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A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science 1869-1953

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Those of us who love pouring through ancient journals- especially British journals, with their exceedingly polite and ultimately trivial harsplitting over pointless detail have a treasure in this book. The editor has taken and annotated gems from nearly 100 years of publication of this eminant journal, including some very amusing and ultimately pointless debates between a number of eminant Victorians. There are some useful inquiries as well; Francis Galton, having his portrait painted for the umpteenth time, begins a study of the number of brushstrokes used my the artist, and eventually concludes that the number of strokes in a given portrait seems to be consistent between artists and independant of style. Various writers suggest mneumonics for memorizing the significant digits of pi- in various langauges, and various meters.

On the more serious side, there is much discussion of the treatment of war wounds at the time of the Great War, quite a lot of debate about Prof! . Einstein, and some of Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman's first published writings in England- regarding the physics of musical instruments.

If this sort of thing interests you (and it absolutely captivates me) you should rush to buy this book lest as soon as possible lest it fall out of print.

I shall quote a few excerpts from my three favourite selections in this amusing anthology.

----"The Influence of a Tuning-Fork on the Garden Spider"

"Last autumn, while watching some spiders spinning their beautiful geometrical webs, it occurred to me to try what effect a tuning-fork would have upon them. On sounding an A fork and lightly touching with it any leaf or other support of the web or any portion of the web itself I found that the spider, if at the centre of the web, rapidly slews round so as to face the direction of the fork, feeling with its fore feet along which radial thread the vibration travels. Having become satisfied on this point, it next darts along that thread till it reaches either the fork itself or a junction of two or more threads the right one of which it instantly determines as before. If the fork is not removed when the spider has arrived it seems to have the same charm as any fly for the spider seizes it, embraces it, and runs about on the legs of the fork as often as it is made to sound never seeming to learn by experience that other things may buzz besides its natural food.

If the spider is not at the centre of the web at the time that the fork is applied, it cannot tell which way to go until it has been to the centre to ascertain which radial thread is vibrating ... The spider never leaves the centre of the web without a thread along which to travel back. If after enticing a spider out we cut this thread with a pair of scissors the spider seems to be unable to get back without doing considerable damage to the web generally, gumming together the sticky parallel threads in groups of three and four.

By means of a tuning-fork a spider may be made to eat what it would otherwise avoid. I took a fly that had been drowned in paraffin and put it into a spider's web and then attracted the spider by touching the fly with a fork. When the spider had come to the conclusion that it was not suitable food and was leaving it, I touched the fly again. This had the same effect as before, and as often as the spider began to leave the fly I again touched it and by this means compelled the spider to eat a large portion of the fly.

The supposed fondness of spiders for music must surely have some connection with these observations." (p. 63)

----"Suicide of a Scorpion"

"One morning a servant brought to me a very large specimen of this scorpion ['the common Black Scorpion of Southern India'], which, having stayed out too long in its nocturnal rambles, had apparently got bewildered at daybreak, and been unable to find its way home. To keep it safe, the creature was at once put into a glazed entomological case. Having few leisure moments in the course of forenoon, I thought I would see how prisoner was getting on, and to have a better view of it the case was placed in a window, in the rays of a hot sun. The light and heat seemed to irritate it very much, and this recalled to my mind a story I had read somewhere, that a scorpion, on being surrounded with fire, had committed suicide. I hesitated about subjecting my pet to such terrible ordeal, but taking a common botanical lens, I focused the rays of the sun its back. The moment this was done it began to run hurriedly about the case, hissing and spitting in a very fierce way. This experiment was repeated some four or five times with like results, but on trying it once again, the scorpion turned up its tail and plunged the sting, quick as lightning, into its own back. The infliction of the wound was followed by a sudden escape of fluid, and a friend standing by me called out, 'See ,it has stung itself; it is dead;' and sure enough in less than half a minute life was quite extinct. I have written this brief notice show (1) That animals may commit suicide; (2) That the poison of certain animals may be destructive to themselves." (p. 41)

----"A New Optical Illusion ... requiring the aid of no optical instrument"

"A lead pencil is held point up an inch or two in front of a wire window screen, with a sky background. If the eyes are converged upon the pencil point, the wire gauze becomes somewhat blurred, and of course doubled. Inasmuch, however, as the gauze has a regularly recurring pattern, the two images can be united, and with a little effort the eyes can be accommodated for distinct vision of the combined images of the mesh. To accommodate for a greater distance than the point upon which the eyes are converged requires practice, but the trick is very much easier in this case than in the case of viewing stereoscopic pictures without a stereoscope.

As soon as accommodation is secured, the mesh becomes perfectly sharp and appears to lie nearly in the plane of the pencil point, which still appears single and perfectly sharp. If now the pencil is moved away from the eyes which are to be kept fixed on the screen, it passes through the mesh and becomes doubled, the distance between the images increasing until the point brings up against the screen. If now the pencil be removed it will be found that the sharp images of the combined images of the gauze persists, even though the eyes be moved nearer to, or farther away from, the screen. Bring the eyes up to within six or eight inches of the plane in which the mesh appears to lie and attempt to touch it with the finger. It is not there: the finger falls upon empty space, the screen being in reality a couple of inches further off. This is by all means the most startling illusion that I have ever seen, for we apparently see something occupying a perfectly definite position in space before our eyes, and yet if we attempt to put our finger on it we find that there is nothing there." (p. 107)