The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7197 p662
11 May 2002

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Declining science [more]
Tricky cork [more]
Great and small [more]
That rock [more]

Declining science

A report published in Science for 19 April suggests that physical scientists (who include chemists, physicists and some engineers) in the United Kingdom may be in the process of becoming an endangered species. A document issued by the Treasury describes a decline in the numbers seeking to enroll in courses for chemistry, physics and engineering in British universities. A sharp fall in numbers occurred between 1995 and 2000, despite an overall rise in people seeking degrees in all disciplines.

There is a claim that physics teachers are fast becoming unacceptably rare. At the same time both universities and manufacturing companies are complaining of a lack of talent among students in the physical sciences at all levels of experience. Comparisons with other countries show that a higher intake of science graduates has been deformed by an increase in those studying biology in the UK over the past five years. The number of chemistry graduates has declined by 16 per cent and of physics graduates by 7 per cent during that time. The shortage of physics teachers in schools today is attributed to this effect, although it is not clear whether the same argument applies to chemistry teachers.

It has been suggested that schools should try to recruit local university students as assistant teachers of chemistry and physics, with appropriate payment. Meanwhile, the salaries offered to physical scientists at all professional levels should be increased to offer better incentives. The payments offered will depend upon the attitude of the Treasury towards academic salaries — something difficult to predict with any accuracy, but unlikely to be generous.

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Tricky cork

The "corking" of bottled wines is something that horrifies the connoisseur. In the April issue of Chemistry in Britain, Brian Malpass has looked at this disquieting phenomenon in terms of the chemistry involved. The nastiest compound known to wine lovers, he writes, must be 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, which is estimated to affect between 2 and 10 per cent of bottles of wine, making the contents reek of damp cardboard. The origin of this contaminant is rather mysterious. It may be that chlorinated compounds used to disinfect the raw cork react with some phenolics and fungi to produce trichloroanisole. Alternatively, this contaminant may already exist in raw cork itself.

In attempts to overcome the problem of corking, steaming or boiling the closure does not always work; nor does disinfection with hydrogen peroxide or ozone. Synthetic closures composed of various polymers have become commonplace, and do overcome the corking effect, but they make the seal difficult to extract compared with a natural cork.

Metal seals have been used extensively, but their critics argue that they interfere with the maturing of the wine by preventing the minimal access of the product to air permitted by a cork during long storage. On the other hand, there seems no good reason why wines should not be sealed by means of metal screw caps, just as happens with many other bottled beverages.

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Great and small

Human observers may contemplate their universal environment in three ways. There are the macroscopic, the microscopic and the holistic approaches. A telescopic, wide-angle attitude is macroscopic. A concentration upon minute or minimal details is microscopic. The holistic approach means that everything must be taken into account, whether gigantic or minute, because all aspects of nature react upon one another and nothing can be disregarded as insignificant. Holism is often dismissed as trivial, but it is no such thing. Unless you deal with every separate detail of a scheme, the ultimate conclusion cannot be justified. Politicians and lawyers like to ignore details that do not fit smoothly into the argument they are trying to make, and so the outcome is distorted and ultimately untrue.

In our modern capitalist and consumerist society, most people subscribe to the fallacy that what is bigger is better, so that a macroscopic approach is followed and a microscopic one ignored. Everything we come across is ultra-, super- or mega- or it cannot justify itself. In the last resort, of course, we arrive at globalisation, which ensures that a few people become rich and powerful and a host lose any ability to control affairs.

In the process of gigantification (to use a Bushism), democracy is really a lost cause. Small wonder, then, that an increasing section of the population of developed countries has lost interest in using its voting power, having become convinced that whatever they do will make no difference. So the dull old plodders sitting on councils and in committees dig themselves into their comfortable sinecures, while a minute body of revolutionaries dismay us with threats of coercion and violence.

This is an uncomfortable situation which we can overcome only by forgetting the mantra that bigger is better and insisting on the need for small and accessible. It is to be hoped that pharmacists will not assume that voting for their Society's Council is a waste of time and energy. It is not, and they should show their teeth, and take to a holistic attitude. We might remember Coleridge's Ancient Mariner's wise remark: "He prayeth best who loveth best / All things both great and small."

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That rock

In the Countryman for May, I was interested to come across reference to that Rock of Ages that is familiar from an old hymn written towards the end of the 18th century by the Reverend Augustus Montague Toplady.

The hymn was published in 1775, and the curate at Blagdon, as he was then, is reputed to have written it while sheltering from a thunderstorm in Burrington Combe, a rocky valley corresponding an the north aspect of the Mendips to the more celebrated Cheddar Gorge on the south. In the combe is a steep rock bearing the inscription: "Rock of Ages. This rock derives its name from the well-known hymn written about 1762 by the Rev A. M. Toplady, who was inspired while sheltering in this cleft during a storm."

When, some years ago, I was working in a hospital near Bristol, my family used to explore the Mendips, and on one occasion I was caught, like Toplady, in a thunderstorm in Burrington Combe. It was unpleasant, and I discovered that the famous cleft would hardly have sheltered a butterfly, although across the combe a sinister cavern called Aveline's Hole offered more cover.

Toplady was born in Farnham in Surrey on 4 November 1740 and started his education at Westminster School. When his widowed mother moved to Ireland in 1755 young Augustus went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1760. He was at first a keen follower of Wesley, but later became a strict Calvinist and thereafter was a bitter and vociferous enemy of the Wesleys. He was acquainted with Samuel Johnson. In 1755 he developed tuberculosis and moved to London, where he died on 14 August 1778.

Toplady's fame was limited, and I do not know whether his birthplace at 10 West Street, Farnham, bears any memorial — if it still stands. Perhaps his invocation "Let me hide myself in thee" came true at the end, and the rock remains his sole memorial.