1700

£36. It is quite probable, therefore, that ratepayers wouldbe confronted with a sum of, in round figures, and allowingfor excess of expenditure over estimate, of either £55,000 or£79,000 and neither of these schemes would provide for thetotal number of 319 children affected. The London CountyCouncil could easily satisfy themselves as to the goodworking of the Children’s Farm Home Association. The

only difficulty which might arise in carrying out Miss Close’ssuggestion is that some epileptic children do require specialaccommodation, or at least special care. But as the Educa-tion Committee of the County Council has adopted therecommendation of its Special Schools Subcommittee, ’’ thatprovision should be made for educable epileptic childrenunder the provisions of the Elementary Education (Defectiveand Epileptic Children) Act, 1889," we suppose that" educable" " means that the children in question are notvery seriously affected, and therefore we think that MissClose’s letter is one to be reckoned with.

THE EFFECTS OF SULPHUROUS ACID ANDSULPHITES UPON DIGESTION AND

HEALTH.

THE notable researches of Dr. H. W. Wiley on the actionof food preservatives upon the human body have now beenextended to sulphurous acid and the sulphites.1 The rela-

tions of sulphurous acid to health are perhaps of greaterimportance than those of the preservatives already studied,because it is more generally used than any other preservative,particularly in the preservation of wines, dried fruits, syrups,and molasses. In the case of wine the cleansing of thebarrels by the action of burning sulphur prevents thosesecondary changes that would otherwise produce the ripening of the wine. The wine thus appears to be mature within

Ione or two years, whereas its natural maturation requires alonger time. In the manufacture of syrups and molasses itis quite customary to expose the freshly expressed juice ofthe cane to sulphur fumes. The sulphur dioxide forms moreor less stable compounds with the components of the juice,and a part of it passes into the finished product, especially inmolasses, low grades of which contain extraordinarilylarge quantities of free and combined sulphur dioxide.

Apricots, peaches, pears, ’and other fruits are frequentlysulphured before desiccation in order to produce a

clear and intense yellow colour, to prevent fermentationand decay, to conceal decayed portions of the fruit, to pro-tect from insects and their larvae, and to hasten the dryingprocess. It is important to notice that highly sulphuredfruits are preserved with a lower degree of desiccation thanthose not sulphured. It is not difficult in this way to pre-serve a water content of 30 per cent. in the finished product,thus enabling the manufacturer to obtain a greater yieldfrom a given weight of raw material. The organisation ofthis series of experiments was practically identical with thatadopted in the experiments with boric and salicylic acids.The experiments were conducted on a "poison squad," asthey are facetiously termed, of 12 young men from theUnited States Department of Agriculture and a local medicalschool, who voluntarily assumed the obligations imposed onthem to eat only the food provided for them at the hygienictable, to collect and deliver for analysis the excreta of theirbodies, to observe regular hours of sleep and work, to indulgein no unusual exercise or study, and generally to pursue theordinary tenour of their lives. The preservative was ad-ministered in two forms, sodium sulphite being administeredin capsules to one-half the number, while sulphurous acid wasadded to the drinking water of the others. The average dailyconsumption for 20 days was 0’ 392 to 0’ 628 gramme ofsodium sul phite, or 0’ 213 to 0’ 343 gramme of sulphur dioxide. I

1 Circular No. 37, Bureau of Chemistry. United States Department ofAgriculture, pp. 18, issued Nov. 22nd, 1907.

The medical and clinical data, in Dr. Wiley’s opinion, showthat sulphurous acid and its salts in the free state produceharmful effects, the metabolic functions being disturbed andthe health, particularly the digestion, being injuriouslyaffected. In the great majority of cases headache, sensa-tions of dizziness and occasional nausea, indigestion, painsin the stomach, exhaustion, weakness, and in some casespalpitation of the heart, and other unfavourable symptomswere noticed. Of these the most prominent symptom washeadache. Abundant evidence was obtained to show thatthese preservatives unfavourably influence the metabolism.The assimilation of food materials containing organicphosphorus was retarded while the sulphur catabolism wasincreased. The sulphur balance-sheets showed that the

kidneys were called upon to remove from the bodynearly, if not all, the added sulphur in the form of sulphuricacid or its salts. Microscopic examinations showed an

increase in the number of crystalline and amorphousbodies in the urine indicating the unusual demandsmade upon the kidneys. The habitual overworking ofthese organs might be expected sooner,or later to producelesions, poesibly of an incurable type. It was alsoobserved that there was a marked tendency to albuminuria.The most important results of these experiments relate to thereduction in the quantity of haemoglobin and in the numberof red and white blood corpuscles, particularly the latter,under the action of sulphurous acid and its salts. Theadministration of a substance which diminishes to a notableextent these important constituents of the blood is regardedas highly prejudicial to health. Throughout the experimentsthe variations of the metabolic processes from the normalwere never of a character favourable to a more healthy con-dition of the system. The evidence all points to the factthat sulphurous acid and its salts are purely drugs, havingno value as foods and exerting nothing but harmful effectsupon the metabolic processes. The conclusion is thereforedrawn that the use of sulphurous acid or its salts, in anyquantity or for any period, as preservatives of foods should

be avoided. -

"THE WASTE OF DAYLIGHT."" And the best of all waysTo lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."

Sues was the opinion, or at least the suggestion, ofThomas Moore, the author of the celebrated ‘ Irish

Melodies," and in the present year of grace Mr. WilliamWillett of Sloane-square, London, has come forward with aproposal of equal whimsicality. In reading Mr. Willett’s

pages, from which the heading of the present article is

borrowed, we cannot help calling to mind the story ofthe Irishman who lengthened his blanket by cutting apiece off the bottom and sewing it to the top. The new

scheme has the undeniable merit of extreme simplicity,and it holds out the promise of substantial benefits-noless than a saving of about .63,000,000 per annum inthe money paid for artificial light and a gain of a wholeyear (of daylight) in the life of a man aged 28 years.All that is required to secure these advantages is to

put forward the hands of the clock 20 minutes at

2 A.M. in each of the four weeks in the month of Aprilso that by the end of the month the clock is one hour and20 minutes in advance of Greenwich mean time. In thefour weeks of September the clock is similarly put backuntil it once more shows Greenwich mean time. Someone

may be prosaic enough to say that all this amounts to

nothing more than getting up so much earlier in the summermornings and leaving off work so much earlier in the summerafternoons. That is, in fact, our opinion and we fear that

there is little prospect of the afternoons and evenings beingmade longer by juggling with the hands of the clock. We