The Oskaloosa herald., 1912-06-06
Commencement ADDRESS
DELIVERED BY MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY BEFORE THE GRADU-
ATlNG CLASS OF THE o. H. s., MAY 81,

surgeon of today looks in the body OF
an injured man for the bullet or frac-
tured bone that needs his skillful aid.
Probably the most wonderful dis.
covery Of the last thousand years is
this same system of X-rays. The
discovery of radium is another
of the epoch making inventions of
this same period.
The photograph with its record of
human voices and it's preservation of
the voices of orators and the songs of
the great singers is one of the pro-
ducts Of this same brief period
The wireless telegraph was reds
covered and made practical, and
many precious lives have been saved
by the call of the crippled vessel for
help far out at sea. Had there been
no wireless message the Titanic pro-
badly would have had few, if any,
survivors to tell the tale of disaster
and death mingled with heroism.
The moving picture has brought to
view in all parts of the world scenes
from other lands and made perman-
ent record of motion itself. Sophists
of Greece said there was no such
thing as motion, for, said they, a
thing cannot move where it is, and,
OF course, it cannot move where it is
not, so there can be no such thing
as motion.
The logic Of thesophist was refuted,
however, by the simple expedient of
kicking him out of doors. A film of
living pictures could make a record
of the act itself.
has been the dream of men from
the most ancient times to fly. Icarus
is said to have fashioned wings to his
body with wax and the sun melted
the wax and cast him to the ground.
Darious Green, with his flying ma
chine, too, was a creature of the
poets fancy. But in these twenty
four years men have learned the dan
gerous secret of flight and aviation
meets with their frequent disasters
are now common in all parts OF the
world.
We recite in the creed we believe
in God the Father, maker of all
things visible and invisible" This
creed is very old, and when it was
first recited the things invisible were
of a spiritual character. Now we
know that most of the universe Is in
visible.
In the Greek and Roman days the
poets and priests peopled the caves
and grottoes with nymphs and god
desses; the storm clouds Numbered
at the command of Jupiter; the sea
was full of Tritons, and earth and
air and sky were peopled with the
creatures of the imagination of our
ancestors. Later came the fairies
and witches and things invisible were
objects of interest to young and old.
Now we hunt up the things invisible
and infinitesimal and find them in
Vulnerable.
Life is full of other life; every
crumb of cheese and drop of water
has its microbes. A learned surgeon
makes you immune from fever by in
jecting into your system small guam
titles of toxin, assuring you that in
one charge he inocculates you with
billions of germs.
Koch and other scientists In these
deadly microbe to his lair and invent
ed anti-toXins which have even
shorn the deadly diptheria of most of
its horrors.
The source of yellow fever and the
felonious mosquito that distributes
the poison have been discovered, and,
I if there should be other epidemics OIL
this disease, it will be our own fault
| Samuel Foote, the dramatist, one
hundred and fifty years ago, in a
play gave a hint of the modern mi
crobe theory. A surgeon describes
the treatment of the jaundice, declar-
ing it to be caused by diminutive
yellow flies. His cure was to feed
the patient with spiders eggs, the
spiders hatch and circulate in the
blood and eat the flies, and then
when the flies are all gone the spid
! ers starve to death. Then the learn
ed doctor sends the cured patient to
the seashOre to battle and wash the
cobwebs out OF his system. What
Foote describes in his inimitable
drollery has come true in these days
: of science.
When we were here in 1888, Sir
John Franklin's sad fate still filled
all navigators with the sense OF dan.
ger in the search of the secrets Of the
pole. Now both poles have yielded
their secrets; the North Pole to
Peary, of America, and the South Pole
to Amundsen, OF Norway.
When someone speaks to the grad
uating class in 1886. what achieve
ments will be recalled as character
izing these next twenty-four years?
We know not the answer, and the re-
mote upon this planet will have given
up many more of their mysteries.
All the new things we have found
out in nature existed then, but We
did not know them. The marble out
of which Michael Angelo carved his
inimitable statue of David for count
less ages remained in the native
crystalline block until the genius OF
the great sculptor removed the en-
casing stone and David stood in all
his majesty and glory. Anybody can
sea IN now hnt Michael Angelo saw