Foreign Soil Research Articles

Henry Ward Beecher and the english press of 1863∗

HISTORIES of oratory place alongside Demosthenes' triumph over Aeschines in ancient Greece the triumph of Henry Ward Beecher over hostile newspapers and unsympathetic ruling classes in England in 1863. How interesting it would be to study the newspaper editorials on The Oration, on the Crown if there were such. Fortunately, we do have the newspaper editorials on Beecher's addresses to the mass' meetings in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. To date these editorials have not been explored to discover their attitude toward Beecher and his cause. In some respects Beecher's conquest calls forth more admiration from the student of oratory than the ancient classic. For one thing Beecher was on foreign soil, away from all those who might be sympathetic to him because of past associations. And for another, Beecher had a press that was, with few exceptions, hostile to the North, and, finally, Beecher was not defending himself but his country. The attitude of most of the newspapers of oligarchic England in 1863 towards Henry Ward Beecher and his cause will be made clear if the lines of current thought in 1863 are reviewed. The primary cause of the war, as we know, was slavery; the secondary cause was Union. Lincoln in prosecuting the war thought it best to emphasize the political cause rather than the moral. In America, this emphasis fooled no one, but in England the ruling classes, which were more familiar with European than with American policies, believed that the cause of the war was political. On the other hand the masses of British people who had relations in America were informed through letters of the true situation. And there were men like John Bright, Richard Cobden, Forster, Goldwin Smith, Leslie Stephen, and the Duke of Argyll, who understood the conflict, who helped the unenfranchised masses to proclaim their sympathy with freedom across the Atlantic. But to men like Palmerston, Gladstone, and Russell the political cause was not sufficient to coerce the South-

Tumor Immunity in the Chick Embryo

The biological study of transplantable tumors in animals has developed and established certain principles, some of which have later been found to have interesting variations; thus, it has been shown that a tumor from one species will not grow progressively in another species of animal. But there are exceptions to this general rule in the fact that the young of one species are susceptible, for a certain period during their development and growth, to tumors from another species. This has been shown to be true when rat and mouse tumors are inoculated into the chick embryo (Murphy (1), Stevenson (2)), and also when mouse tumors are inoculated into new-born rats (Bullock (3)). In a later communication Murphy reported that this period of susceptibility could be terminated in the chick embryo, by the introduction of a graft of adult chicken spleen. On this observation and the work of Da Fano (7) he based his ingenious hypothesis regarding the function of the lymphocyte in immunity to transplanted tumors. This hypothesis was weakened, however, by Bullock9s (3) discovery that new-born rats, ordinarily susceptible to inoculation with a mouse tumor, did not become refractory even when adult rat spleen and tumor were simultaneously inoculated. This is in exact contradiction to the findings of Murphy in the chick embryo; in each case the attempt is made to immunize against a tumor of a certain species growing upon a foreign soil, with tissues derived from this foreign soil. This interesting statement of Murphy9s, according to which the chick embryo presents an exception to the findings in another species of animal that has a similar brief period of susceptibility, seemed to indicate that a further investigation of the immune reaction of the chick embryo to tumors of the rat and mouse was necessary. With this in view, a short series of experiments was undertaken to discover whether or not tumors other than the Jensen rat sarcoma, which Murphy (4) used in his experiments, react in a similar manner.

THE VISITING NURSE DEPARTMENT

A PHASE of visiting nursing that to our settlement mind is not sufficiently emphasized in the training of the pupil nurses during their period of education is that relating to their great privilege to perform a large as well as a most modern service. 'hey have unequalled opportunity, in certain conditions of the life and social surroundings of their patients in congested quarters, to help the strugglers on a foreign soil to understand the requirements of Anglo-Saxon law and order and to bring to them a conception of American ideals that will go toward creating among the immigrants a realization of what is good in American life. No district nurse who lias intelligent perceptions and education lias failed to recognize the potentialities for good in the simple stranger or has not felt it incumbent upon herself to translate into elementary terms the laws that affect the welfare of these patients of hers. On the other hand, it has seemed a golden opportunity lost when the nurse througli failure of education on her part has been unable to point out the laws that touch the people in their daily lives and to explain the reasons for their enactment and the standard of the civilization the immigrant must face. What greater value can an intelligent nurse have who, going into the homes of the poor and having some knowledge of these laws, can explain them to the family with whom she comes in contact? She, as an educator,-for that we have long since called the district nurse,--must be also a believer in the enforcement of law, and if at times the laws seem to her unwise and to bring undue hardship in their enforcement, she can do no better service to society than to express lier opinion to those people in her community who are more familiar with the law and who through her contribution as to its working may have further light upon its reasonableness.

DISEASES AND HOSPITALS OF AFRICA.

THE HOSPITALS OF PRETORIA AND CAPE TOWN. The road from Cape Town to Vynberg, over which the tramway passes, is lined on both sides with veteran oak trees, which the Dutch imported and planted more than a century ago. They are not the tall smooth-stemmed proud oaks of our forests but low, knotty, many-branched trees, which have managed to live and to attain extreme old age, on this to them foreign soil, but would look strange and unfamiliar to their kin in their native land. On this road, 15 minutes from Rondebosch station, is the famous Groot Schuur, (Great Barn), one of the many African residences of the late Cecil Rhodes. The palatial house built in Dutch style is in the midst of a magnificent flower garden in an open place surrounded by a dense forest of indigenous and planted trees. The location is an admirable one for a restful