Union County courier. [volume] (Elk Point, Union County, D.T. [S.D.]) 187?-1913, 1886-06-30
The Last Fifty Years In Science.

The first railway for locomotives,
which was constructed betwe n Stock
ton AID Darlington, was opened in
September, 1925; SO that l have the
doubtful advantage Of about four
months seniority yer the ancestral
representative Of the vast reticulated
fetching and carrying organism which
now extends its meshes over the civil
lied world. / confess 1t fills me with
astonishment to think thst the time
when no man could travel faster than
horses could transport him, when our
means of locomotion were no better
than those of Achilles or Of Rameses
Maximum, lies W thin my memory. The
electric telegraph, as a thing for pract.
cal use. is far my junior. So are arms
Of precision, unless the old rifle be re-
garded as such. Again, the application
to hygiene, and to the medical and
surgical treatment of men and animals,
of u knowledge of the phenomena of
parasitism, and the very discovery of
the true order of these phenomena, is
q long way within the compass OF my
personal knowledge. 1t is Unnecessary
for me to enumerate more than these
four rich gifts made by science to man
kind during the past sixty years. Ar
resting the survey here, | would ask if
there is any corresponding period in
previous history which can take credit
for so many momentous applications of
scientific knowledge to the wants of
mankind? Depreciators of the value
of natural knowledge ara wont to speak
somewhat scornfully of these and such
like be~nefactions as mere additions to
material welfare. l must own to the
weakness of believing that material
welfare is highly desirable in itself,
and / have yet to meet with the man
who prefers material i~ll-fare. But even
if this should be, as some may say,
painful evidence of the materialistic
tendencies incidental to scientific pur-
suits, it is surely possible. without
much ingenuity or any prejudice in
favor of n or the other view OF mutu-
al relations Of material and spiritual
phenomena, to show that each of these
four applications of science has ex-
erted q p%rodigious influence on the
moral, social. and political relations of
mankind, and that such influence can
only increase as time goes on. If the
senseless antipathics, born of isolation,
which formerly converted neighbors,
whether they belonged to adjacent
families or to adjacent nations, into
natural enemies, are dying away. i'm
proved means of communication deserve
the chief credit of the change; if war
becomes less frequent it will be chiefly
because its horrors are being intensified
beyond bearing by the close interde-
pendence and community of interest
thus established between nations, no
less than by the improvement of the
means of destruction by scientific in
vention. Arms Of precision have
taken the mastery of the world out of
the hands of brute force and given it
to industry and intelligence. If rail
ways and electric t%elegraphs have rem
dered it unnecessary that modern en-
pires should fall to pieces by their own
weight as ancient empires did, arms of
precision have provided against the
possibility OF their being swept away by
barbarous invasions. Health means not
merely wealth, not merely bodily well
fare, but intellectual and moral sound
ness; and / doubt If, since the time of
the father of medicine, any discovery
has contributed so much to the promo
ton Of health and the cure OF diseases
as that of the part played by fungoid
parasites in the animal economy, and
that of the means of checking them,
even though, as yet, unfortunately, it
be only in a few cases.-Prof. Hur.
leU's address to the ROUdL SOctetu.