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were due to retire, and any special infirmity fromwhich they suffered, which might leave the way openbefore the due time. He arrived long before histime. Whilst his department is probably well organ-ised I imagine it would be futile for students tolook there for inspiration.

* * *

For medical students this habit of the universityis particularly unfortunate. In the premedical subjectsthere is a tendency to regard the students as a

necessary evil-not to be taken seriously-an outlookwhich the students heartily reciprocate so far as thesubjects in question go. If they next fall into thehands of a really snow-white physiologist, who feelshis subject to be a pure science and believes that themajority of human reactions can be shown on a

galvanometer or a smoked drum, their lot is even

more unfortunate. Snow White looks on their desireto be taught such physiology as will have applicationto clinical medicine as a prostitution of his science.Doc, Sleepy, Grumpy and Dopey are left to sleepquietly at the back of the lecture theatre, while poorBashful is picked out and persuaded to take a B.Sc.in physiology. When it comes to pathology they mayfind a bacteriologist in charge, who has no use foranything preserved in a bottle in spirit, or alterna-tively a formalin-hardened morbid anatomist with ahealthy scorn for glorified market-gardening. Even-tually when they come to the clinical subjects theyfind part-time professors, whose appointments are

almost entirely honorary, who have been appointed

because of their position on the hospital staff. Thequalifications which well merited the hospital appoint-ment have little or nothing in common with thefunctions of a professor. The best men are oftenso busy in lucrative practice that were it not for thestatus which a professorship gives, these twenty-pound-a-year appointments would always be filledwith second-class men. The worst exhibition comeswhen a real materialist grabs the title and thendecides to provide the students with exactly twenty-pounds’ worth-so much and no more. The vast

majority of doctors are grateful to those who taughtthem the elements of their profession; the troubleis that they so rarely feel it was the professors.The appointment of full-time professors does not

supply the answer to the problem. The salariesoffered are so much less than a good man can earn inprivate practice that the universities are once moreunder the necessity of hawking their vacant professor-ships in clinical subjects, and gratefully recording theacceptance of the second-best. Possibly the solutionlies in reasonably well-paid part-time appointmentswith some limitation of private practice. The old-timers were what they were because they were generalpractitioners in their own lines. Should we not askfor the appointment of men who can teach, who canorganise under them as many specialists as can bepaid for? Should we not stop looking upon those whoare really hag-ridden by specialism as the repositoryof all future revelation, simply because we cannotunderstand either what they say, or what they write?

PUBLIC HEALTH

THE CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER ON NUTRITION

IT is a welcome sign of the times that the chiefmedical officer of the Ministry of Health gives so

much space in his report to nutrition, for, as his

predecessor said, nutrition is the foundation of thepublic health. The main activity of the AdvisoryCommittee on Nutrition has been discussion of thebudgets collected by the Ministry of Labour, thedistribution of the population of Great Britain intoincome groups and the institution of dietary surveys.They propose to express the nutrients in the diets sur-veyed as consumption per head, which is surely betterthan the plan, which they also propose to adopt forcalories and protein, of calculation per "man-value."There are so many standards of the relation of theneeds of children and adolescents to those of adultsthat it is doubtful if the calculation per man-value,even of calories, has much significance, and as regardsprotein if it is not definitely misleading. Manydietitians think that the attempt to express the needsof children for the different constituents of diet as

fractions of the adult male’s should go into coldstorage, possibly for ever. It is good news thatfeeding experiments involving the giving cf supple-mentary foods belonging to the protective groupshave made progress. The results may supply guidancein the desperately difficult task of feeding the nationin war-time. The chief medical officer rightly includesin his report the gist of publications of the Leagueof Nations, on whose committees the ministry isrepresented by Dr. H. E. Magee. The giving ofcereals before the age of six months is condemnedby the League committee, and after this age suitablepreparations of potatoes are recommended. The

practice of American paediatricians of giving ripebanana pulp to infants even as young as three months-a practice which has been adopted in feedingmarasmic and caeliac babies at a someivhat later age

in this country 1-would hardly meet with theirapproval. The League committee also urges a moreextensive use of skimmed and separated milk. In thiscountry the supply of skimmed milk is now hedgedround by such restrictions that it is almost impossibleto procure it, and hospitals in urban districts are

forced to skim their own milk when feeding childrenwith ccaliac disease.

It is heartening to read that the number of licensedT.T. herds of cattle has doubled in the period 1936-38,but it is regrettable that the number of accreditedproducers is nearing or has reached saturation point.Nothing is said on the controversial topic of pasteur-isation, and a disproportionate space is given toundulant fever, 38 cases of which were reported in1938. This may be, as the report suggests, only afraction of the actual cases, but even so they bearbut small relation to the new cases of bovine tubercu-losis almost certainly initiated by tuberculous milk.Reference is made to the Food and Drugs Act, 1938,and to the possibility under that act of the Ministerof Health making regulations as to the compositionof foods. It is to be hoped that the ministry willactively proceed in this ’matter and also make someattempt to protect the public against the use ofmisleading labels and advertisements. Section 6 of theact should serve as a check on extravagant andmendacious claims made by advertisers about com-mercial articles of food, but it will only do so ifthe ministry is fearless and ruthless. The section onmeat inspection will be a gift to the vegetarians. Itis almost unbelievable that dead one-day-old chicksor dead unhatched chicks have been used for themaking of "chicken paste" as filling for pies in theMidlands. But such is the madness of an acquisitiveage that commercial men sink to this level and wehave to keep a Ministry of Health to prevent them.

1. Thursfield, H., Arch. Dis. Childh. 1927, 2, 49.