Finally Dysentery Due to the Various Pseudo-Dysenteric Be Caused By

318 and (5) finally dysentery due to the various pseudo-dysenteric officer to obtain the advantages for which we have always bacilli. Mlle. Brcido does not think that true dysentery can contended-namely, fixity of tenure, adequate salary, a be caused by non-specific microbes. free official residence, and a free annual holiday-i.e., with payment by the parish council of a locum-tenent. But we cannot help those who will not help themselves and we A PRAISEWORTHY FAD. learn from the report that although there are 850 Poor-law POPULAR crazes in matters of medicine and of hygiene are medical officers in Scotland only 350 nominally belong to the more often than not things to be deplored. If they are not association and of these many omit to pay their subscriptions. actually harmful they are generally ridiculous, and if they This, as the report goes on -to say, is not fair. are of no benefit to the general public assuredly they are, as a rule, of equally little advantage to the medical pro- THE fession. The net result is most often a fine haul for a few PREVENTION OF LEPROSY. quacks and loss and disappointment for a large number of OuR readers have probably read the correspondence which . "patients." It is with considerable complacency therefore has occasionally appeared in the Times on the causation and that we may view what seems almost to amount to a prevention of leprosy. A long letter was recently published "craze at the present time. We allude to the prevalent from Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson who once more explains in exploitation of eating slowly and eating less. A more considerable detail his theory that leprosy is due in the main generally beneficial doctrine could hardly be chosen for the to the consumption as food of decomposing or imperfectly popular medical idol of the moment. A lay contemporary cured fish. This theory has received some support, editorially has recently devoted many paragraphs to the researches and and otherwise, in the columns of our contemporary. Mr. eaperiences of an American gentleman, Mr. Horace Fletcher, Hutchinson admits that the fish hypothesis has not as yet’ who has made it the business of his life to demonstrate that been openly endorsed by many of the leading members of the most people eat too much and eat too fast. Incidentally medical profession and we have throughout maintained that believes that a new he throat reflex has been discovered his theory has not yet been proved. His views, however, can insuring proper mastication for the I I slow feeder." Mr. only be received with respect and the hope expressed that Fletcher’s results have interested physiologists and many of further investigations will be forthcoming which will his experiments were carried on at Cambridge in association corroborate or otherwise the conclusions at which he has with Sir Michael Foster and other physiologists at that arrived after the most painstaking efforts to discover the place. As an enthusiast Mr. Fletcher sees in the reduction truth. If he is correct in the etiology of the disease his of the quantity of food necessary for the individual far- remarks on its prevention should receive world-wide reaching results, amongst others the kernel of national attention. ____ military success by the simplification of the commissariat problem. Napoleon’s dictum that an army "moves on its THE BRITISH DENTAL ASSOCIATION. belly " is to be altered and the instructed army will hardly AN of the British Dental need a belly to move on. Whatever may be the wide extraordinary general meeting IAssociation was held on Jan. 23rd at the Examination effects of the adoption of such a system of feeding as Mr. Victoria Embankment, London, to consider the Fletcher proposes, at any rate there can be no ques- of the of a in A tion of the individual advantage that would follow in Hall,question expediency degree dentistry. motion was Mr. J. H. Badcock and seconded most cases from such a course. A similar lesson, in a less proposed by by Mr. L. Matheson :- convincing form, is, of course, the central point cf the That a memorial he to the Senate of the of successes that attend Mr. Barrie’s heroine in his presented University mysterious London praying for the institution, in the interests of dental science, play of Lattle Mary, and if when lay writers deal with the public, and the dental profession, of a degree in dental surgery in the Faculty of Medicine, but expressing the further opinion that it were to work in such dinc. medical subjects they always would be undesirable to make the possession of the M.B., B.S. degrees tions the medical profession would welcome them as valu- a necessary qualification for such a degree. able ccoperators, as, indeed, we do in the case of Mr. An amendment was proposed by Mr. David Hepburn and Horace Fletcher. seconded Mr. F. ____ by Montagu Hopson :- That the creation of degrees in dentistry is undesirable and that the POOR-LAW MEDICAL OFFICERS IN THE HIGH- opinion of this meeting, specially summoned to consider the expediency of a degree in dentistry, be communicated to the universities LANDS AND ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND. of the United Kingdom. A discussion ensued and the amendment was carried THE Scottish Poor Law Medical Officers’ Association, which vigorous a by large majority. - is a body formed for the purpose of looking after the interests of a haid worked and very poorly paid body of men, has just issued its report for 1903. 1’o Mr. J. Cathcart Wason, RINGWORM AND THE METROPOLITAN ASYLUMS BOARD. Member of Parliament for Orkney and Shetland, was intrusted the rEsponsible task of introducing in Pailia- AT a meeting of the Metropolitan Asylums Board on ment a Bill promoued by the association. He was, however, Jan. 23rd the children’s committee reported that at unable to do so during the last session. The report further the Downs Ringworm Schools during the year ending states that owing to the advertisements of the association Dec. 31st, 1903, 618 children were admitted, 208 were which have appeared in the medical press applicants for discharged, and one had died. Of the discharges, 153 vacant Highland and island appointments have applied were pronounced cured, 14 were transferred to the Bridge to the secretary of the association for information with School or elsewhere, and 41 were sent for by the guardians. the result that the inquirers ceased to be applicants for The committee stated that it regretted to observe that so the posts. The committee hopes this year to advertise large a number of children were removed from the schools also in the Scotsmart and the Ulasgorv Herald. Particulars before they were cured of the disease, thus tending to are then given of various parishes which have been without defeat one object for which these schools were intended. medical officers during the greater part of the past year. Although the committee was not prepared to indicate a The report ends with an appeal to all Poor-law medical remedy it thought that some action should be taken and officers in Scotland to join the association and this appeal therefore recommended that the facts should be reported we cordially endorse. We are always glad to do what to the Local Government Board and that it should be lies in our power to assist a Scottish Poor-law medical asked to favour the managers with an expression of its.

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