prove to be, no one now expects them to be volutionary, but merely the continu- ation of logical development. But if not revolutionary in science, these flights will be revolutionary in the pop- { ularization of that real knowledge of | Even Parry had been outright de- |novel the conclusions were in some cases. | the Arctic which Nansen has done more 'he rarity and aver- | He is carrying on oceanography still | st in His Progress than any one else to develop, but which he has been powerless, as all others have been, to get the public to accept. Perhaps because the Arctic is the home of Santa Claus, we seem nation= ally and internationally unwilling that any realities shall prevail in our thoughts of the Far North. Personally fond of Santa Claus, I would be the last to desire that any one shouid handicap that benevolent saint mate- rially. It seems to me that I have found a way around the apparent a- lemma. I have proposed it before, but want to propose it afresh in connection with the visit of the greatest of explor= ers to the western side of the Atlantie. Why not transfer the residence of Santa Claus to the moon, and most of our folklore interest of the Arctic to the moon along with him? Then we would be free to promote the Arctic by truly modern methods and to begin using it in line with current aeronautical devel~ opment as & thoroughfare between Old World and New "Vorld commercial cen- ters. Santa, being the crystallization of an idealistic dream, could as easily visit our kiddies from the moon as from Lap- land or Alaska. ‘The importance of the coming Nan- sen flights is essentially one of publicity, or as we now euphemistically say, pub- le relations. He should, therefore, em- ploy the best of public relations counsel. There must be a liberal appropriation “educational” campaign and the sts must study every angle, especially, I suggest, the personnel of the expedition. Girl Scouts or debu- ::::mn;htonucled ufca;n&any the flight, it re! rest of the public is to be enlisted in the venture. 4y A$ the very least we must know that several of the members have gray- haired mothers who are fond of them. Cats should be taken, dogs and pigeons. Some of the crew should be handsome, and others pieasantly homely with warts on their noses. “There might be & chaplain so broadminded that we could be informed that he secretly enjoyed the terrific oaths of some sea- dog who might be taken along with the flyers to do the swearing. For on ex- peditions the public would really notice, Queen Marie of Rumania should be induced to go along. If some such program is followed the Nansen flight of 1930 will be likely to succeed in calling the attention of the public to some of the outstanding con- clusions of his drift voyage of 1893-'96. The facts he gathered then and the prlnclgle' he established would begin after thirty years to flll the press dis- patches if those methods were followed, and might even succeed in getting a footing as low down as our common school text books. Nansen's ideas might begin to move the world. But whether or not the public decides to find out and understand what Nan- sen has done, let's treat him well in any case, now that he is among us. For the Nobel prize and the gold medals of scores of learned socleties certify that he is a great man. And we are used to worshiping great men, even if we do not undestand them—men like Einstein, for instance. It does us lots of good: the thrill has & tonic effect. Attempt to Ambush Influenza Germs Which Are Candidates for Official Source of Disease Have Difficulty in Proving Claims, but Epidemic Is Under Scientific Attack in Hope of Unlocking Its Secrets. BY WATSON DAVIS. ONFIDENT in scientific weap- ons for publi¢ health, tect- ed by the sanitary that the Government flings around America's frontiers, '2:.!.: coun; self-satisfied considers Fru ;rlzcu- are unpleasant. chapters of an- clent history or remoté haj n!:(u min Africa and 3 cfin but seldom enter our w] they do they meet with a swift extinction. Smallpox, which once marked the face of nearly every ome, is now, thanks to vaccination, more of a crime than a misfortune. Cancer, tuberculosis and a few other diseases we still have with us, but most of the horrars of the past, such as typhoid, conguered by pure water, or diphtheria, made s minor cause of death by toxin- antitoxin, are relegated to relatively | the obscure proportions. It is disconcerting and troubling to a country about to mgtlt‘ullle itself on one of the best health years in history to have its good record solled by a chameleon disease marching across country, mas| as a “bad cold” at times and in o cases calling in mmonu to finish its dastardly at- ‘The great influenza pandemic of 1918, which seemed to come as nature’s con- %buuon to lhord:::cu e: the Worlc} AT, WaS one_ of great plagues of history. To India the 1918 influenza epidemic was by far the most serious epidemic in its history—and India is Justly considered the plague spot of the world, not only now but in the past. The 1918-19 epidemic, in America alone, brought death to over half a mi] rsons who would not have died if the normal death rate of the preceding healthful years had not been shot skyward by this visitation of dis- ease. During those dark days one out of every three persons was attacked. t unrecorded damage the plague id in undermining otherwise stalwart constitutions or weakening defense against future ills, we shall never know. * x ok % EARLY last October physicians in the district around San PFrancisco be- g:.n to receive calls from patients who d what they described as & bad cold, accompanied by a slight fever and sometimes a hacking cough. They were really sick, weak and prostrated, al- though it was sometimes difficult to | corvince them that they should treat ! their illness seriously and stay in bed. | malady spread explosively, rais- | ing the temperatures of many and fill- ing the air with the sound and danger- ous spray of constant coughs. The brewing epidemic was soon lifted from the ordinary category of a mere cold and it was labeled “influenza,” although | 10 1t was milder and not so liable to bring on such deadly after effects as char- acterized the war-time disease. As the case reports flitered upward from physician to local health officer, | to Btate health departments and finally to the general headquarters of Ameri- ca’s health organization, the United States Public Health Service in Wash- ington, there was concern among those who, trained to see the significance of minor occurrences in the t, have watched small flashes of disease fan into conflagrations that covered the world. PFrom South Carolina, too, there came reports of a similar disease. As the cases mounted in the early weeks of November, health forces mo- bilized and made ready for warfare. A decade_had passed since the last epidemic. Immunity produced in the blood of the survivors of the last great outbreak undoubtedly had been lost by this time—that is, if there is immunity to influenza, Despite the thousands of experiments. hours upon hours of tedi- ous and faithful work, the volunteering of human subjects for tests that might mean death, experts sadly shook their heads and admitted frankly: “We kncw no more about influenza unhapp; ces and memoric’ graved ¥n their recollections and prin ed in the pages of their technical re- rts. For vention and treatment here was little new practical knowledge to be offered to the public. Unscrupu- lous or misguided advertisers were soon to offer “cures” for the “flu.” But public health and medical authorities' knew that in the face of an influenza epi- demic they could do little more than gve the good common sense counsel of : eep away from sick people, cover your coughs and sneezes, g0 to bed when you feel sick, call a doctor, follow his advice and be an invalid until after you are sure you are well. Unarmed, without serums or anti- toxins that often prove useful in other diseases, the officials could foresee what haj . They knew where the 1918 influenza epidemic be- . It was at Commonwealth Pler in ton and the month was August. They knew how the disease, brought from Europe, spread from city to city, military camp to military camp, by per- sons who were often taken sick during their journeys from one place to an- other. * Along the lines of human travel disease spread with grim relentless- ness despite the frantic preventive measures, the masked physicians and nurses, the closed schools, the dark theaters and other emergency g_‘re tions. Individuals must meet individ the |uals, and so long as there is human contact this disease seems to spread. PR LAST Fall the influenza started on the West Coast instead of the East. ‘Whence it came no one knows. But whither it was going the public health statisticians did know, sithough they were careful not to alarm the public by terrifying predictions. However, they were able to predict the probable course of the epidemic for their own guidance and the information of officials. Along the railroads that carry human freight back and forth, they said, the epidemic would make its way eastward, conquering State after State. And so it did, speedily, for influenza lasts only five to ten weeks in any one place. The disease made its transcontinental jour- ney. From the peak of the epidemic on’the Pacific Coast to what ap] to be its greatest intensity in the Was onlly.h:c matter of six or eight weeks. subsided. It is too early to know defl- nitely what its toll in life has been. The statisticians who record our country's health must use indirect methods to de- termine the real effects of influenza. Many physicians apparently do not see the necessity of reporting influenza cases, the disease in some of its forms ! seeme so mild and inconsequential. And even in the most thoroughly up- to-date report systems only a fraction of the cases find their way into the tall; marks of the health record. It is cus- tomary for public health statisticians to consider that only one out of five cases of any disease is really reported, but with influenza the number of cases re- ported is an even smaller fraction of the tal. A house-to-house canvass of typical areas is undertaken in such cases to ob- tain a better picture of what actually happened during the distressful weeks when the disease raged. The housewife, upon whom the burden of caring for the sick usually falls, is a more compe- tent recorder of the statistics of her household than even the family phy- siclan or the health department. such a manner it was determined that one out of every three persons in the country had influenza during the epi- demic ‘at the end of the World War. More to be relied upon are the death statistics, which from their very nature give a nearly correct numerical picture, even though the causes may not be so accurately recorded upon the death cer- tificates. Influenza is char officially and directly in death certificates with only a part of the toll which it really causes. Many influenza cases turn into pneumonia in their final fatal stages and for that reason, in evaluating the damage from an influenza epidemic, statisticians keep their eyes on the du“thn caused by related digWipes as well. By long experience and with many columns of statistics, these recorders of life and death have computed the nor- than we did In 1918.” ‘They were modest. Actually they had mal toll that various diseases take of the population each year, It is_possible present epidemic has not yet | didn to measure the effect of an epidemic by determining the deaths during the epi- demic period that are in excess of normal expected death rate. By such a manner it is to say that the 1918 influenza epidemic cost the coun- try half a million lives. ‘The less serious influenza epidemic of 1920 snapped out prematurely the lives of 100,000. A good guess of the excess damage done by the epidemic now sub- siding 1s at least 150,000 lives. ‘This damage is done by an unseen foe traveling from victim to victim in a manner which is not precisely known. The best of experts differ even on whether there is an influenza disease as clear-cut as, for instance, smallpox. Perhaps, it is suggested, influenza is really a general condition in the popu- lation that allows colds and pneumonia to do their damage. But most of the students of disease see influenza as a definite disease entity which comes upon its victim suddenly, causes a fever, prostrates him and affects not only his respiratory organs but his whole system. When infection temporarily gets the upper hand of the human body the white cells of the blood usually in- crease in number. They are the sol- diers of the blood and they enter into decisive combat with the invader. But in influenza these defensive forces of white blood cells are not mobilized and there may actually be too few of the white soldiers to prevent other infec- tions getting a foothold in the body. * X K X I N the early days of this epidemic of newspapers a rTeport that there had influenza there appeared in the been stolen from a London physician culture tubes of influenza germs suffi- clent in %flflly to endanger all of London. story must have ‘caused amused chuckles among the research workers. For, while many germs have been nominated to the hanor of causin, influenza, none has beent able to hol fast to the claim. For nearly 20 years the Pfeiffer bacillus was the seemingly successful claimant. After the influenza epidemic of 1889-1890 a German bacte- riologist located this bacillus in many cases and the organism named in his honor was considered to be the cause. During the 1918 epidemic, despite many competent searchings for it, the Pfeiffer bacillus was not found in many typical cases of influenza and as a re- sult it has lost its prestige as the cause of the disease. Other bacteria, one of which, known as bacterlum pneumosintes, was found to produce influenza-like symptoms in the rabbit, have been put forward as the cause of influenza and then have been repudiated when subjected to closer scrutiny, It seems probable that the 1iving cause of influenza is so small that it easily passes the finest fliters and will forever defy the attempts of the human eye to see it. It must be a brother in size to the yet unknown cause of smallpox. Despite its undetermined _cause, smalipox was one of the first diseases to come under what may be called ab- solute control. Jenner applied vacci- nation before Pasteur laid the founda- tions of bacterlology. So the research workers will not be disheartened if they never find the causative organism of influenza. More discouraging have been the at- son to person under experimental con- ditions. The most casual layman, when tempts to transmit influenza from per- | infectious. o A ” Is Futile _Despite Medical Skill e s )i THE PUBLIC IS CONFIDENT THAT SCIENCE EVENTUALLY WILL CONQUER INFLUENZA. would see immediately that it is highly But just after the 1918 epi- demic brave volunteers in Beston and San Francisco subjected themselves to shown a record of spreading influenza, ! experiments during which influenza BY STEPHEN LEACOCK. N the old days, of say 20 years ago, when & man got sick he went to a doctor. The doctor looked at him, examined him, told him what was wrong with him, and gave him some medicine and told him to go to bed. ‘The patient went to bed, took the ,medicine, and either got better or 't. All of this was very primitive, and it is very gratifying to feel that we have got_quite beyond it. Now, of course, & consulting doctor first makes a diagnosis. The patient is then handed on to & “heart man” for & heart test, and to a nerve man for a nerve test. Then if he has to be operated on, he is put too sleep by an anesthetist, and operated on by an op- erating surgeon and waked up by a| resurrectionlst. | All that is excellent—ecouldn’t be bet- ter. But just suppose that the other pro- fessions began to imitate it! And just suppose that the half professions that live in the reflection of the bigger ones ! start in on the same linel We shall then witness little episodes in the routine of our lives such as that which follows: “Mr. Follicle will see you now,” sald the young lady attendant. The patient_entered the inner sanc- tum of Dr. Follicle, generally recog- nized as one of the greatest capillary experts in the profession. He carried after his name the degrees of Cap. D. from Harvard, B. Hair Oil from Paris, | and was an Honorary Shampoo of half a dozen societies. The expert ran his eye quickly over the face of the incoming patient. His trained gaze at once recognized a cer- tain roughness in the skin, as if of a partial growth of hair fult coming through the surface, which told the whole tale. He asked, however, a few questions as to personal history, par- entage, profession, habits, whether sedentary or active, and so on, and then with & magnifying glass made a ;euchlnc examination of the patient’s lace. He shook his head. “I think,” he said, “there is no doubt about your trouble. You need a shave.” The patient's face fell a little at the abrupt, firm announcement. He knew well that it was the expert's duty to state it to him flatly and fairly. He himself in his inner had known “I THINK,” HE SAID, “THERE TROUBLE. YOU IS NO DOUBT ABOUT YOUR NEED A SHAVE.” it before he had come in. But he had hoped against hope; perhaps he didn't need it after all, perhaps he could walt, later on, perhaps, he would ac- cert it. Then he had argued to him- self, refusing, as we all refuse, to face theccniel ’ln& tnevltlhlefl X{ncL r “Could 1t postponed for a day or S0 more?” he uke{o “I have good many things to do at the ofjce.” “My dear sir,” sald the’ expert firm- ly. “I have told you emphatically that you need a shave. You may postpone it if you wish, but if you do I refuse to be ‘responsible.” The patient sighed, “All right,"he sald, “if I must, I must. After all, the sooner it's done, the sooner it's over. Go right ahead and shave me.” The great expert smiled. “My dear sir,” he said, “I don't shave you my- self. I am only a consulting hairolo- gist. I make my diagnosis, and I pass you on to expert hands.” He pushed a bell. “Miss Smith,” he said to the enter- ing secretary, “please fill out a card for this gentleman for the shaving ropm. If Dr. Scrape is operating, get him to make the removing of the facial hair. Dr. Clicker will then run the clippe! P This Age of Specialized Service. over his neck. Perhaps he had better 80 right to the soaping room from here; have him sent down fully soaped to Dr. Scrape.” The young lady stepped close to the expert and said something in a lower tone, which the patient was not in- tended to hear. “That's unfortunate,” murmured the specialist. “It seems that we have no soapist available for at least an hour or so. Both our experts are busy—an emergency case that came in this morn- ing, Involving the complete removing of a full beard. Still, perhaps Dr. Scrape can arrange something for you. And now,” he continued, looking over some notes in front of him, “for the work around the ears, have you any | preference for any one in particular? |1 mean any professional man of your own itance who! 5 c:lf‘ln whom you would like “Why, no,” sald the patient, “can't Dr. What's-his-name do that, too?" “He could,” said the consultant, “but only at a certain risk, which I hesitate to advise. Snipping the hair about and around the ears is recognized as a very delicate line of work, which is better confided to a specialist. In the old days in this line of work there were often some very distressing blunders and accidents due purely to lack of technique—severance of part of the ear, for :fim le.” “All right” said the patient, “Ill have a specialist.” o “Very good,” sald the halrologist, sufferers coughed in their faces, doc- tors swabbed their throats with the supposedly dangerous discharges from | influenza patients and supposedly in- | fective material was injected into thetr bodies. But none of {":**: contracted the disease. In another exper.nent condu ‘sd in part by Dr. Joseph Goldberger, the con= querer of pellagara, whose untimely death is being mourned by his col- leagues at the Hygienic Laboratory at Washfngton, it was discovered that in- fluenza is infective only in the earlier stages of the disease—possibly before | the patient really knows that he is go- | ing to be sick. The advice to the pub- lic is to avold those recently sick and those just being taken sick. It may be that those convalescent, no matter how much they sneeze and cough, are rela- tvely harmless. Taking good care of one's health in epidemic times is probably the best in- surance against the disease. Robin- son Crusoe on & dessert island might be spared from a world pancemic of influenza—provided he were not visited by his man Priday. Isolated communi- ties, cut off from the outside world with the exception of infrequent vis- itors, were attacked by the 1918 in- fluenza epidemic nearly as quickly as the crowded areas of the larger citles. Only one visitor, not necessarily sick, i3 enough in some instances to bring the disease into a remote village. * ok ok X THE way in which the disease spreads is shown by an incident in the early part of the present epidemic. The University of Washington foot ball team traveled from Seattle to Berkeley for games with the University of Cali- fornia. Accompanying the team were some loyal Washington rooters. The time of the contest coincided with the early outbreak of influenza in Cali~ fornia and the rooters, mingling with —_— little. “What about the fee?” he asked. “now a3 to & shampoo—I think we had better wait till after the main work is advioe according to your condition. am inclined to think that your constitu- tion would stand an immediate sham- poo. But I shouldn't care to advise it without a test. Very often a pre- mature Ipoo in cold weather will set & nasal trouble of a very dis- u_fi: character. We had better wait and see how we come along.” “All right,” sald the patient. “And now,” added the expert, more genially, the end of all of it, shall we say—a shine?” “Oh, yes, certainly”® “A & brush- shine, very good. and up?. Te include the hat? Yes, excel- lent. Miss Smith, will you conduct this gentleman to the soaping room?” The patient hummed and hawed & over .and then we will take special The consultant waved the question aside with dignity. “Pray do not trou- ble about that,” he said, “all that will 11be attended to in its place.” And when the patient had passed through all the successive stages of the high-class expert work indicated, from the first soap to the last touch of pow- der, he came at the end, with a sigh of relief, to the lmchl shoe-shining seat and the famillar colored boy on his knees walting to begin. Here, at ll:n._‘he thought, 18 something thaf changed. ‘Which !::‘{7" asked the boy. the Berkeley crowd, carried the dis- ease back to Seattle. An ldemnlos..lt was able to trace the spread of the dis« ease at the University of Washington from fraternity house to fraternity { house. The foot ball team, mingling with the other players, all of whom were in good physical condition and well, did not contribute to the spread on their home campus. The conquest of influenza lies in the future. In the same bundle of unsolved disease mysteries are the colds that cause great economic loss and much persopal discomfort. Colds may be found to be the small and less deadly cousins of influenza. Dozens of scientists are now seizing the present influenza epidemic as an opportunity for further research. So completely does influenza disappear in the intervals between epidemics that it is difficult to carry on research when the disease is not widely prevalent. And since the epidemic is speedily over, the investigators must work fast to make the most of the opportunity. This time one of them may be successful. All who are trained in the observation of dis~ ease have a chance. The family physi~ clan, seeing case after case of influensa, may detect the essential key to in- fluenza's secret which others have over« looked. The story of discovery of ine culin by & young doctor who took his theory into a large university laboratory and conquered the previously hopeless d‘i‘;_eu- of diabetes is fresh in our mem« ory. . . | Wine Carts Passing. 'HE picturesque old wine carts of Rome are giving way to the on- ward march of progress, and soon the plodding horses are expected to retire altogether in favor of the fast-moving motor truck. Speed and traffic regula- tions have much to do with the of the wagons piled high with their n cusf 1 memorial for the drivers r:‘t‘t‘h?"lllr: carts, who start for Rome at ht, to sleep on their seats, while the faith- ful, well trained old horses way into the city and to the wine shop for which they are headed. New traffic rules, however, call for ) vehicles to keep to the right instead | the left, as formerly, nndi:ccidenu m@’f been numerous, as the horses. ambli: along around turns on their let-hang side of the road, have met autoe .sep- “How's that?” said the man. “Ol it doesn't matter—here, take the right.” “You'll have to go to the other chair,” said the boy, rising up from his knees. ;I‘l’:"lelt-mnded. I only do the left Copyright, 1929.) Severe penalties have added problems of the drivers following th accidents and gradually the older men re follo in the footst: of the {gun l;n .t c-knttumlnn w?k:a use of e Tuck for transporting thelr products, 2 ing to the right 5 to the ' ol