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Show Babylonians Were Fathers of Science, Says Orientalist Knew Much of Medicine and About Astronomy Keeping Up BfijSciene t Science Service. WNU Service. Wide Usefulness of Bags Despite the Tin Can's Rise Paper Lining Prevents Sifting of Contents By ROBERT D. POTTER New York. -The tale of the tin can's rise to a well-earned niche on America's family cupboard shelves is well known, but the advances in another packaging method the bag are little noted. This is because the bag is seldom used by the average family except as a temporary container con-tainer from the grocery store and possibly for sugar, salt and flour. Dut bags are not "dead" in any sense, for they still help build the homes of America and its highways, as only two examples. Burlap, commonest fabric for rough bags, was first imported in volume from India just before the turn of the century. With the present pres-ent 1-cent-a-pound Import tax, burlap bur-lap still is considerably lower in cost than domestic cotton fabric. In 1936 some 870.000,000 yards of burlap were imported from Europe and India. Rome Modern Improvements. , Bags have now been so Improved that manufacturers can claim to offer of-fer any degree of protection from air, acid, dust, oil,, moisture, odors or vermin. The crinkled paper linings for bags allow them to offer serious competition with rigid containers. Materials that formerly sifted through cloth bags can now be shipped satisfactorily and cheaply. These linings permit shipment without with-out contamination of the contents from foreign materials or outside odors. Multiwalled bags, first introduced only a little over a decade ago, have taken over the greater part of the world's cement output and virtually vir-tually all the packaging of hydrat-ed hydrat-ed lime and gypsum plaster. " The puncturing of bags, during shipment, is still a problem of the industry, however. Little co-operation from the railroads seems to be available in obtaining clean freight cars. The shipper must clean the car himself, remove nails and lay heavy paper. In fact, much shipment ship-ment by bag that formerly went by rail is now being sent by the smaller, small-er, but more co-operative, trucking Industry. By DR. WALDO II. DUBBERSTEIN The Oriental InstUute, University of Chicago Chicago. Assuredly the ancient Babylonians deserve the title of "Fathers of Science." Sci-ence." Through 3,000 years of documented doc-umented history we can trace their slow steps toward modern mod-ern science. We today have no reason to feel smugly superior su-perior in our advanced knowledge. knowl-edge. The really hard steps in progress are the first ones.-Those ones.-Those were taken for us thousands thou-sands of years ago. Four thousand years ago, Babylonian Babylo-nian surgeons set broken bones, made major and minor body Incisions, Inci-sions, and even attempted eye operations. op-erations. A pictorial representation shows the physician with his Inevitable Inev-itable case and bandages. Sicknesses were known by specific names, and symptoms were recorded. record-ed. Magical and religious elements of Babylonian medicine are easily over emphasized, while honest medical med-ical prescriptions are overlooked. There is a reasonable purpose in Babylonian magic. Once gods and demons had been accepted, then charms and Incantations for their control were also necessary. Had magic been omitted, the patient would certainly have lacked confidence confi-dence In his physician. It was part of his professional "bedside" technique. tech-nique. But scores of simple medical medi-cal prescriptions have no magic in them. Some even have real medicinal medici-nal value. Mathematics and Astronqmy. Mathematics was obviously practical prac-tical in a complicated business development de-velopment such as Babylonia experienced expe-rienced almost 5,000 years 8go. Ancient An-cient textbooks offer simple and complex problems. In the oldest texts are found addition, addi-tion, subtraction, division, multiplication, multipli-cation, and fractional numbers. Square and cube root tables, as well as multiplication tables, were also compiled. Even the theorems commonly com-monly ascribed to the Greek Pythagoras Pyth-agoras and Thales, who lived In the Sixth century B. C, seem to have been known, empirically at least, In Babylonia 4,000 years ago. Astronomy began its climb toward to-ward a respectable science as an assistant to that pseudo-science, astrology. as-trology. Vet by 2000 B. C. Babylonian Babylo-nian astronomy had assumed much of its later form as a practical science. sci-ence. The necessary adjustment between be-tween the lunar and the solar year was made by Inserting extra months,. All this demanded specific astronomical Information. The path of the sun through the heavens had been charted through the 12 constellations, con-stellations, whose names still survive sur-vive In our rodiac. At least 71 stars were carefully studied and named. They Knew Some Chemistry, Too. Chemistry as a science developed out of practical needs and practical experiences. Metal smelting was , practiced before written history, more than 5,000 years ago, and it was through experimentation with fire that early man learned much about the properties of many minerals. min-erals. Detailed formulas for making various va-rious kinds of glass are preserved. A recipe for lead glaze colored with copper Is dated 3,500 years ago. It was their practical compilation compila-tion of observed phenomena, as well as their discovery of general truths, that made the Babylonians pioneering pioneer-ing scientists. Shortest of Radio Waves Being Used at Ann Arbor Ann Arbor. The shortest continuous radio waves ever produced are being used in experiments at the University Univer-sity of Michigan here. They are only 6.4 millimeters (about one-quarter inch) in wavelength, report Drs. C. E. Cleeton and N. H. Williams Wil-liams of the department of physics. So tiny is the tube used to generate gen-erate the waves that it is assembled assem-bled under a magnifying glass and its outside dimension is less than one quarter of an inch, state the scientists in their report to the Physical Review. Radio radiation generated by the equipment is being used for studies of the molecular structure of gases Including water vapor. The minute mi-nute rays have many of the properties proper-ties of light and travel in straight lines when focused by a concave mirror. Pieces of black paper, hard rubber and wood are transparent trans-parent to the rays. Not for Communication Use. The possibility of using them" for communication purposes is remote since they are rapidly absorbed by the water vapor in the atmosphere. It Is by a study of this absorption, in fact, that scientists are learning new facta about the molecular makeup of water vapor. The 6.4-millimeters radio waves represent about the limit of radiation radia-tion which can be produced from vacuum tube sources. To get shorter short-er waves the dimensions of the radio ra-dio tube must be decreased and ultimately ul-timately becomes a mechanical impossibility. im-possibility. For waves shorter than six millimeters mil-limeters it is necessary to use either the radiation from a quartz mercury mer-cury arc lamp or spark sources in air. The wavelength region from one-tenth millimeter to six millimeter milli-meter waves is about the last untapped un-tapped "no man's land" of infrared infra-red research, for only a few isolated iso-lated measurements have as yet been made in this region. Briton Sees Great Advance in Battle to Defeat Cancer New York. A "great advance ad-vance in the struggle against cancer" was reported by Dr. W. Cramer, of the Imperial Cancer Research fund, London, Lon-don, to the American Journal of Cancer here. This is the fact that the increase in cancer during the last 20 years, in England at least, is almost all in the age groups over 65 years. This Is true for cancer of the organs or-gans most frequently attacked by cancer, such as the tongue, esophagus, esopha-gus, stomach, intestines, liver and pancreas in men, and the uterus in women. The only exception is in the case of breast cancer in women. Here there is a significant increase even in the earlier age groups. "To the average person and his relatives," Dr. Cramer points out in reporting this encouraging advance ad-vance in, the fight against cancer, "the question of importance is net whether he dies from cancer or some other disease, but at what age he dies from any disease whatever." what-ever." The increase in cancer mortality is not so frightening when it is realized re-alized that cancer is not killing any more people before they have approached ap-proached the Biblical span of life than it did 20 years or more ago. |