At Detroit

In busy-buzzing Detroit, 1,500 members of the American Chemical Society attended its 74th annual meeting.

Age of Chemistry. The president, Dr. George David Rosen-garten of Philadelphia, begged that the present period of history be called the Age of Chemistry instead of the Iron Age, Steel Age, Motor Age, Mechanical Age or any other Age. He rehearsed familiar benedictions from chemistry, predicted further benedictions, such as the total eradication of disease.

Artificial Life. In 1870, Scientist Huxley declared it would be "the height of presumption" to suppose that chemists would not some day be able to bring together the constituents of protoplasm under such conditions that they would assume vital properties. Professor Treat Baldwin Johnson of Yale cited sulphur-dwelling bacilli as an example of the sort of artificial life chemists might hope to produce first. These bacilli thrive and multiply in a solution of sulphuric acid, needing no sunlight, prime requisite of most other plants. Self-sufficient in an inorganic environment, these bacteria may have been the link between the mineral and vegetable kingdoms.

Fuel Acids. Chemist H. C. Mougy of the General Motors research staff pointed out that the U. S. oil industry could save 50 millions per annum in refining costs if motor designers could safeguard motors against fuels containing a higher percentage of sulphur than is now left in good grade gasoline. Motor designers aim to protect motors from sulphuric acid corrosion by eliminating condensation of the water vapor from burning fuel.

"Science Killed the Navies." So said Dr. Charles Edward Kenneth Mees, research director of the Eastman (Kodak) Laboratories of Rochester, N. Y. "A modern navy is a burden too heavy to be borne. . . . the advance of science will make it impossible tomorrow. One of the sanest of small nations-- Denmark--already has decided to give up the idea that it can defend itself and ... is ... therefore, reasonably safe."

War Gases. Has science invented any gas with which bombing planes could annihilate a whole community? Certainly not, said Major General Amos Alfred Fries, chief of the U. S. Army Chemical Warfare Service. Another popular fallacy: that gas wounds form the basis of later disease. Yet gas is the greatest casualty-pro-ducer in war, Soldier Fries explained, because its victims require from two to three persons each to care for them, "while statistics show that one man can dispose of two fatal casualties. . . . Wounded men are many times more a burden than the dead. Gas is the only instrument in which the power of the blow can be regulated."