The Great Events by Famous Historians

The Titanic's captain wanted to make a record on her maiden voyage. His directors wanted him to make a record. That would mean increased advertisement and increased traffic for their line. So in the face of danger, knowing there were icebergs all around him, the captain rushed his ship blindly ahead. The chance of his actually hitting an iceberg was scarce one in a hundred. So he took the chance. The probability that if he did strike an iceberg it could do irreparable damage to his stout ship, was scarce one in a hundred. So he took that chance also. He gambled with Death, as a thousand speed-driven captains had gambled before. This time it was Death's turn to win.

A gamble even more reprehensible was that of the steamship companies, who had grown so sure their ships would not sink that they no longer provided sufficient means of escape from them. Why load a vessel down with useless life-boats, which only hung the year in and year out, blocking up space? Every foot of that space was valuable. It might make room for an extra passenger, or provide an extra amusement to draw traffic. What voyager ever counted life-boats, or worked out the awful calculation, so obvious now, that there was only rescue space provided for one-third of the number of souls aboard? Was not the ship "unsinkable" after all?

The Titanic is gone. Our sorrow for her is becoming but a memory. Our ships carry lifeboats sufficient now; they are compelled to by law. And our sea captains run on safer lines; that, too, the law has made compulsory. But it will be long before man's overweening self-confidence rises from the shock which has been given to his belief in his mechanical ability. Nature is not conquered yet. Ocean has still a strength beyond ours. Ships are not unsinkable; and Death will still take his toll of bold men's lives in the future as he has done in the past. We know that cowardice costs more than courage, but it is not so tragically costly as blind foolhardiness.

OUR PROGRESSING KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE SURGERY PERPETUATES THE BODY'S ORGANS

A.D. 1912

GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT Prof. R. LEGENDRE

Several years ago a wealthy Swedish manufacturer of dynamite left, by his will, a fund for the providing of a large prize to be conferred each year upon the person who has accomplished most for the peaceful progress of mankind. This annual sum of forty thousand dollars, which is called from its donor the "Nobel prize," was, in October, 1912, conferred upon a surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel, for his remarkable work in the study of the life of the tissues and organs which exist in the human body.

Even before this public recognition of his work, Dr. Carrel had in the summer of 1912 created a furor among the savants of Paris by the announcement of what he had accomplished. Carrel, though a native-born Frenchman, is an American by education and citizenship, and the French were at first inclined to challenge the value of his work. We therefore present here a "popular" scientific account of what he had achieved, reprinted by permission from the Scientific American. Then comes the grudging approval of Professor Legendre, the noted "Preparator of Zoology," head of that section in the National Museum of Paris.

Briefly stated, the impressive step which science has here taken, is the preservation of life in the heart and other organs so that these may be taken out of the body and yet kept alive for months. With smaller animals Carrel has even accomplished the actual transferrence of organs from one individual to another. As for the simpler bodily tissues, it now seems possible to preserve these indefinitely outside the body, not only alive but in excellent health and ready to reassume their functions in another body.

GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT

THE "IMMORTALITY" OF TISSUES

A very evident disadvantage under which medical science has labored has been the impossibility of watching the chemical process set in motion by substances introduced into the body. For this reason various experimenters, from time to time, have attempted to "grow tissues" artificially, in such manner that their development, functions, and decay—under both healthy and diseased conditions—might be studied under the microscope. The only way in which this could be done would be to take a piece of living tissue from the body, and cause its cells to multiply; tissue being made up of an aggregation of cells.