331

increased. The possibility was raised that some cells responsiblefor " recognition " might persist in the host for some hoursafter irradiation.

J. ANDERSON (Texas) reported rapid hxmatological recoveryin monkeys given 2-5-3.5 x 1012 bone-marrow cells (isologous)three days after irradiation with 900r.

Dr. SIMMONS and others agreed that the chances of treatingsystemic tumours successfully by irradiation were poor at

present. In rats and mice sterilisation of solid tumours andleukxmic tissue required about 4000r, whereas the presentsublethal working limit, except possibly in animals treated withA.E.T. and 5-hydroxytryptamine, was about 1500r, using A.E.T.or marrow transfusion alone. There was still a wide gap to be

spanned.

Medicine and the Law

Drink and Diminished ResponsibilityDESCRIBED by the prison doctor as a psychopathic

personality, a 19-year-old soldier has been found not

guilty of murder on the ground of diminished responsi-bility. He was convicted of manslaughter under theHomicide Act 1957, and sentenced to life imprisonment.The prisoner was charged with the murder in December,

1958, of a woman whose mutilated body was found in bed.The murder remained unsolved until last November when the

police took his fingerprints in connection with another charge.After his arrest, the prisoner made a statement in which hedescribed how he killed the woman; he also referred to attackson two other women.

Dr. Francis Brisby, principal medical officer at Brixton

prison, said that, in his view, the prisoner had a psychopathicpersonality, which expressed itself in aggressiveness withoutsufficient cause and in criminal acts which induced no remorseor shame. When he was 15 his headmaster had described himas difficult and precocious. Two years ago he had tried to hanghimself. For a year he had been drinking heavily. He hadclaimed that he never committed any offence except when indrink. The encephalograph findings were abnormal.

Similar evidence was given by Dr. Denis Leigh.Summing up, Mr. Justice Donovan said that if the jury

accepted the evidence that the prisoner was suffering from anabnormality of the mind which substantially impaired his

responsibility for the killing, they should find him guilty ofmanslaughter instead of murder. In his statement to thepolice, the prisoner had said:

" It is when I get drinking I dothese things. I am all right when I am sober." If a normal

person got drunk or drank to excess and in that condition killed

another, it would be no defence to say that he lost his self-control or that his self-control was diminished. The sectionin the Homicide Act dealing with diminished responsibilitywas not intended to be, nor was it, a charter for drunkards.

His Lordship continued that two doctors had expressed theview that even if the prisoner did not drink he would stillsuffer from an abnormality of the mind which substantiallyimpaired his responsibility. " You are not bound by what thedoctors have said. If you prefer to accept what the manhimself has said, on the grounds that probably he knows best,you are entitled to do on that basis and say guilty of murder."

After the jury had brought in a verdict of manslaughter,his Lordship said that it would be unsafe to impose a sentenceof a fixed term of years at the end of which the prisoner wouldbe set free even if he were as dangerous as he was now. Thesentence must be one which would enable the authorities todetain him until they were satisfied that he could safely minglewith his fellow creatures once again.

It has for many years been a principle of English lawthat loss of self-control through drunkenness is not adefence to a criminal charge. The summing-up in thiscase indicates that there has been no change in thisprinciple as a result of the passing of the Homicide Act.The defence of diminished responsibility under that Act

1. The chairman is Mr. Leslie Farrer-Brown and the members Prof.Melville Arnott, Prof. T. H. Davey, Prof. A. D. M. Greenfield, Prof.P. B. Medawar, Dr. Honor Smith, Prof. R. Milnes Walker, and MissGrace McDonald (secretary).

2. Cent. Afr. J. Med. June, 1958.3. ibid. March, 1959.4. Lancet, 1959, i, 929.

requires some abnormality of mind, and Mr. JusticeDonovan was surely right to tell the jury that meredrunkenness did not suffice.

Medical Education

THE NEW AFRICAN SCHOOL

THE Nuffield Foundation has offered E250.000 to theUniversity College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland towardsthe establishment of a medical school at Salisbury on thelines recommended by the Rhodesia Medical School

Planning Committee. This committee has produced tworeports, the first 2 of which proposed that a medical schoolshould be part of the University College while the second 3outlined a curriculum which has attracted much attentionand was republished at some length in our columns. 4The grant is offered on the understanding that the

teaching hospital takes the form of a new multiracial

hospital on the University College campus. The planningcommittee’s design for the medical course calls for moreintegration than is usual between the preclinical and theclinical parts of the course, and by putting the variousdepartments in close proximity the University College hasan opportunity to create a medical school which mightbecome a model.

When the new medical school is established, it will

initially be an affiliated institution of the University ofBirmingham. The planning committee thought that theschool should provide its successful students with a quali-fication which would be widely accepted, rather than witha diploma of only local value. The University of Birming-ham agreed to help over this, and the details of its relation-ship with the African college are now being worked out.While this relationship continues, students of the new

medical school will be admitted to medical degrees of theUniversity of Birmingham, and appointments to the staffof the medical school will be made only in agreement withthe university. For its part, the university will ensure thatthe shaping of the curriculum to meet local needs andopportunities does not affect the standard of the course orof the examinations required. The relationship betweenthe university and the university college will continue untilthe reputation of the new medical school is so securelyestablished that local degrees which will be widelyaccepted can be awarded. If thought desirable, theassociation of the two schools may indeed continue insome form after the university college has become a fulluniversity awarding its own degrees in faculties other thanmedicine.

It is expected that very close personal relations willdevelop between the medical school at Salisbury and themedical school and the teaching hospital in Birmingham.Staff will be exchanged and joint research undertaken. Itis being suggested, for example, that all members of thestaff of the medical school at Salisbury should also besupernumerary members of the staff of the appropriatedepartment in the Birmingham medical school. Whenfirst appointed, they would spend a period teaching atBirmingham, and at intervals thereafter they wouldrevisit Birmingham to engage, perhaps for a term, in

teaching, research, and other departmental duties.