100 years ago

It has long been my conviction that we study animals too much as dead things. We name them, arrange them according to our notions of their likeness or unlikeness, and record their distribution. Then perhaps we are satisfied, forgetting that we could do as much with minerals or remarkable boulders. Of late years we have attempted something more; we now teach every student of Zoology to dissect animals and to attend to their development…. But the animals set before the young zoologist are all dead; it is much if they are not pickled as well. When he studies their development, he works chiefly or altogether upon continuous sections, embryos mounted in balsam, and wax models. He is rarely encouraged to observe live tadpoles or third-day chicks with beating hearts. As for what Gilbert White calls the life and conversation of animals, how they defend themselves, feed, and make love, this is commonly passed over as a matter of curious but not very important information; it is not reputed scientific, or at least not eminently scientific. — L. C. Miall

From Nature 26 August 1897.

50 years ago

In facing realities we must agree that the world is not yet at peace, neither is it free from the threat of further conflagration, perhaps even on a world-wide scale. It follows that though every effort towards world peace must be made, it would be foolish during present troublesome times to fall into a state of lethargy and unpreparedness. So some scientific research, especially that dealing with certain aspects of atomic energy, must even now, and perhaps for some time to come, be carried on under the ban of offical secrecy. Feeling is high these days, and concern is often expressed that military secrecy might take the place of former industrial interests in slowing up the free flow of ideas which are essential to the smooth progress of scientific endeavour. But at present men of science must face the fact that some secrecy is inevitable, and this makes it all the more imperative, therefore, that they themselves should strive to bring before each other and above all before the general non-scientific public the many beneficent aspects of science.

From Nature 30 August 1947.