MORAL AND POLITICAL

"Human interest" stories in scientific guise are commonplaces of journalism. But more than commonplace was a late dispatch from Paris, containing an ironic bit of information. Professor Charles Valliant was recently declared the winner of a prize of 15,000 francs, awarded by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for heroism in the cause of science. He was chosen because, after repeated operations, he has sacrificed both his arms in experimenting with the X-ray. But the Academy has now been obliged to withdraw its award, because Professor Vailliant is physically unable to sign for the money.

The X-ray, remarkable though its effects have been in modern science, has made martyrs of many of its students. The whole history of progress is marked by similar sacrifices, the acts of heroes most of whom have suffered in obscurity and silence, and who have usually been neglected in the records of heroism. The story of the voluntary victims to malaria, who allowed the disease to run its course with them so that a serum could be found and the tropics made safe for white men, was one of the first to become widely known. But there have been many like it--surgeons who have experimented on their own bodies, chemists who have labored fearlessly under imminent risks from fumes or explosives, finally these numerous workers with the X-ray, who have allowed their flesh to be burned away rather than abandon progress.

It is the task of such honor societies as this Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and especially our own Carnegie Foundation, to try to find some reward for these services, or at least to give them their due honor. But if the dispatch is to be credited, there is a sharp difference between the French society and the American. Where one was held back by the flimsiest red tape from giving an earned award, the other has recently gone to the opposite extreme, as the same news-item relates. Another X-ray scholar was Dr. Adolph Leray, who died a slow death in the same cause. The Carnegie Foundation has awarded 40,000 francs for his sacrifice, and has paid the award to his widow.