100 YEARS AGO

It is reported in some of the daily papers that Dr. Otto Schmidt, of Cologne, has succeeded in isolating and cultivating a parasite from cancer and in preparing an antiserum for the disease. So many positive statements of the isolation of a cancer-parasite have been made during the last few years, and have subsequently proved to be incorrect, and so many capable men have been investigating cancer without result, that reports of this kind cannot be accepted without further proof. The publicity given to matters of this kind is much to be deprecated; in the majority of instances false hopes are raised which must end in disappointment for many sufferers.

From Nature 12 November 1903.

50 YEARS AGO

It was a famous moment in the history of science when, during the discussion of Darwin's theory of evolution at the British Association meeting at Oxford in 1860, Bishop Wilberforce turned to T. H. Huxley and asked him whether he claimed descent from an ape on his father's or his mother's side. The actual words of Huxley's reply are not known... The main source of our information, his son Leonard Huxley, wrote “most unluckily, no contemporary account of his own exists of the encounter”. Such an account does, however, exist in a letter written to Dr. Dyster within a few months of the meeting, on September 9, 1860, and now preserved in the collection of Huxley Papers at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London... “When I got up I spoke pretty much to the effect — that I had listened with great attention to the Lord Bishop's speech but had been unable to discover either a new fact or a new argument in it — except indeed the question raised as to my personal predilections in the matter of ancestry... If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion — I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. Whereupon there was unextinguishable laughter among the people, and they listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest attention.”

From Nature 14 November 1953.