The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-16
PROMISING BUT DANGEROUS.

In the general revival of trade and in
dustry science has aroused her votaries to
take part in the procession, and they have
responded with an unprecedented degree
of activity. We hear from them on all
sides. They have promised US flying
machines, self-moving carriages, manu-
featured diamonds, gas that can be sold by
the gallon, and thousand forms of
electric machinery guaranteed to make
life comfortable, home happy, the office
place of pleasure and the kitchen scene
of enchantment.
All these are good, but they are not the
best. In every race there are always some
competitors who outstrip the rest. So in
the present activity of promising scientists
there are two who promise more than the
others and stand pre-eminent in assuring
us not merely Improvements upon old
things, but new things altogether-so new
indeed that they will come near to be ac-
counted miracles, and be regarded as evil
dence that creation is about to begin all
over again and man and his world undergo
total change.
One of these innoyators is a resident of
New York and the other of Old England.
| The New York man proposes to practl-
cally re-create the whole bliZZard-swept
region of this country by changing the
climate His name is T. B. Crocker and
as he holds the position of professor Of
electrical science at Columbia College his
promises are entitled to respectful consid-
Grafton. His plan is to bring to any given
locality hot air from the tropics and cold
air from the Arctic circle by a system of
steel tubes four or five feet in diameter.
Such q system would cost no more than a
railroad, and the professor says would en-
able the community to effeetually control
the rainfall and the weather. In answer
to the argument that the heat and cold
would be lost in transmission through the
tubing he says the air would always pro-
duce heat when compressed and cold when
expanded. and there would be no loss on
that score.
The innovator of Old England is Pro-
lessor Victor Horsley, who, after a series
of experiments in determining the effect of
rifle shots upon living organisms, has
proven to his satisfaction that when an
animal is shot through the brain it dies,
not because the heart ceases its action, but
because the lungs cease theirs. 1t follows
that if artificial respiration could be ap-
piled in the case of a man shot through
the brain until trephining could be per-
formed the patient might live. Professor
Horsley even advises in such case the
treatment which is given to a drowned
person, keeping the lungs in action until
the surgeons trephining instrument can
remove the pressure of the brain, forced
out by the bullets passage against the
sides of the skull.
Taken together, these two innovations
are not without interest to the future well
fare of California. What is to prevent the
populous East from using the power of the
Government to lay tubes across the CONT
nent to pump our climate away from us to
the Mississippi Valley or the Atlantic
Coast? If, in self-defense, We took I'D
arms and shot holes through the heads of
those who ran the pumping works, their
skilled surgeons would easily trephine the
skulls and bring the villains to life again.
Nor is it unlikely that the Fasteners
would attempt the project of stealing our
climate. Only short time ago we called
attention to claim made that the cyclones
of Kansas were caused by the transference
to that region, by railroads, of the cleo
trical disturbances in the earth that used
to cause earthquakes in California. If
these people become persuaded that we
have shipped our earthquakes to them in
the form of cyclones it will not take them
long to believe they would be justified in
taking our climate through steel tubes by
way of retaliation.