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Show THE LIGHTS OF SCIENCE. In the realms of science the new century is turning on strange and brilliant lights with a rapidity rap-idity which promises more miracles and more blessings to men than any preceding century has produced. If the discovery of Dr. Barrows of New York fulfils expectations, it will be a veritable boon of mercy to the world. If a fluid, harmless to the human body, can be introduced into the blood when so vitiated that death is iminent, and in an hour restore it, driving the enemy away, it will remove a shadow that hangs over every home and will take from maternity its chierest terror. It will, moreover, incite new investigation along the same lines of practice. If one form of blood poison poi-son can be swiftly arrested, why cannot another, and why cannot the dream be realized which proposes pro-poses an antidote for the fevers that sweep every land? The paper read the other day by a California scientist, in which he claims that the air does not purify the lungs, that t is that other mysterious agency, electricity, that, acting on the elements of the air in the lungs, gives the needed vitality and gives also the tinge of red to the blood, is not only wonderful in itself, but it will start investigation investi-gation on a score of new lines. Experimenting ith the properties of light shed by the X-ray, a great many physicians have obtained wonderful results in the past two years, without being able to explain why. There are several physicians in this city who have about reached the conclusion that all surface cancers will disappear before the X-ray, but not one, as we understand it, can ex-Pkin ex-Pkin the secret of the healing. The brightest Hght in the world is the electric spark. It is imitation imi-tation sunlight. The latest theory is that what we 1 sunlight is caused by the electricity thrown 0lt by he sun, a positive wave which flows united un-ited until it strikes the negative of the earth's mosphere, which kindles the light. Is not this e healing factor in the X-ray, and if it is, what Witless possibilities await further investigation and experiment? A late dispatch asserts positively that dumb Wroals can be made immune against tuberculo-is tuberculo-is by inocculatlon. If dumb animals, why not "Uman beings? It sems, too, that wireless telegraphy Is very siftly approaching absolutely practical use. Then it comes from the East that John Jacob Astor has made an improvement on the application of the turbine wheel for the propulsion of vessels, which foreshadows a revolution in shipping almost as great as was caused when the sails were discarded dis-carded and the swifter and surer steam power was adopted. No other study is bringing more triumphs than that of chemistry. The mysterious air of the old alchemists is still around the study, but its progress prog-ress is very great and swift. Maybe that, after all, it holds within its yet unexplored chambers that very elixir of life which the old alchemists sought so long and so eagerly to find. Speaking of the experiments being made in science, a gentleman remarked the other day that "even what seem foolish experiments must not be jeered at. Why," saia he, "no really scientific man could ever have discovered the cyanide process pro-cess for saving gold. The man who did discover it flew directly into the face of all the rules that govern scientific men in their investigations." Before the writer of this is a letter which says: "General believes he has made a discovery which will make all other discoveries for producing pro-ducing power seem small by comparison. He insists in-sists that with a little machine that will not occupy oc-cupy a space 4x6 feet he can generate more power than can the engines on a trans-Atlantic steamship, steam-ship, and at only trifling expense." This reads as did the pronunciamentos of one, Mr. Kelly, of Philadelphia, but who knows? The man who makes the claim is an engineer of national fame. After electricity runs cars, lights houses and bores teeth for the dentist, who shall say that anything is impossible? In the stately description of the birth of the world and the creation of man is the promise that man shall have dominion over the earth and all its living creatures. There Is no doubt that the dominion extended to the elements of the waters and the air. The triumphs of mortals during the past few years give a new dignity to that history, give glimpses of man's higher self and make more plain and sublime the declaration that man's place Is only a little lower than the angels. With every new discovery the whole race of mankind becomes more and more exalted, and it is reasonable to believe that when enough more lights are vouchsafed vouch-safed to make clear to mortals the exalted place which the good God intends they should occupy", they will have new horror for anything wrong, new appreciation of the right, and the regeneration regenera-tion of the race will become a passion among men, and that as unclean things creep away before be-fore the light, as base men suspend their dark deeds in the sunlight, so under the new lights that science is kindling men will, by and by, of their own volition, forsake what is evil and depraved and seek the new dawn. |