Part 54

Many have expressed their surprise at the unanimous expressions of Darwin’s friends concerning the geniality of his disposition, his gentleness, cheerfulness; his genuine humility and simplicity of character.

A third type of character is here presented, and that which corresponds most correctly with the true ideal of a modern philosopher, also represented by that great master of experimental science, Faraday. In both of these there was the full measure of Murchison’s amiability, but without the courtly polish of the ex-soldier. Philosophic meditation and close application to original research may, and often does, induce a certain degree of shyness due to a consciousness of the social disqualification which arises from that inability to fulfil all the demands for small attentions which constitute conventional politeness; a disability due to habits of consecutive thought and mental abstraction.

A sensitive and amiable man would suffer much pain on finding that he had neglected to supply the small wants of the lady sitting next to him at a dinner party, and would withdraw himself from the risk of repeating such unwitting rudeness. This holding back from ordinary society, though really due to a conscientious sense of social duty and tender regard for the feelings of others, is too often referred to a churlish unsociality or arrogant assumption of superiority.

If Newton really did mistake the lady’s finger for a tobacco-stopper, depend upon it the pain he suffered was far more acute than that which he inflicted, and was suffered over and over again whenever the incident was recollected.

ATMOSPHERE versus ETHER.

One of the most remarkable meteors of which we have a reliable record appeared on February 6, 1818. Several accounts of it were published, the fullest being that in The Gentleman’s Magazine of the time. (I may here add, parenthetically, that one reason why I have especial pleasure in writing these notes is that they contribute something towards the restoration of the ancient status of this magazine, which was at one time the only English serial that ventured upon any notable degree of exposition of popular science.)

Upon the data supplied by this account, Mr. Joule has calculated the height of the meteor to have been 61 miles above the surface of the earth, and he states that “this meteor is one of the few that have been seen in the daytime, and is also interesting as having been one of the first whose observation afforded materials for the estimation of its altitude.” It was seen in the neighborhood of Cambridge at 2 P.M., also at Swaffham in Norfolk, and at Middleton Cheney near Banbury. The distance between this and Cambridge is sufficient to afford a measurement of its height, provided its position above the horizon at both places was determined with tolerable accuracy.

According to the orthodox text-books, the atmosphere of this earth terminates at a height of about 45 or 50 miles, or, if not absolutely ended there, it ceases to be of appreciable density anywhere above this elevation.

But here we have a fact which flatly contradicts the calculation. At 61 miles above the earth’s surface there must be atmospheric matter of sufficient density to offer to the passage of this meteor through it an amount of resistance which produced an intense white heat, visible by its luminosity in broad daylight.

In the above-quoted paper, read by Mr. Joule before the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on December 1, 1863, he refers to subsequent observations and estimates 116 miles as “the elevation at which meteors in general are first observed”—i.e., where our atmosphere is sufficiently dense to generate a white-heat by the resistance it offers to the rapidly flying meteor.

It is curious to observe how, in dealing with actual physical facts, a mathematician of the solid practical character of Joule becomes compelled to practically throw overboard the orthodox theory of limited atmospheric extension. Here, in making his calculations of the resistance of atmospheric matter at this elevation, he bases them on the assumption of a decrease of density at the rate of “one quarter for every seven miles,” and indicates no limit at which this rate shall vary. Very simple arithmetic is sufficient to show that this leads us to the unlimited atmospheric extension, for which I have contended we may go on for ever taking off a quarter at every seven miles, and there will still remain the three quarters of the quantity upon which we last operated, or, more practically stated, we shall thus go on seven after seven until we reach the boundaries of the atmospheric grasp of the gravitation of some other sphere.

Surely the time has arrived for the full reconsideration of this fundamental question of whether the universe is filled with atmospheric matter or is the vacuum of the molecular mathematicians plus the imaginary “ether,” which has been invented by its mathematical creators only to extricate them from the absurd dilemma into which they are plunged when they attempt to explain the transmission of light and heat by undulations traveling through space containing nothing to undulate.

They have filled it with immaterial matter evolved entirely from their own consciousness, which they have gratuitously endowed with whatever properties are required for the fitting of their theories—properties that are self-contradictory and without any counterpart in anything seen or known outside of the fertile imagination of these reckless theorists.

We know of nothing that can penetrate every form of matter without adding either to its weight or its bulk; we know of nothing that can communicate motion to ponderable matter without itself being ponderable—i.e., having the primary property of matter, viz., mass, or weight, and consequent vis viva when moving; we know of nothing that can set bodies in motion without proportionally resisting the motion of bodies through it; and if the waving of the ether is (as Tyndall describes it) “as real and as truly mechanical as the breaking of sea-waves upon the shore,” the material of the breakers must be like the “jelly” to which he compares it, and have some viscosity, or resistance to penetration, or pushing aside.

We have not a shadow of direct evidence of the existence of the “interatomic” spaces occupied by the other, and in the midst of which the atoms are made to theoretically swing, nor even of the existence of the atoms themselves.

The “ether” of to-day, with its imaginary penetration and its material action without material properties, has merely taken the place of the equally imaginary phlogiston, caloric, electric, and magnetic fluids, the “imponderables” of the past. I have little doubt that ere long the modern modification of these physical superstitions will share their fate, and we shall all adopt the simple conception that heat, light, end electricity are, like sound, merely transmissible states or affections of matter itself regarded bodily, as it is seen and felt to exist.

This may possibly throw a good many mathematicians out of work—or into more useful work; but, however that may be, it will certainly aid the general diffusion of science as the intellectual inheritance of every human being. At present the explanations of the simple phenomena of light and heat are incomparably more difficult to understand and to account for than the facts which they attempt to elucidate.

A NEGLECTED DISINFECTANT.

When the household of our grandmothers was threatened with infection, the common practice was to sprinkle brimstone on a hot shovel or on hot coals on a shovel, and carry the burning result through the house. But now this simple method of disinfecting has gone out of fashion without any good and sufficient reason. The principal reason is neither good nor sufficient, viz., that nobody can patent it and sell it in shilling and half-crown bottles.

On September 18th last, M. d’Abbadie read a paper at the Academy of Sciences on “Marsh Fevers,” and stated that in the dangerous regions of African river mouths immunity from such-fevers is often secured by sulphur fumigations on the naked body. Also that the Sicilian workers in low ground sulphur mines suffer much less than the rest of the surrounding population from intermittent fevers. M. Fouqué has shown that Zephyria (on the volcanic island of Milo or Melos, the most westerly of the Cyclades), which had a population of 40,000 when it was the centre of sulphur-mining operations, became nearly depopulated by marsh fever when the sulphur-mining was moved farther east, and the emanations prevented by a mountain from reaching the town. Other similar cases were stated.

It is well understood by chemists that bleaching agents are usually good disinfectants; that which can so disturb an organic compound as to destroy its color, is capable of either arresting or completing the decompositions that produce vile odors and nourish the organic germs or ferments which usual accompany, or, as some affirm, cause them. Sulphurous acid is, next to hypochlorous acid, one of the most effective bleaching agents within easy reach.

I should add that sulphurous acid is the gas that is directly formed by burning sulphur. By taking up another dose of oxygen it becomes sulphuric acid, which, combined with water, is oil of vitriol. The bleaching and disinfecting action of the sulphurous acid is connected with its activity in appropriating the oxygen which is loosely held or being given off by organic matter. Chlorine and hypochlorous acid (which is still more effective than chlorine itself) act in the opposite way, so do the permanganates, such as Condy’s fluid, etc. They supply oxygen in the presence of water. It is curious that opposite actions should produce like results. A disquisition on this and its suggestions would carry me beyond the limits of a note.

ANOTHER DISINFECTANT.

The above-named disinfectants are objectionable on account of their own odors and their corrosive action. Both sulphurous acid and hypochlorous acid (the active principle of the so-called “chloride of lime”) have a disagreeable habit of rusting iron and suggesting antique green bronzes by their action on brass ornaments. Under serious conditions this should be endured, but in many cases where the danger is not already developed, the desired end may be attained without these annoyances.

Sulphate of copper, which is not patented or “brought out” by a limited company, may be bought at its fair retail value of 6d. or less per lb. (the oil-shop name for it is “blue vitriol”), in crystals, readily soluble in water.

I have lately used it in the case of a trouble to which English households are too commonly liable, and one that has in many cases done serious mischief. The stoppage of a soil-pipe caused the overflow of a closet, and a consequent saturation of floor boards, that in time would probably have developed danger by nourishing and developing those germs of bacteria, bacilli, etc., which abound in the air, and are ready to increase and multiply wherever their unsavory food abounds.

By simply mopping the floor with a solution of these green crystals, and allowing it to soak well into the pores of the wood, they cease to become a habitat for such microscopic abominations. The copper-salt poisons the poisoners.

Dr. Burg goes so far as to recommend that building materials, articles of furniture, and clothing, etc., should be injected with sulphate of copper, in order to avert infection, and in support of this refers to the immunity of workers in copper from cholera, typhoid fever, and infectious diseases generally.