1957-09-30 — Page 4

The Man Who First Recognised A Germ

HE eyes of the entire

THE

scientific world wero centred on Louis Pasteur in · 1857, when his proof of the 'erm theory of discasse brought down one of the greatest storms of contro- versy in the annals of science. But the storm hul begun to brow twenty years before, when Theodoro Schwann first watched the formation of yeast spores under the microscope, a mement in history which Pasteur himself may have thought of when he said. thought of when he said, "In the Belds of observa- tion. chance favours only the prepared minds,”

And even

gruw

now, its worse.

the the

THEODOR

storm amiable, unpretentious man

THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1957.

the field of mind,

SCHWANN... In observation favours only the prepared

D

The most sinister thing

this man has ever done...

(AND I'VE SEEN HIM DO PLENTY!)

Stuttgart.

from

SEFTON

DELMER

* STUTTGART.

personal power, He is not, as in 10 you think it right to

Britain, the learned. neutrel sentence a woma to

president of the court balancing the scales between the art valog death because nhe used

arut defending parti-s, cumming stolen ration curds to buy.

up the evidence to help, a jury food for herself and

her others in the

decide. Ministrica of disorder the family and passed on other Justice

nation's carefully as a judge to show do falsé

ΤΗΣ of all the

majority of so -heartedness,""

Cerimun German ordered supply system.

have her Federal States.

Drath was the only possible Dr Keyser told me how, after system, and under this the judge

courts

Continental stolen ration cards to friends?

sentence for

Russians this woman, the Another one of them is Besides," he adde 1,

and entred is Inquistiot, prosceulór, assessor "all the Leipzig, he had liver der ut the truth, and final biter. Travelling around

Federal Judga at the Federal Germany recently watching and listening court in Karlsruhe, 17 are direc- people had bece warned what ground

to expect;" to the final adjurations for the tors of justice in Stati indeed produced by living bodies, Germ fights germ. General Election, I had been three are presidents of what the putting this question to many Germans call judicial senaks.

of morphology: universal prin- ciple of development for the sie mentary parts of organisms, however different, and that prin- ciple is the formation of cells.”

whose studies had laid the the respiratory system of a chick mest Important generalisation in

und, in his fasugural the history groundwork for the whole embry

dissertation in 1834, shown that "There is one Was teaching uproar quietly at Liege. in Bel-air was necessary to its develop

ment. Two years later, using the Kium, in terms of scientific same approneh to the problem Theodor of spontaneous gencration, Sch- accomplishment, Schwann had long since wana proved done 11 lifetime's work, crowned by one of the most important discoveries in the history of biology:, his classic cell theory.

Born at Neuss In the Rhine- land. Schwann had studied at Wurzburg nuder Schonlein, the German Jourder modern

of elinical medicine, He went on to Bonn, and Berlin, where in five years of work with Germany's greatest propement of selentine medicine, Johannes Muller, than accomplished Isture would in the forty years academic life which followed, It is probably a tribute to the In- from spiration which can now

that great teachers.

Schwant had cewned his

nehlerement before he was thirty.

Spontaneous life

he of

putrefaction is

organisms which were destroyed if the surmunding nir was heal- ed or taken away.

There, tur bi real purposes, went the theory of spontaneous generation. But the microscope was not yet perfected, and the job of convincing an unbelieving public would

take time, and someone of greater

slature in the scientifle

than the twenty-seven-year-old Schwann.

world

A name for nerves

Schwaen taught a! Liege, where he had gone from Lou vain in 1848, walil he retired in 1000, two years before his death. Wille the storms of controversy raged around him, and Pasteur's crucial experiment proved airborne nature of the living ur- Lanisms which caused fermenta- Ilon, Schwann's pleasant open countenance could be seen

The

on

cafe terraces discoursing on the

the

It

progress of histology, and germ theory of disease. I re- malned for Lister to devise the concept of antisepsis from this momentous discovery, And has remained for the complex, advanced techniques of twen- Beth-century bicchemical en- gineering to give substance to The greatest dream of nineteenth- gentury, medicine. In the deve-

and topment

production ol modern antibiotics a life- saving reality has emerged from the limpe that

Schwann earned his place among the great discoverers of modern science, and, at the time, a professorship in anatomy and physiology at Louvain, with the formulation of his cell theory in 1839. A careful, accurate in- vestigator, he had already dis- covered the axis-cylinder of the nerves, which is named after him, and the striped muscle in Although

trained 119 anatomist, Schwann's attention the upper esophagus. Now, lcd

One day the age-old by his observation of nuclented was caught by

to seek might actually use problem of spontaneous genera cells in animal tissues

common belief that such cells in vegetable tissues, fight und destroy Won--the living matter could be generated he noted their structural similar in his unending from non-living. He had studied ity in what has been called the disease,

Relax

with

an

LUXY

Here in Hongkong

you too can now enjoy the luxury

of Lux Cigarettes.

113 11 to

germs other, germs, battle against

Cigarettes

Acclaimed the world.

Germans.

courts.

EXPANSIVE

Do these men repent the rolo played as Judicial

.

without papers in the Soviet zone.

Not until 1063 did he manage

to escape from the Soviet zone

• the

DANGER

of

to the West. By May 1954, the fairness and luck thanks to his friends in the prejudice of its Judges de- judges old boy, network, he was pends the main bulwark of. Stuttgart,

Only one of them upheld the stooges? Wat if the attitude of DR JUSTICE KEYSER became soon comfortably installed in democracy in the new Germany,

savage sentence.

And that, fittingly enough, was Dr Herbert Keyser himself, a jude at the

special Hill gi terror tribunal which at Leipzig on November 18, 1843, sentenced 46-year-old Johanna Flock to be beheaded for just this crime.

There must be other Ger- mans, though-more influential, perhaps, behind the scenes than the ones I questioned-who do approve.

Keyser is any guide to the rest of them,

I called on Dr Keyser in the office which he occupies in the blyg new law courts building here in Stuttgort, where he serves as a judge of civil appeals for the Slate of Baden Wurtemberg.

DEFIANT

One of them, presumbly, 15 FOUND him sitting at his D. Konrad Adenauer himself, deska mousy, Insignificant- And millions of enthusiastic looking little man with a nibbly Germans put him back in sort of moustache over his power for # third Lern Us mouth, large, ginting goggles Chancellor.

over his eyes under a bald but rather flat erautum,

For is under the negis of Dr Adenauer as Chancellor that Dr Keyser and at least 181 other judges and oficial prose cutors of Hitler's special war- time terror tribunals have been restored to key positions in the German judicial machine,

Between them, so it has been culculated on the basis of the official records, these 162 men wer responsible for upholding Hiker's rule of terror with more than રી thousand death sentences.

THE "CRIMES'

MONG the crimes for which

A they sent men and women to have their heads chopped "af" I get this from the register are: listening to the enemy tucio and spreading enemy lies, har bouring Jews, picking up an rug in a bombed and burning house, defeatist utterances, and anti- Nazi activities,

Under the Allied legislation, which was intended to create new democratic Germany out of the ashes and Tubble Feft by Hitler these men were banned for fe from holding judiclat or State office.

Not really sinister-looking at all, but the. sort of man, he seemed to me at any rate, who would always want to be on the right side of his superiors.

It seemed significant to me, therefore that Dr Keyser not only did not attempt to dispute been the sentenets he hud

responsible for on the forror but wag rendy 10 bunals. stand by them almost with' an air of deutice.

"I do not regret a'single one of the sentences for which I was responsible as a member of the *pecial tribunal," yaid Dr Keyser.

made

All

s

this

expansive as he felt he had

the equality of its eltizeny " ̃be- telling paint.

"Did they know your past na fore the law. "The day of the traitors and a member of the Special Courts Of all the departures from deserters who came to the top ere?" I asked him.

the Allied plans which Dr course," he answered, here Immediately after the war

Adenauer has sanctioned in the is on the want," he announced.

my papers and personal eight years he has been t (Rather an understatement, in are deposited with the power already. I think any view, of a situation in which authorities here. I have nothing restoration of the Hitler terror the Hitler terror Judges aro ·la hide," flame ta

judges is the most sinister.. I believed him. But to ny back on the Bench again.)

For there is

is the constaa! did not want war. But I mind it makes the realomtion danger that these min who have tell you

that, us one of the to judicial dignity of this ex- bren stooges once will be ready majority of decent Germans, 1, tror judge all the more dis- to be tooges agali. like the others, did everything quieting.

I do not look forward to could to win the war once it For in the German system of Adennuar's third had started, It was my duty Justice the Judge has enormous relish.

term

HARD TIMES ARE HERE FOR

:

THE MAN IN THE WIG

with

N-Tuesday-for-the first time in six weeks-tho-doors-of-the-most-famous-court-in

for form The Old Bailey Will-of-the

in

summer recess, And striding past the policeman at the door, swishing his gown as he makes his way through the throngs that crowd the court corridors, will be the star performer. The barrister.

In full panoply of wig and gown, he looks the picture of 1-assurance and sucers. But

if you look at his trouser ends you will most likely And they are frayed

-by- PAUL COOPER

For modern

the are finding things lough, At busi- least they can easily get out ness man, it- and earn a decent living in In- pation is ex- dustry--as several do. In Octo- pensive, frus ber 1030 only 34 per cent of bating and barristers called to the Bar in in the long run 1053 were still in practice, ofich a woslo of time.

And many of the rost could But what of also leave it only they had the the criminal sense

nat still cling to courts?

Lón- the barrister's life because, well, But, in fact, all that glitters don Sessions has such dash it, it's rather alce to be a. hand," he said a little doubt is not success. For the majority an Overflow of work that barrister-even though one does fully, and then with a stalden of the 1073 barristers practising it was recently announced some get rather fed up with a steady ush u though this settled in England and Wales the only of their cases will be heard diet of sausages and mashed

He glanced down at the Photo- slat showing the official record of the care of Johanna Flock which 1 produced for him,

"I cannot recall this case off-

"The Bar is the finest profes- stow in the country."

says the successful QC, with an air of pompous self-satisfaction.

everything for him; "Ah! she glitter they see, is the shine on was a prostitute, I see."

He now got into his fuli stride.

Most cf

them cre

Surely, (cheapest Hem on the menu in the well-worn trousers of their at the Old Balley.

"criminal barristers" are carn- ball) for lunch. colleagues.

Solicitors are taking more and Ing a good living?

The real tragedies are to be not. found with more of the money that is to

the middle-aged be earned in legal work. They Criminals are generally poor.. men. Those who have hung on "I must tell you: to receive argue their own cases in county and lawyers are not likely to into their late thirties and early and use stolen ration cards courts far more than they used wax fat on the few guineas they forties hoping for the lucky But today you can be sure of knowing: them to be stolen and to, and the bigger ceres--those receive for trying to coax the break to come that will set their running into them at the seat pass them en to friends or destined for the High jury into believing that their practice on its feet. "You walt anyone else th a most serious Court, where be winged clients were nowhere near, the And sec, old boy, all I need German town and elty.

crime in war. It is a shameless counsel appear In all their scene of the crime at the time. is one really (od murder There's one of them. In the betrayal of the rest of the com- splendourare settled before It is not only the young men defencel" Bonn Ministry of Justice and manity, able to bring into | they come to court.

fledglings at the Bar who

over for their superior of Justice in every major

quality and smoothly satisfying flavour

Sole Agents: SHEWAN TOMES & CO.LTD.

ELECTION LANDSLIDE

FOR ADENAUER

PROSPERITY VOTE

SEE HOW ALIKE WE ARET IF HE HAD MY MOUSTACHE

AND I HAD HIS PLATFORM:

But it does not come.

And "at 50 they and themselves still making two-guinea applications In shabby county courts and arguing trivial summonses In scruff back-street magistrates' courts.

THE ANSWER

WHAT is the answer to it

Fusion: abolishing the dis- tinction between barristers and solicitors end establishing a. single legal profession, able to undertake both the pre-court preparatory work (now 'zolely, the sclicitor's funeliont and advocacy in court (the barris. ter's present role),

the

It has got to come eventually. Practically alone in the world, Britain still retains anachronistic dantism of bar- rister and sollettor. So that it' you need to go to court, 'you have to pay two lawyers' » sot of fees instead of one.

Solleitors: are on the whole hot so opposed to the prospect. as barristers, "It can only do un good," they say,

But barristers view it as the Inst all in the coffth of their dunet dignity.

One of the reasonas: behind this barristerial obdurance la the Sarrister's traditional contempt

Laut members of the Bar must either leder, to swim with them as lowly brethrets or else they will I surely drown;