Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Industrial Chemistry, Patronage, Discovery

    Notes that the late 'Alfred Nobel Nobel, Alfred Bernhard (1833–96) DSB
Close   View the register entry >>, the Swede, whose name is familiar wherever dynamite is used as the Thor Hammer of Modern Industry' has bequeathed some £2,000,000 'for the purpose of encouraging scientific study, medical discovery, and the promotion of international peace'. The interest annually accruing from this sum (around £60,000) will be split into 'five portions, to be awarded in prizes for the most important discoveries' in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine, as well as for the promotion of peace, and will, in Nobel's opinion, be 'the very best mode of stimulating the intellect and energy of mankind in regions where the ordinary incentives fail'. (2)

Genre:

Biography, Serial

Subjects:

Photography, Analogy, Politics

    In arguing for the superiority of constitutional monarchy over republicanism, claims that 'when we have to do with many millions, scattered over many continents, it is impossible to make any impression on the general mind by the fleeting phantoms of evanescent Ministries. To borrow an illustration from photography, their exposure is not long enough. The plate is not sensitive enough for rapid photography. But the immobility, the massive grandeur, and the fierce light that beats around the Throne, all facilitate the production of a clear, well-defined image on the mind of our kin beyond the sea' (30).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Sex, Hygiene, Public Health, Morality, Imperialism

Institutions mentioned:

Army Army
Close   View the register entry >>

    Observes that 'the military medico-police intend to make another attempt to establish prostitution as a branch of the Imperial service in India', and warns George F Hamilton Hamilton, Lord George Francis (1845–1927) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>, the Secretary of State for India, that the 'Record year of the Queen must not be defiled by any of this purulent matter' (112).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Kingsley 1897, Kingsley, Mary Henrietta 1897. Travels in West Africa: Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons, London: Macmillan & Co.
Close   View the register entry >> Clodd 1897 Clodd, Edward 1897. Pioneers of Evolution From Thales to Huxley: With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement, London: Grant Richards
Close   View the register entry >>

Subjects:

Exploration, Travel, Gender, Physical Geography, Imperialism, Anthropology, Evolution, Darwinism, Philosophy, History of Science

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Nansen 1897, Nansen, Fridtjof 1897. Farthest North: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893–96 and of a Fifteen Months' Sleigh Journey by Dr. Nansen and Lieut. Johansen, 2 vols, Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co.
Close   View the register entry >> Nansen 1890, Nansen, Fridtjof 1890. The First Crossing of Greenland, trans. from the Norwegian by Hubert Majendie Gepp, London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
Close   View the register entry >> Bain 1897 Bain, James Arthur 1897. Life of Fridtjof Nansen: Scientist and Explorer, Including an Account of the 1893–1896 Expedition, London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.
Close   View the register entry >>

Relevant illustrations:

photo. [2]; map [2]

Subjects:

Publishing, Reading, Exploration, Endeavour, Physical Geography, Oceanography, Heroism, Hypothesis, Steamships, Discovery

People mentioned:

Joseph Wiggins, Wiggins, Joseph (1832–1905) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> Otto N Sverdrup, Sverdrup, Otto Neumann (1854–1930) RLIN
Close   View the register entry >> Hjalmar Johansen Johansen, Hjalmar (1867–1913) RLIN
Close   View the register entry >>

    Comments on the 'Nansen boom' of the last month, and notes that it is 'many years since any publisher has reaped as golden a harvest as Messrs. Constable Archibald Constable and Co., firm
Close   View the register entry >>' have with Fridtjof Nansen's Nansen, Fridtjof (1861–1930) DSB
Close   View the register entry >> latest book, for which, rumour has it, the publishers paid him £10,000 (276). Although Nansen's Arctic explorations have succeeded in establishing a fact 'possessing immense scientific importance [...] viz., the existence of a deep western current flowing from the north of Siberia to the East of Greenland', it is 'not one that appeals to the popular imagination'. Rather, what has stirred interest beyond that of the 'Arctic expert' in Nansen's account of his voyage is its 'record of the combat of Man with Nature in her sternest moods [...] the great unchained, untamed forces of savage nature' (277). Indeed, the brilliant cricketer 'Prince Ranjitsinhji Nawanagar, Maharaja Shri Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, maharaja jam saheb of (1872–1933) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>, probably, was the most popular man last year with the masses of the people, for the same reason that Nansen is popular this year [...] they both represent men who have pitted their strength and skill against great odds and have come off triumphant' (279). Recounts how Nansen determined to test a hypothesis developed in the 1880s that items from a ship wrecked in northern Siberia had 'drifted on a floe across the polar sea' and reached the south-west coast of Greenland, and, by building a steam-ship 'strong enough to be wedged into the ice that drifted westward', was able to demonstrate that in the current lay 'the route to the North Pole ready to hand' (282). As well as verifying the existence of 'a steady current that can be relied upon for transport purposes', Nansen's expedition has also 'finally exploded one of the favourite delusions of Arctic authorities' by proving that, rather than being 'shallow and extremely cold throughout', the Arctic Ocean in fact 'contains the respectable depth of two thousand odd fathoms, and [...] is much warmer than any one had any idea of' (285).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Photography, Technology, Statistics, Disease, Sex, Hygiene, Public Health, Morality, Imperialism, Medical Practitioners, Gender

    Reports the eagerly anticipated 'prize fight for the Championship of the ring' which was fought in Nevada between Robert Fitzsimmons Fitzsimmons, Robert (1863–1917) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> and James J Corbett Corbett, James John (1866–1933) WBI
Close   View the register entry >>. The fight 'lasted nearly an hour, and as every phase of it was photographed for reproduction on the kinetoscope, we may expect to see the latest resources of photographic science employed in familiarising every man and boy in the English-speaking world with every detail of the fourteen rounds' (314). Also disputes the statistical claims made concerning the prevalence of syphilis in the British Army Army
Close   View the register entry >> in India ('522 per 1,000'), and warns again that the 'advocates for licensing prostitution have been ill-advised in selecting this year for raising the question' (see Anon, 'The Progress of the World', Review of Reviews, 15 (1897), 103–12). Accepts, however, that no one can have 'any objection whatever to doing everything that can be properly done to lessen the ravages of any disease, no matter what its origin', and insists that 'no one would object [...] if the unfortunate female camp-followers of British regiments could be treated by female medical officers whenever they fall ill'. Providing 'facilities for healing the sick', though, is very different to 'creating an institution for recognising and virtually establishing the vice which is the direct cause of the disease in question'. (315)

Genre:

Biography, Serial

Subjects:

Rationalism, Education, Societies, Patronage, Medical Practitioners, Gender, Heterodoxy, Spiritualism, Race, Railways, Accidents

    Asserts that 'the Prince-Consort Albert [Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha], prince consort, consort of Queen Victoria (1819–61) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> was a German rationalist, devout, no doubt, but with absolutely no room in his brain for the notions to which Anglican clerics attach supreme importance'. Indeed, the 'Prince-Consort, and therefore the Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India (1819–1901) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>, was prepared to welcome the rationalist reformation' of the early nineteenth century, and in private letters he 'praises also Combe's Combe, George (1788–1858) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> excellent pamphlet on education Combe, George 1835. Lectures on Popular Education: Delivered to the Edinburgh Philosophical Association in April and November 1833, Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart
Close   View the register entry >>, in which he defines the real mission of science and education'. (326) Notes that while the Queen gives her patronage to associations such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
Close   View the register entry >> which 'accord with the unanimous sentiment of all her subjects', she is 'by her position precluded' from 'commanding in person those adventurous associations of pioneers' with whom she might otherwise sympathise (332). On 'the cause of medical women', for instance, 'there can be little doubt as to the side on which the Queen must naturally stand, if only from her keen sympathy with the women of India' (331). Also insists that the widowed monarch 'not only believes but knows the truth of the doctrine of Spirit return', although no one would wish her to 'scandalise the prejudices of her subjects by becoming, let us say, a patron of the Spiritualist Alliance London Spiritualist Alliance
Close   View the register entry >>' (331–32).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Richardson 1897 Richardson, Benjamin Ward 1897. Vita Medica: Chapters of Medical Life and Work, London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
Close   View the register entry >>

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Surgery, Sanitation, Temperance

Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Relevant illustrations:

map

Subjects:

Photography, Technology, Electricity, Accidents, Engineering, Government

    Reflects on the recent 'holocaust of Paris [...] one of the most terrible fire tragedies of modern times', in which over 140 people, 'mostly fashionable ladies' attending a charitable bazaar, were killed (526–27). The terrible fire began when the 'electric current that was used for the purpose of working a Kinematograph set fire to some combustibles in its immediate neighbourhood' (527). Also reports the opening of 'the Blackwall Tunnel Blackwall Tunnel
Close   View the register entry >>, the one great engineering work that the County Council London County Council
Close   View the register entry >> has executed'. The 'tunnel has been five years in the making', and 'Eight hundred men have been employed in the work, the cost of which is £871,000'. (528)

Genre:

Biography, Serial

Relevant illustrations:

photo. [2]

Subjects:

Evolution, Prehistory, Geology, Biology, Archaeology, Materialism, Matter Theory, Microbiology, Astronomy, Spectroscopy, Photography, Mapping, Light, Electromagnetism, Ether, Physics, Engineers, Steam-power, Electricity, Telegraphy

    Begins a review of the numerous achievements of Queen Victoria's Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India (1819–1901) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> sixty-year reign, by remarking upon the 'marvellous shifting of the perspective' of time and space held by 'our grandfathers'. The Victorians have 'awakened to a sense of the antiquity of our lineage', and 'are beginning to discern somewhat of the massy foundations upon which long æons since was based the evolutionary process'. While the 'Elizabethan age owed much of its stimulus and inspiration to the discovery of another world across the Atlantic', these discoveries cannot be 'compared with the rapid unfolding of the marvellous records of the eternity of past time with which we have been familiarised by the researches of the biologist, the reading of the book on geology, and the patient digging of the archæologist'. (535) Although the Queen's record reign is often called 'a Materialist age, which has chained the soul of man to inert matter', in fact 'science proclaims that there is no such thing as inert matter, that every atom is alive, and that our mortal bodies are vast composite conglomerations of living organisms' (535–36). By advances in fields such as microbiology ('the microbe was practically unknown when the Queen came to the throne'), astronomy, and spectroscopy, 'science has revealed to us a new Heaven and a new Earth' which are 'infinitely marvellous', and 'Behind each discovery that advances our knowledge, the infinite unknown indefinitely recedes'. However, 'far more stupendous are the discoveries that have been made not in the infinitely distant abysses of space, but in the infinitesimally small molecules which are all around. Science has sent its Röntgen Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad (1845–1923) DSB
Close   View the register entry >> ray through the darkened veil, and revealed the Invisible, and summoned all men to enjoy it as their inheritance'. (536) Also pronounces the Queen's reign the 'Age of the Engineer', and insists that the 'Master-men of the Reign have been, not the politicians and statesmen, the soldiers and sailors, the poets and artists—they have been the engineers, the shipbuilders, the electricians, the men who have yoked the thunderbolts of Jupiter to the hammer of Vulcan, and have usurped the authority of Neptune over the waves at the same time they have outstripped the herald Mercury by the speed of their despatches. The steam-engine, the steamship, and the electric wire have, in sixty years, effected a more revolutionary change in the conception of distance than all the millenniums that have passed since the Stone Age' (537).

Genre:

Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Charles H Cooley Cooley, Charles Horton (1864–1929) RLIN
Close   View the register entry >> , Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1890–1900+) RLIN
Close   View the register entry >>

Subjects:

Genius, Heredity

People mentioned:

Francis Galton Galton, Sir Francis (1822–1911) DSB ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

[Stead, ed.] 1897a [Stead, William Thomas], ed. 1897a. Notables of Britain: An Album of Portraits and Autographs of the Most Eminent Subjects of Her Majesty in the 60th Year of Her Reign, London: Review of Reviews Office
Close   View the register entry >>

Subjects:

Secularism, Religion

    Maintains that 'the Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India (1819–1901) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> is more Victorian than Mr. Gladstone Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–98) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>', for the 'Queen, with her broad latitudinarianism, her supreme indifference to forms and ceremonies, and her steady devotion to the weighty matters of righteousness rather than to the tithe of mint, anise and cummin, represents far more faithfully the spirit of the times than any of her ecclesiastically minded subjects. The Victorian age may have witnessed the labours of Newman Newman, John Henry (1801–90) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> and Pusey Pusey, Edward Bouverie (1800–82) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> and Liddon Liddon, Henry Parry (1829–90) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >>, but it was more conspicuously the age of Darwin Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–82) DSB
Close   View the register entry >>, of Spencer Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903) DSB
Close   View the register entry >>, and of Mill Mill, John Stuart (1806–73) DSB
Close   View the register entry >>' (587).

Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Conway 1897 Conway, William Martin 1897. The First Crossing of Spitsbergen: Being an Account of an Inland Journey of Exploration and Survey, with Descriptions of Several Mountain Ascents, of Boat Expeditions in Ice Fjord, of a Voyage to North-East-land, the Seven Islands, Down Hinloopen Strait, Nearly to Wiches Land, and into Most of the Fjords of Spitsbergen, and of an Almost Complete Circumnavigation of the Main Island, London: J. M. Dent & Co.; New York: C. Scribner's Sons
Close   View the register entry >>

Subjects:

Exploration, Mapping, Physical Geography, Amateurism

    Observes that William M Conway Conway, William Martin, 1st Baron Conway of Allington (1856–1937) ODNB
Close   View the register entry >> 'does not look down with scorn upon the tourist; on the contrary, he thinks the tourist is an invaluable ally of the scientific investigator'. If only 'summer travellers could be induced to visit' Spitsbergen, then, as has happened with the Alps, 'it might be possible to get a portion of the Arctic land minutely studied and exactly surveyed'. (600)