51

- appeared œdematous but no trichinas were seen. In a teased

fresh specimen as well as in sections of hardened specimensthey were readily found, two or three being seen in each sec-tion encapsuled. The stools were examined for triohinas with

negative results. For five days the temperature ranged fromabout 100° in the morning to about 1020 in the evening and

--then fell to normal. Treatment consisted of rest in bed and

the administration of purgatives and glycerine (the latter forsupposed hygroscopic effect on the parasite). The patientimproved so much that he left the hospital without per-mission. The slightness of the symptoms in this case brings’into relief the value of eosinophilia in the diagnosis.

THE MEDICAL DIRECTORY FOR 1909.

Messrs. J. and A. Churchill issued their ’’ Medical c-

Directory " for 1909 with their usual promptitude during the fi’third week of December, 1908. Comparing the edition of the hcurrent year with that for the year just past we see that the c

total number of names for 1909 is 39,992 as against 39,703, a

being an increase of 289. As regards the several regions t,into which the Directory is divided the number of names in Ithe London list for 1909 is 6420, as against 6550 in 1908. t

The provincial list for England contains 17,354 names as.against 17,211 for the present and past years respectively. (

Wales has 1394 names for 1909 as against 1256 for last year.The corresponding figures for Scotland are 3845 as against3829 names. The Irish list for 1909 contains 2656 names as

against 2660 in 1908. The list of practitioners resident

.abroad contains 5009 names as against 4927 in the last

Directory. The Naval. Military, and Indian Medical Servicesshow 3303 entries as against 3259 in 1908. In both yearsthe Too Late List" contains additional names. We seethat the Local Medical Directory for London is now indexedin the old way mainly under separate streets. This is a real

improvement. The names of medical men resident in

sundry districts such as Acton, Battersea, and Blackheath.are still entered under the general heading of the districtand not under their respective streets, but we presume thatreasons of space have dictated this. The introductorymatter containing a digest of the principal laws affectingthe medical profession and other information is as useful.as ever and altogether we consider the Directory an indis-pensable work of reference. ,

THE WESTMINSTER PLAY.

Ay esteemed correspondent writes :—" Nothing is more I

,certain than that the ’ dead languages’ are not dead-

Latin being in daily, if not hourly, use among the mostnumerous body of Christians, and Greek being still spokenand written in an idiom as little removed from that

of St. Luke or St. Paul as the English of De Quincey orMacaulay is from that of Wycliffe. But even assuming thatthey are as dead’ as they have been called is their

function really gone ? Apart from their educational value,as to which two philosophers so divergent from each other asSir William Hamilton and John Stuart Mill are emphatic-.ally at one, they may appeal to the anatomist’sinduction that it is only through the dead that we canattain a true knowledge of the living. The Latin

syntax has been called the finest illustration of an appliedlogic’ and the vulgar languages,’ it has been said, ’areindebted to the schoolmen for whatever precision and

analytic subtlety they possess ’ ; but more than this, theEnglish of Shakespeare or Milton can be adequately under-stood only by the reader whose philological equipmentincludes a training in the tongues called dead.’ Let us

take a present instance. In a great public school with amodern as well as a classical side, and an English literature ’

class common to both, the pupils in the latter had to para-phrase the lines in Hamlet’ wherein-

’The extravagant and erring spirit hiesTo his confine.’

The modern boy’s version was the spendthrift and sinfulghost’; the classical boy’s was the wayward and wanderingphantom’-the farmer being nonsense and the latter

Shakespeare. Why? Because the classical boy knewhis linguistic ’ anatomy’—the ’ dead’ progenitor of

the living English-which the modern boy did not. Norwas the time spent by the classical boy over his Horaceand his Virgil time thrown away.’ For him the

acquisition of French, even of German, had become an,

easy game’-thanks to the linguistic habit’ which he hadacquired; while in the process his faculties had received a

culture and a refinement denied to his modern’ school-

fellow. ’ Send me up a youth well grounded in the: humanities,’ said the distinguished occupant of a chemical

chair in Austria, and I will answer for his chemistry’ ;. and similar testimony may be quoted from other educa-stionists whose duty it is to prepare young men for the liberal1 professions. If, then, the classics are so worthy of being- taught, they are equally worthy of being taught well-tos which result there is no better preparation than the practice

of committing to memory passages from their ehefs-dœuvre’- and still more of reciting these with that clear resonant

elocution and appropriate ’ action’ recommended by the’s ’ Roman Hippocrates’ as so conducive to health. It is for

this reason that the ’ Westminster Play’-perpetuating aPost-Renaissance tradition unwisely dropped in other schools

es -still commands the sympathy and support of the complete,8 professional mind’-to use the phrase of a distinguished? medical consultant-and that the example it sets is, from:d year to year, being copied in the representation, not only ofal the Latin, but of the Greek drama. The competition thusin set on foot may have the salutary effect of widening theth area of choice’ to which Westminster has hitherto con-ct fined itself, and of giving us, as an annual Christmas treat,at some other Latin chef-d’œuvre than one of the three of

ry Terence or of the two of Plautus. Aristophanes or Euripides,ng or Æschylus, or (most artistic of all) Sophocles, might then:ul have a claim to be represented, and with a success not lessis- conspicuous than that attained in other, even provincial,

schools. Meanwhile, we are very thankful for what we havethis year’s reproduction of the Andria maintaining, morethan adequately, the good old Westminster traditions. The

prologue, with its touching commemoration of old scholarswho have reinforced ’ the majority,’ having previously re-

lost flected honour on their school in the service which they have

rendered to the Motherland at home and abroad-to be

5hat followed by the epilogue (happily called a Latin Punch’s

or Almanac’ or comic retrospect of the facts and affairs of thepast twelvemonth) are features always sure of the welcomewhich they so amply deserve. School life is sweetened andenriched by such well-inspired, well-arranged interludes or

ue, d2vertissenzents-coming, as they do, if only once a year, stillas a perennial reminder of the great Humboldt’s prescriptionin correction of a competitive utilitarianism-° Cherish theBeautiful; the Useful will take care of itself.

THE FEEDING OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLCHILDREN.

ON Dec. 16th, 1908, the London Education Committee

agreed to accept a report from the General Purposes Sub-committee recommending that power should be sought fromthe London County Council to draw 10,000 from the countyfund for the purpose of feeding underfed children in theelementary schools. This practically means that in future

ratepayers will have to provide money for the purpose of

52

feeding those unfortunate children whose parents are eithertoo poor or too lazy to feed them themselves. It must be

allowed that the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906,does not seem to be altogether a success. Moreover, in Paris,to take a city comparable with London, the cantines scolairesprovide a nutritious and interesting meal for children at about2d. per head. We much doubt the capability of any Englishmunicipality either for cooking in the sensible and tasty wayin which Frenchmen do or for cooking even badly at 2d. perhead. English rates rise with the rapidity of the sums inthe well-known problem about the farthing for each nail ina horse’s shoes. But we quite agree that if the State is to ’,educate children, and apparently it must do so, that it is ilmere waste of money to try to educate a child who is prac-tically starving. The problem is a serious one, and it wouldbe well for those politicians who have hailed the decisionas a party victory to take a lesson from the Paris MunicipalCouncil as to how that body manages to run its cantines

scolaires in the excellent way in which they are run, andmore important still as to its system of inspection as to what Iparents can pay and as to what parents can really not pay. ’

MODERN FORMS OF ADULTERATIONS OFDRUGS.

ABOUT a year ago the drug laboratory of the Bureau ofChemistry of the United States Department of Agriculturewas assigned the duty of ascertaining whether the drugs im.ported and those distributed from one State to another weretrue to name and of a suitable quality for the manufactureof medicinal preparations. The work was intrusted to Dr.

H. H. Rusby, a pharmacologist, whose first report 1 affordsmuch valuable information as to the mode of adulteratingdrugs and the extent to which it is now carried on. Dr.

Rusby examines every drug that is imported at New Yorkabout which the inspector is at all doubtful, and the admis-sion or deportation of drugs then rests with the Treasury.A consignment of belladonna root was found to contain pokeroot and scopola, but it ultimately entered the countrythrough another port. A broker imported five tons of

ground olive pits on behalf of a firm who, according to hisstatement, intended to use the article as a filler for chickenfood. This is an interesting case, because the firm in questiondealt only in drugs and had no connexion with chickenfoods. But as the shipment was neither adulterated nor

misbranded there were no legal grounds for preventing itsentry into the country. The firm’s powdered drugs werethen examined and within a few months ground olive pitswere found in five samples out of nine. Nearly every ship-ment of belladonna root contained from 15 to 42 per cent.of poke root, one contained 50 per cent. of ground olive pits.and a consignment of cut dandelion root was adulterated withmore than 40 per cent. of small stones ingeniously selectedon account of their similar size and colour. The first year’swork showed that much of the adulteration was intentional

and studied. Sand, either alone or mixed with starch or

foreign vegetable matter, was found in many drugs, includinghenbane (28 per cent.), aniseed (25 per cent.), benzoin (40 to50 per cent.), kamala, lycopodium, and senna. Ground

olive pits were found to a considerable extent in many drugs,including gentian and ipecacuanha. In several cases a

drug which is officially ordered to be derived from one

country was imported from another as the genuine article.Thus, Mexican ipomoea root arrived at one time as scammonyand at another as jalap, and Japanese aconite and scopolawere offered in place of the European drugs. The danger ofsuch a procedure is great, since the so-called Mexican

scammony has not been shown to be equivalent to the product i1 The Western Druggist, November, 1908, p. 691.

of the Levant, and the aconitine obtained from Japaneseaconite is not identical with that derived from the Europeanplant. Shipments of henbane were found to be mixed withstramonium, mylabois was offered for cantharides, the

trimming of chicory bark for dandelion root, and worthlessmaracaibo bark for cinchona, while spurious drugs were

offered in place of jaborandi, arnica, buchu, gentian, and

matico. A consignment of santonica was found to be largelyadulterated with exhausted birch bark, and in spite of

repeated exposures the worthless brown strophanthus hispiduscontinued to arrive, thus perpetuating a fraud which if notchecked would jeopardise a great many lives. Specimens of

.

lactucarium arrived in a mouldy condition and some jambulseeds were found to be hollowed out by worms. A shipmentof nux vomica seeds consisted largely of small worthless

seeds which had been rolled in a mixture of clay andvegetable matter to imitate the genuine seeds in size andgeneral appearance. Several other drugs were found to beartificial, including benzoin, balsam of Peru, storax, and

saffron, the last-named consisting of calendula heavilycoated with mineral matter and dyed. Probably themost important and interesting experience of the year’swork was the importation of three shipments of hyoscyamusmuticus as ’’ henbane." This is a very large plant and it iscollected in Egypt so cheaply that it costs less than one-

twentieth the price of the medicinal drug. It is particularlyattractive to the importer from the fact that it usually con-tains from 1 to 1.25 per cent. of hyoscyamine, whereas thegenuine drug contains only about one-twelfth of 1 per cent.On this account it is brought down to the official standard bymixing it with inferior grades of henbane and disposed of inthe powdered form. Dr. Rusby’s report is of world-wide

interest because it deals with medicinal products obtainedfrom every drug-yielding country. Some of these are liableto appear on the English market and it is desirable, there- ’

fore, that home importers should be on their guard. The

selection of medicinal agents should not be influenced by lowcommercial considerations and no precautions should be

neglected to avoid the introduction of fraudulent drugs orthose of poor quality into the country. It is in matters ofthis kind that the pharmacist, whether wholesale or retail, iscalled upon to exercise professional functions and to providethe physician with the very best materials with which to

combat disease.

LONGEVITY IN NORFOLK.

THE occurrence of extreme old age seems to be more

frequent in the country than in the towns, although manyinstances may be pointed to of longevity in town dwellers.Exact statistics would be difficult to come by, as the place ofdeath may not have been the habitat of the deceased for any

length of time, while the country centenarian is more apt,in the absence of other topics of conversation, to become acelebrity and to receive the honour of a paragraph in thenewspapers. As a rule, no great reliance can be placed uponthe statements made by old persons themselves and theirrelatives as to age. There is nearly always a tendency toexaggerate. "This," writes a correspondent, "has beenstrongly exemplified whilst gathering information regardingthose who had applied for the old age pension. In the

majority of instances which came under my notice applicantshad added considerably to the length of their years. How-

ever, collecting the necessary details brought to light thefact that there are in the rural districts of England a verylarge number of persons who have exceeded the allotted spanof life. For example, in Norfolk there are in every villageindividuals of more than 80 years of age, and not infrequentlyone or two over 90, and those of 70 and upwards are regardedas not even old. Many farm labourers of 70 are quite hale