In this photograph, nurses are learning how to use a negative pressure ventilator. These ventilators enabled a person to breathe when normal muscle control had been lost or the work of breathing exceeded the person's ability.
<p>The celebrated novelist and historian John Dos Passos wrote a prose poem about the visit that Albert Einstein paid to Charles Steinmetz, the "The Wizard of Schenectady."</p>
<p>We have come a long way from the philosophy of the Enlightenment...a shift that represents a retreat rather than an advance, argues the noted historian.</p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> They were botanists, but not of the dull variety: William’s journals inflamed the imaginations of the European romantics, and John may have inadvertently touched off the American Revolution</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> The single greatest medical discovery of the last century began as a parlor game, and brought tragedy to nearly everyone who had a hand in it</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">Was it science, sport, or the prospect of a round-the-world railroad that sent the tycoon off on his costly Alaskan excursion?</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">One of America s truly great men—scientist, philosopher, and literary genius—forged his character in the throes of adversity</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> THE BIRTH OF THE RAND CORPORATION <span class="typestyle"> During World War II, America discovered that scientists were needed to win it—and to win any future war. That’s why RAND came into being, the first think tank and the model for all the rest.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> …And what’s more, the planet’s highly civilized inhabitants live together in perfect harmony. So argued an eminent astronomer named Percival Lowell, and for decades tens of thousands of Americans believed him.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> America has won more Nobel Prizes in medicine than any other nation: it’s easy when you have the money, the technology, and people from every other nation</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">Slovenly, impulsive, impoverished, and grotesque, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was the greatest naturalist of his age. But nobody knew it.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">At a time when our civilization is trying to organize itself on scientific principles of mathematical probabilities, statistical modeling, and the like, is traditional narrative history of any real use? Yes, says a distinguished practitioner of the discipline; it can always help us. It might even save us.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">For more than 200 years, Americans have tried to change the weather by starting fires, setting off explosions, cutting trees, even planning to divert the Gulf Stream. The question now is not how to do it, but whether to do it at all.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">We talk about it constantly and we arrange our lives around it. So did our parents; and so did the very first colonists. But it took Americans a long time to understand their weather, and we still have trouble getting it right.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> Since 1930, more than half of America’s splendid elm trees have succumbed to disease. But science is now fighting back and gaining ground. </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">It was discovered in New Jersey in 1858, was made into full-size copies that were sent as far away as Edinburgh, and had a violent run-in with Boss Tweed in 1871. Now, after 50 years out of view, the ugly brute can be seen in Philadelphia.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">THE STRANGE FORGOTTEN LIFE OF AMERICA’S OTHER BEN FRANKLIN, BY AN AUTHOR SO FASCINATED THAT HE’S WRITING A NOVEL ABOUT HIM.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The foremost student of a belief held by nearly half of all Americans traces its history from Darwin’s bombshell through the storms of the Scopes trial to today’s “scientific creationists," who find William Jennings Bryan to have been too liberal.</span></p>
