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known editor, he was once heard to murmur, ’ I have to admitthat every alteration he has made is an improvement.’

" His conversation had the same qualities. His wit couldilluminate any topic, however unfamiliar, and he would enter-tain his close friends with many an irreverent comment uponpeople and events; yet his humour never bore a trace of malice,and the delicate verbal caricatures in which he delighted werenever cruel. Supremely urbane on public occasions, he some-times adopted an air of aloofness which (to his secret delight)could quickly silence an irritating or over-persistent questioner;yet he was the most approachable of men, always happy torespond to a genuine call for help, though often diffident of hisability to meet the need. His judgment was penetrating butnever ruthless, and he saw and acknowledged the merit of awork more readily than he would demonstrate its shortcomings.

" His interests covered a wide range, and his discriminationand taste sought out and relished the best in every field, wereit a Masaccio fresco or a vintage motor-car. In breadth ofintellect and understanding, extending far beyond the boundsof his chosen specialty, he stood out among his contemporaries.His many friends will remember one whose great and variedtalents were matched by a rare humility and simplicity of mind,and whose life was lived to the full."

JAMES THOMAS CURRANC.B.E., M.B.Glasg.

Dr. J. T. Curran, formerly group physician superinten-dent of Lennox Castle and associated hospitals, died onAug. 10 at the age of 66.He was born at Newmilns in Ayrshire and was educated at

Girvan Academy and Glasgow University, from which hegraduated M.B. in 1924. He served as a ship’s doctor and wasfor some time in general practice, but his main interest lay inpsychiatry and, more particularly, in mental deficiency. In1928 he joined the Glasgow Corporation Mental Health Serviceand was on the staff of Woodilee Hospital as well as beingdeputy superintendent of Stoneyetts Hospital. In 1936, whenStoneyetts Hospital was transferred to the new hospital ofLennox Castle, he continued as deputy superintendent, and in1940 he was promoted medical superintendent. During the1939-45 war Lennox Castle, in addition to being a hospital formental defectives, also served as a large emergency hospitalwhich ultimately included a maternity unit, all of which cameunder the administration of Dr. Curran. In 1948 he was made

group physician superintendent of Lennox Castle, CaldwellHouse, and Waverley Park hospitals, and he held this positionuntil his retirement in 1955.

J. C. writes:" From the beginning of his career Dr. Curran dedicated all

his energy and ability to make life for the mentally handicappedfuller and to persuade and teach the community to accept themas an integral part of the social structure. He fully realised theimportance and impact of mental deficiency upon society andundertook research into the basic causes and possible remediesof this. His own personality and leadership inspired others-medical, lay, and nursing-to help, to work for, and to under-stand the mentally handicapped. He was an outstanding pioneerin all aspects of mental deficiency, which, until recently, hasbeen an almost forgotten and neglected specialty. His work wasrecognised and rewarded by his being appointed C.B.E. in 1954,and for his interest in handicapped boy scouts he was awardedthe silver Wolf decoration by the Boy Scout Movement.

" After his retirement he returned to his native Ayrshire,where he continued to work quietly and without publicity forthe fuller understanding and reablement of the mentally handi-capped. Truly a unique personality with a keen sense ofhumour, he was always sartorially elegant, dignified in appear-ance, with a cultured appreciation of music and art. Sometimeshe was very demanding, but this stemmed from his deep senseof dedication."

Notes and News

A NEW SCHEDULE FOR IMMUNISATIONS

SINCE the Ministry of Health last published advice on thetiming of immunisation procedures, new information has cometo light about immune responses to vaccines. The StandingMedical Advisory Committee has amended its recommenda-tions. Because in early infancy the response to vaccines is poor,3 months is now the recommended minimum age for the firstdose of diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and oral poliomyelitisvaccine. A better immune response may be expected if thefirst dose is given at 6 months. The recommended dosage-intervals have also been changed: the second dose should begiven after an interval of 6-8 weeks, and the third after aninterval of 6 months. If this schedule is followed, no boosterdoses will be needed until the child goes to school. Measlesand smallpox vaccines should be given in the second year, andan interval of 3-4 weeks should always elapse between vaccina-tions with live viruses. Smallpox vaccination, therefore, shouldnot be performed within 3-4 weeks of giving oral polio-myelitis vaccine. The committee recommends revaccinationfor smallpox at the age of school-entry; and within a few weeksa booster dose of diphtheria, tetanus, and poliomyelitis vaccine(oral or killed) should be given. Another revaccination for

smallpox, and a further dose of tetanus toxoid and poliomyelitisvaccine, are advised in the period before leaving school.

SURGERY FOR THE NEWBORN

AN increasing number of newborn babies are candidates forsurgical procedures. This presents problems, and a jointEnglish and Scottish subcommittee has produced a report 1which should help hospital authorities to plan new facilities forneonatal surgery. It recommends that special units should beset up in existing children’s hospitals, and gives advice on thenursing establishment which will be needed in these units.More pxdiatric surgeons will also be needed, and some newtraining-posts have already been approved. But it is not onlyhospitals which must make plans; local authorities will have toprovide more facilities for the aftercare of disabled children.The report has been accepted by the Central Health ServicesCouncil and the Scottish Health Services Council. 2

WATER FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

TEN years ago the World Health Organisation started on aprogramme for giving assistance with water-supply projects.Progress was reviewed at the 21st World Health Assemblyearlier this year, and is the subject of an article in the Augustissue of the W.H.O. Chronicle. The outlook, in terms ofachieving even quite modest objectives, seems none too

promising. W.H.O.’s budget for this programme is beingallocated not to direct financial assistance, where its effectwould be negligible, but to providing technical advice andtraining so that banks can be assured that loans for capitalprojects would make sense financially. Some idea of the scaleof the problem can be had from an estimate that 70% of urbanpopulations in developing countries had insufficient or unsafepiped water. In rural areas the problem, in engineering terms,is not great-the difficulty here is that water-supplies are rarelyself-supporting, and government subsidies are hard to come by.Outside South America, where governments have set them-selves a target of providing water for 70% of urban and 50%of rural populations by 1971, there are few national pro-grammes. Significantly, of all the loans made in the ten years1958-67 almost two-thirds went to Latin America; but, despitethis, progress in rural areas seems to be behind schedule(37 million people still to be supplied with water if the 1971target of 50% is to be achieved). In 1964 the director-generalof W.H.O. thought that fifteen-year objectives might reasonably1. Report of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee and the Scottish

Standing Medical Advisory Committee on Surgery for the Newborn.H.M. Stationery Office. 3s. 9d.

2. H.M. (68) 55.3. Wld Hlth Org. Chron. 1968, 22, 362.

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include piped water within a reasonable distance of all homesand a water service in 50% of dwellings, with quality up to theW.H.O.’s international standard for drinking-water. But, theChronicle concludes, "... the gap between stated objectives,modest as they are, and actual conditions is widening ratherthan closing ... the experience of the governments and agenciesconcerned indicates that today more people are in need of anadequate water supply than four years ago

University of LeedsDr. D. Gordon McDowall, senior lecturer and head of the

university department of anxsthesia at the Western Infirmary,Glasgow, has been appointed professor and head of thedepartment of anaesthesia, Leeds.

Dr. McDowall, who is 35 years of age, was educated at EdinburghAcademy and University of Edinburgh, graduating M.B. in 1957. Heheld house-appointments at the Royal Infirmary and the EasternGeneral Hospital, Edinburgh, and then served for three years in theMedical Branch of the R.A.F. In 1961 he was appointed registrar atthe Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, before becoming I.C.I. researchfellow in anaesthesia at the hyperbaric oxygen unit, Western Infirmary,Glasgow. After holding a university lectureship at the RoyalInfirmary, Glasgow, he was promoted senior lecturer there in 1965,and, since March last year, has held his present post at the WesternInfirmary. In 1962 he was elected F.F.A. R.c.s. and in 1967 he

graduated M.D. with commendation. He has received research prizesfrom the Association of Anaesthetists and the Scottish Society ofAnsesthetists. His published work includes articles on the physiologyand pharmacology of the cerebral circulation and on hyperbaricoxygen.

Responsibilities and Functions of ConsultantsThe Minister of Health in conjunction with the Secretary of

State for Scotland has set up a working group to consider theresponsibilities and functions of the consultant grade. Thechairman of the working group is Sir George Godber, chiefmedical officer at the Ministry of Health; and the members ofthe group, drawn from the consultant and junior hospitalgrades and doctors concerned with administration of the

service, are as follows:Dr. J. R. Bennett, Dr. Katharine Bradley, Dr. J. H. F. Brotherston,

Dr. A. A. Driver, Mr. Michael Freeman, Mr. N. G. C. Hendry,Dr. W. P. U. Kennedy, Mr. Walpole Lewin, Sir John Richardson,and Dr. H. Yellowlees.

The joint secretaries are Dr. Ian Field and Mr. M. R. P.Gregson.The Ministers have asked for a report by the end of the year.

The report will be discussed through the usual channels withrepresentatives of the medical and dental professions.ResuscitationA symposium on this theme is to be held at the Royal College

of Surgeons of England on Sept. 10 at 9.30 A.M. Discussionwill be based on two pilot schemes: the mobile intensive-care(cardiac) unit at Belfast, and the general practitioners’ imme-diate intensive-care unit (traffic casualties) at Darlington.Tickets may be had from " Symposium ", St. John Ambulance,1 Grosvenor Crescent, London S.W.I.

Royal Free HospitalProf. H. Sarles (Marseilles) is to speak on chronic pan-

creatitis on Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 5.15 P.M., at the depart-ment of medicine of the hospital, Gray’s Inn Road, LondonW.C.I.

Leucaemia Research FundProf. Georges Mathe (Institut de Cancérologie et d’Im-

munogenetique, Paris) is to lecture on therapeutic strategy inacute leukaemia on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 5.30 P.M., at theInstitute of Child Health. Tickets may be had from the

secretary of the medical advisory panel of the Fund at theinstitute, Great Ormond Street, London W.C.I.

University College Hospital Medical School, LondonDr. E. E. Pochin is to deliver a Sydney Ringer lecture at this

school on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 4.30 P.M. His subject will bethyroid adenocarcinoma-a functioning tumour.

Pamphlets and Reports

Ballistocardiography and Circulatory Function. To theproceedings of its 12th annual meeting the BallistocardiographicResearch Society appends a brief account of the first decade of itslife, its members, and their research projects. Published simultane-ously as Bibliotheca Cardiologica no. 20. (Basle and New York:Karger. London: Academic Press. Sw. fr./DM 39;$9.35; 78s.)

Circulation in Skeletal Muscle. Proceedings of an InternationalSymposium held at Smolenice, Czechoslovakia, in 1966. (Oxford:Pergamon. E6.)

Perspectives in Ophthalmology. This volume contains the1967 postgraduate teaching course organised at the Rotterdam EyeHospital to mark the 75th anniversary of the Netherlands Ophthal-mological Society. (Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica. E6 14s.)

Proceedings of a Symposium on the Disabled Young Adult.The National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases sponsoredthis symposium, held in London in November, 1967. (Obtainablefrom the Fund, Vincent House, Vincent Square, London S.W.I.43s. 10d., including postage.)

Lymph and the Lymphatic System. The proceedings of aconference held in New Orleans in December, 1965. (Springfield,Illinois: Thomas.$18.50.)

Recent Retardation of Mortality Trends in Japan. Thisreport, prepared for the National Center for Health Statistics by agroup of workers from the Institute of Public Health and the Ministryof Health and Welfare, Tokio, shows that the slowing down in thetrend to lower mortality-rates which has been noted in the U.S.A. andEurope is shared by Japan. The data relate to 1947-63, the turning-point being around 1955. (U.S. Government Printing Office.$0.35.)

Recent Developments in Affective Disorders. Based on a seriesof lectures organised by the Royal Medico-Psychological Association,this collection is the second in a series of British Journal of Psychiatryspecial publications. (Obtainable from Headley Brothers Ltd.,Ashford, Kent. 25s.;$3.50.)

Microsurgery of the Eye. lst symposium of the OphthalmicMicrosurgery Study Group held in August, 1966, in connection withthe XXth International Congress of Ophthalmology in Munich.(Basle and New York: Karger. London: Academic Press. Sw. fr./DM 54;$12.95; E5 8s.)

Directory of Collections and List of Species Maintained inNew Zealand 1968. Revision of the directories and lists of theCommonwealth collections of microorganisms is now in the hands ofnational committees, which have undertaken to prepare new listsindependently at intervals of, at the most, ten years. (H.M. StationeryOffice. 3s.)

Sample Census 1966, England and Wales: workplace andtransport tables, part 1. (H.M. Stationery Office. 85s.)

Medium Chain Triglycerides. The transaction of a symposiumheld in the University of Pennsylvania in March, 1967. (London:Oxford University Press. Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress. E5 19s.)

The Prevention of Damaging Stress in Children. The reportof U.K. study group no. 1 to the World Federation for MentalHealth, and to coincide with the 7th International Congress onMental Health, held in London in August. (London: Churchill. 20s.)

The Interferons. An international symposium on this topic washeld in Siena in June, 1967. (London and New York: AcademicPress. E5 16s. 8d.)

Animal Health Yearbook. (Obtainable from H.M. StationeryOffice, from Columbia University Press, Irvington on Hudson,N.Y. 10533, and other F.A.O. sales agents. 32s.,$4.)