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test. Secondly, direct comparison of spectral colours, a planthat is satisfactory, but which requires a somewhat com-plicated apparatus. Lastly, the study of subjective simul-taneous colour and after-colour (complementary colour),which Dr. Oliver regards as practically useless. For

ordinary clinical purposes he considers the selection of

wools is the best and readiest method of testing the coloursense, though it cannot be regarded as quite reliable.

For signalling on railways and at sea another planshould be adopted, and the testing should be done underthe actual conditions which exist whilst the candidate’s

colour sense is officially protecting life and property. The

apparatus he himself employs for the testing of sight amongrailway employees consists in a fixed framework which canbe placed anywhere upon a company’s property. Woodenframes containing properly and proportionately sized match-and confusion-colours of bunting for daylight work, or

illuminated plates and lanterns of similarly tinted transmittedcolour for bad weather or for night time are arranged in arow in any order. A series of five test colours form an upperrow, and the comparison colours are disposed in a lower tier.One eye is tested at a time. The examinee then successivelydesignates the nearest numerical match to each of the upperLL

test colours by the actual position of the corresponding colourin the lower tier. The examiner, after obtaining the truecolour names of the numbers chosen from an assistant,places the selections on suitable blanks for expert decisionand permanent registry. Dr. Oliver thinks the colour signalsshould be standardised, certified as correct, issued under

proper authority, and accompanied by plain and simpleinstructions for their use. Many points have to be attendedto in properly testing for colour vision ; thus, for example, togive a green signal light a similar degree of brightness, andtherefore the same relative distinctness as red, it mustbe either .five times more powerfully illuminated than the

red or be given five times more exposed superficial area.

It is marvellous, considering the number of trains that plydaily, not that accidents traceable to defective colour visionoccasionally happen, but that they are not of daily occur-rence. Consider that the distance signal is perhaps, in

rounding a curve, only visible for a few seconds, that the

information it gives has to be acted on instantaneously, andthat the particular signal has to be discriminated, as in theneighbourhood of all large centres where many lines meet,from perhaps 50 others ; whilst to the look-out man at

sea there is the additional source of doubt and hesitationin the fallacious aspect of even the most saturated colourscaught through fog or haze, or intermittently seen on thecrest of waves.

___

THE WET OCTOBER.

THE month of October is on the average the wettest ofthe 12 over the greater part of these islands, but it is veryseldom that its rain-yielding capacity equals that of last

month in the south and south-east of England. In nearly allparts of the country the number of days on which rain fellexceeded the normal, and it is extremely rare that even wetOctober affords so many instances of the gauges yielding aninch or more as the result of one day’s rain. Early in themonth the heavy downpours were mostly confined to Ireland,Scotland, Wales, and the west and north-west of England ;these were, however, subsequently eclipsed by the deluge inthe southern and south-eastern counties. It is very note-

worthy that these excessive rains occurred over a re-

latively small patch of country, the districts sufferingthe most being Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent. There werealso some heavy falls in Essex and Suffolk, but the northand north-east of England had very little or no rain during

the time and the Midlands very little. At Scarborough andHarrogate the month’s rainfall was less than usual. Theactual amount of flooding naturally varied much in theJ:li_.......4 1..........’:J..:_ -3- __L _L ____.___ __.7uinemuu lVVt1111C.’. luuuuctbiuiis uu 11U, u uumat!, uepmiu.

entirely on the amount of water falling during a given time,but they depend to a very considerable extent on the

topography of the district, the nature of the soil and sub-

soil, and the capacity of the drains. They also depend tosome extent on the quantity of rain that has fallen during the

two or three weeks immediately preceding the culminating fall.I . I I I I . I

A relatively dry soil can easily absorb an inch or two of rainthat will cause devastating floods if the soil has been soakedalmost daily with more than can flow off or percolate tothe lower strata. This was exactly the condition in the southand south-east of England last month. The chief feature

with the sunshine was its uniform distribution. London had

7 hours more than the average, but its figure of 76 hours wasthe least, and no less than 43 hours lower than the total at

Torquay. During the first three weeks the temperature wasabove the average, especially at night, but when the windshifted to the east and north towards the end of the periodthe thermometer indicated readings many degrees below thenormal figure.

* No trustworthy average. t A day with at least 0’01 inch.

THE ASSOCIATION OF HEAD MISTRESSES ANDMEDICAL CARE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

WE have received from the secretary of the Association ofHead Mistresses a copy of some resolutions carried at theannual meeting held in June last. The first resolution ex.

presses disapproval of external examinations for girls underthe age of 16 years. We gather that the idea underlying thisresolution is that the excessive preparatory study for theexaminations of extraneous bodies is likely to do harm tothe younger girls, and there are certainly grounds for thiscontention. In the internal work of schools, both primaryand secondary, care can be taken to adjust the time andsubjects of study to the individual capacities of the children,but when attempts are made to induce, or even to compel,

1452

children to enter for outside examinations the courses of istudy must be arranged directly for this purpose, and if"any child is entered for such an examination individual

peculiarities and needs must be neglected in order to

f:6t the child to the Procrustean bed of examination.

The second resolution is even of more importance, for it

expresses the opinion that there is need for the medical

inspection of all children entering public secondary schools,and that provision should be made for re-inspection fromtime to time. We endorse cordially this expression of

opinion. No small proportion of the children who enter for ithe higher studies, if we may dignify secondary education bythis phrase, are unfitted physically and sometimes even

mentally for them. The hours in the secondary schoolsare necessarily longer than in the primary, the work is

harder, and though the children are in a sense pickedthe strain is greater, and therefore it is essential thatcare should be taken to see that the back is fit forthe burden, even though it appears to be considered iunnecessary to fit the burden to the back. With the present

. general idea that book-learning and examinations are the be-all and end-all of a child’s education, a precaution such asthat suggested by the resolution is very necessary. Thefailures which occur in the lives, both mental and physical,of the children in secondary schools are more numerous thanmight be expected, though the percentage is certainly small,but most of the failures, be they few or many, could havebeen avoided by careful medical examination made at the commencement of study and repeated from time to time in Ithe course of school life. Adequate precautions are not

taken at present. It is insisted, no doubt, that a childshould have no obvious ringworm or other infectious condi-tion with which the child might infect others, but little care.is taken that the child shall not receive damage from thestudy that is intended to benefit, and we are glad to see that-the conference of head mistresses recognises this point of

’ view.

OSTEITIS DEFORMANS AND ITS PATHOGENY.

IT was in the Transactions of the Royal Medical and Chirur-: gicat Society for 1877 that Sir James Paget first described that’’ form of chronic inflammation of bones " which bears his

name, and since then perhaps a hundred cases or so have,been recorded. While the disease therefore is relatively un-common, and yet easily recognisable, it is somewhat curiousthat our ignorance of its causation is as great to-day

.as when the famous English surgeon first drew attentionto it. Its occurrence on the Continent certainly appearsto be more frequent than in Great Britain, if we are

to judge by the literature, but in spite of many care-

fully examined cases, with pathological reports and,most recent of all, investigation by the X rays, opinion

- is still much divided on the exact nature of the con.

dition. The old view which regarded it as a late manifesta-tion --C form of LIULI of congenital a lVllil of

tarda, is now discredited, a result, in part at least, achieved’ tarda, is now discredited, a result, in part at least, achievedby radiography, and the same may be said of that other view,according to which Paget’s disease is nothing else than

chronic rheumatism. Another theory has for a time heldsway and still finds adherents-viz., that which attributesthe changes to trophic disturbances under the influence ofthe nervous system. We know that in poliomyelitis,infantile cerebral hemiplegia, tabes, and syringomyelia- to mention but one or two-bony changes, often advanced,

I

may be met with, and in a number of instances of

’Paget’s disease diffuse alterations have been found inthe spinal cord. But they have never been sufficientlydefinite or frequent to bring a causal connexion betweenthem and the bony changes within the realm of

probability. During the year two fresh cases have been

reported in the pages of the Nouvellc Iconographie de la

Salpêtrière, one by M. Klippel and M. Piefire Weil, and theother by M. Pascarolo and M. Bertolotti. The first of these

concerned a woman, aged 56 years, in whom the disease hadmade its appearance 11 years previously and had slowly pro-gressed, without pain. In her the characteristic features

of marked overgrowth and thickening of the bones, with

curving of the long bones (and scoliosis of the vertebral

column) were almost entirely confined to the right side ofthe body. The curious symptom of an increased surface

temperature on the affeoted side, the differenoe between

the two sides being no less than 5° C., was noted in her

case ; this symptom has been described by one or two

previous observers. There was no discolouration of theskin or evidence of local inflammation. The second case wasthat of a man, aged 53 years, with a history of 15 years’duration. Here the condition was more or less symmetricaland much more widespread, involving as is usual the bonesof the cranium, thorax, and pelvis, and, of course, the longbones. The interesting feature of these two new observa-tions is that the patients !were suffering from obvious circu-latory disturbances; the man was an arterio-sclerotic, andthe woman had mitral insuffioiency and was slightly arterio-sclerotic. In a large proportion of cases of Paget’s diseasearterio-sclerosis has been observed, and the view that thecondition is somehow a result of vascular changes in thenutrient arteries of the bones has much to recommend it.There must, however, be another element in the causation ofthe disease which has hitherto escaped the eye of research:arterio-sclerosis is very common; Paget’s disease is a rarity.

PUBLICATIONS ISSUED BY THE HUNGARIANGOVERNMENT FOR THE MEMBERS OF THE

RECENT INTERNATIONAL MEDICALCONGRESS.

THE Hungarian Ministry of Public Worship and PublicInstruction has sent us various publications, written in

French, that were issued for the special benefit of the

members of the Sixteenth International Congress of Medicinewhich met at Budapest last August. The most remarkable

of these is an elaborately illustrated history of the Facultiesof Medicine of the Royal Universities of Budapest and ofKolozsvár. During the last few years many alterations and

I improvements have been effected at these universities. The

number of chairs, clinics, and professors has been consider-ably increased. The history of these faculties is traced backto the fourteenth century, and brief allusion is made to thewars and invasions that interrupted the university teaching.Since the recognition of Hungarian autonomy in 1867 therehas been, it is claimed, no further interruption to the forwardmarch. The large volume before us, consisting of close

upon 400 pages, with plans and photographic repro-ductions, shows that a great deal has been accom-

plished. Reproduced from photographs, very graphicillustrations enable us to see the exterior and interior of

the various faculties, the institutes of anatomy, physio-logy, and bacteriology, the theatres, the operating room,the hospital clinics and offices, and the school laboratories.Emulating the example of his colleague of the Ministry ofPublic Instruction, the Minister of the Interior publishedtwo volumes. The first contains a brief description of allthe charitable institutions of Hungary. In the openingpassages complaint is made that but little has been con-tributed by private charity, so that what is done is for themost part done by the State. Nevertheless, at the end ofthe volume we are told that within the last 15 years thenumber of beds available for charitable purposes in the

hospitals has augmented three-fold. In 1898 a law was