- Email: [email protected]
BY WOMEN FOR WOMEN
742 nurses’ home, also a Victorian building, has the intimate quality as the hospital. The rooms, of various shapes and sizes, with agreeable and unexpected differences of structure, decoration, equipment, and outlook, gain fresh individuality from the taste of the owners ; nothing could be less institutional or stereotyped. The whole building is well warmed, and there are good kitchens, a roomy pantry where the sisters can make tea or do their ironing, a large comfortable sitting-room, and a The
Notes and News
same
EMPIRE MEDICAL ADVISORY BUREAU
THE council of the British Medical Association have made timely and friendly gesture in setting up this bureau to help doctors from overseas who are visiting this country. A committee of management has already been appointed, and this week applications are invited (in our advertisement columns) for the position of director. When the bureau is in action visitors will be able to turn to it for information about postgraduate study and about suitable lodgings and hotels, as well as for letters of introduction to their British colleagues, both specialists and general practitioners. But it will not be bound by academic and professional limits. To the stranger everyday life in this country must often seem bewildering and intricate ; his ration book is in a mysterious code, tickets for the ballet are hard to come by, and he is uncertain where the Derby is run. With all these problems the bureau will lend a helping hand. In short the new director’s job will be to enable his visiting colleagues to feel at home and find their way around. a
new
friendly and
pleasant garden. Sir William Douglas, secretary of the Ministry of Health, who replied to the Duchess of Gloucester’s good wishes for the future of the hospital and of the new nurses’ home, advised all donors to give at once, since money given before the appointed day will be used for the individual hospitals Alderman Mrs. R. S. G. Carnegie, on which it is bestowed. the mayor of Hampstead, spoke of the hope of future discoveries in the research department of the hospital. CHRISTMAS SEALS THE National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis growing commitments : the number of Colonial training scholarships for doctors and other health workers has been increased, and last July a conference held in London was attended by over a thousand delegates. For the continuance of its work the association looks largely to proceeds from the sale of its Christmas seals, from which source about f 250,000 has been obtained in the last ten years. This year the seals, presented as in previous years by the Canadian Tuberculosis Association, depict in cheerful colours a team of oxen bringing home the Yule log. The seals may be obtained, at a cost of 4s. per sheet of 100, from the Duchess of Portland, Chairman N.A.P.T., Tavistock House North, Tavistock Square, London, W.C.I.
has THE SURGEON AND THE ID
A SUCCESSFUL analysis, they say, must be founded on a good transference " between psycho-analyst and patient. But neurotics, who are as chancy-or as predetermined-in their likings as anybody else, may form their transferences with quite the wrong people. ’The frustrate young man in Mary Renault’s latest book, Return to -L B7ight,’. chooses a surgeon. Luckily for him she has read some psychology, and when not being pompous about her work (a weakness not entirely confined to surgeons, after all) is a mature and pleasant The young man has been hamstrung for any part person. in real life by his deep attachment to his mother and by the love and hate she bears him. Here, then, are materials for a psychological study of two people whose love for each other is hampered by disparity of years (the surgeon is much the older), old bondage, unfamiliar crises, and purely practical obstructions-ample material, little of which is wasted. But the discontented Miss Renault throws in all sorts of extras-underground caves, fighting drunks, calumny, runaway horses, and finally an unlikely premarital experience for the frigid mother. What do we want with these Jane Eyre-ish accessories ? Her characters, caught in their inward web, are living at many levels ; their conversations are haunted with overtones ; they are forever blundering and trespassing, healing, and restoring. But, into this personal adventure, drama keeps breaking so destructively that Miss Renault has to summarise whole phases ; and indeed at her tenth chapter, in a few pages of bald exposition, reduces her own carefully wrought mystery to dust. Her trouble is that she doesn’t know how well she writes. The book, however, has been awarded the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prize of 40,000 as the outstanding novel of the year, and will shortly be filmed. No doubt the caves and so forth will prove a "
_
EARTH-EATING
IT is hard to see why the idea of earth-eating excites repulsion, whereas the prospect of eating a dead animal seems unobjectionable-pleasant, indeed. Patients will swallow chalk or kaolin without demur when earth in such forms is prescribed by the physician ; and minerals derived from the earth, such as salt, iron, and mercury, rouse no distaste when offered in food or medicaments : and what is a barium meal but geophagy ? No doubt the mother’s horrified conviction " that earth-eating is dirty makes a strong impression on the young child ; and the association of pica with mental disorders and with parasitic infestations later heightens such "
disgust. Yet in many
1. London: Longmans, Green.
Pp. 356. 10s. 6d.
Robertson1
points fertility
He quotes Dr. Leonhart Ranwolf, who in the sixteenth noted that the women of Tripoli ate an earth called jusabar. Sir George Watt found the same practices in India in 1908. A comestible clay, found near Koluth, is sold in the bazaars to improve the complexion. The edible earth most cqmmonly eaten is said to be a light yellow ochre, called m2dtan,i mitti, which is taken in doses of about gr. 5-30 to relieve acidity of the stomach. Other edible earths are Sang-iBasri, imported from the Persian Gulf and used in tonic preparations ; a sweet-scented earth called Sausrastra mrittika, given as an astringent for internal bleeding ; and the goastone, made from fine fuller’s earth, compressed into the form of a large egg and scented and gilded, a little of which is scraped off and taken in water as a remedy for many disorders. Potter’s earth for eating is sold in the Calcutta bazaar in partly baked saucer-shaped chips about 2 in. in diameter. Robertson considers that most of the earths eaten in India are fuller’s earth containing the clay mineral montmorillonite, as well as some silica. The " Samian stone " mentioned by Pliny, between A.D. 23 and 79, is thought to have been a compact form of kaolinite such as lithomarge. Chaucer mentions " bole armoniac," or Armenian earth, which was used as an antidote for poison, and for stanching wounds. This early reputation of adsorbent earths received scientific confirmation only as late as 1914, when J. A. Lloyd reported that the finer particles of fuller’s earth would remove alkaloids from solution ; and the next year B. Fantus noted that fuller’s earth was beneficial in cases of morphine, nicotine, and ipecacuanha
century
-
SMALL and intimate, staffed entirely by women, the Marie Curie Hospital occupies a Victorian house in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead. The original hospital, founded in 1929, for the treatment of women with cancer, by the London Association of the Medical Women’s Federation, was destroyed by a bomb in 1944, and this second building was opened in May, 1946, with 11 beds. On Oct. 22 when H.R.H. the Duchess of Gloucester opened the new nurses’ home, Lady Moran, the chairman of the board of management, was able to announce that there are now some 50-60 beds in action, and that, when times allow, it is hoped to build a new hospital on the old site which will bring the full complement of beds up to 100. Fortunately the Helen Chambers research laboratory was undamaged. Since 1944, when an appeal was launched after the bombing, the hospital has received donations to the value of 120,000 from the public, and has been able to acquire, besides the new hospital building, two new houses to receive nurses and domestic staff, and another house in Fitzjohn’s Avenue which will be used by ambulatory and convalescent patients, thus sparing beds in the main hospital.
as
reasons or as a
rite.
Metro-goldmine. BY WOMEN FOR WOMEN
parts of the world,
out, earth is eaten either for medicinal
1. Robertson, R. H. S.
Discovery, 1947, 8, 213.
Notes and News
same
EMPIRE MEDICAL ADVISORY BUREAU
THE council of the British Medical Association have made timely and friendly gesture in setting up this bureau to help doctors from overseas who are visiting this country. A committee of management has already been appointed, and this week applications are invited (in our advertisement columns) for the position of director. When the bureau is in action visitors will be able to turn to it for information about postgraduate study and about suitable lodgings and hotels, as well as for letters of introduction to their British colleagues, both specialists and general practitioners. But it will not be bound by academic and professional limits. To the stranger everyday life in this country must often seem bewildering and intricate ; his ration book is in a mysterious code, tickets for the ballet are hard to come by, and he is uncertain where the Derby is run. With all these problems the bureau will lend a helping hand. In short the new director’s job will be to enable his visiting colleagues to feel at home and find their way around. a
new
friendly and
pleasant garden. Sir William Douglas, secretary of the Ministry of Health, who replied to the Duchess of Gloucester’s good wishes for the future of the hospital and of the new nurses’ home, advised all donors to give at once, since money given before the appointed day will be used for the individual hospitals Alderman Mrs. R. S. G. Carnegie, on which it is bestowed. the mayor of Hampstead, spoke of the hope of future discoveries in the research department of the hospital. CHRISTMAS SEALS THE National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis growing commitments : the number of Colonial training scholarships for doctors and other health workers has been increased, and last July a conference held in London was attended by over a thousand delegates. For the continuance of its work the association looks largely to proceeds from the sale of its Christmas seals, from which source about f 250,000 has been obtained in the last ten years. This year the seals, presented as in previous years by the Canadian Tuberculosis Association, depict in cheerful colours a team of oxen bringing home the Yule log. The seals may be obtained, at a cost of 4s. per sheet of 100, from the Duchess of Portland, Chairman N.A.P.T., Tavistock House North, Tavistock Square, London, W.C.I.
has THE SURGEON AND THE ID
A SUCCESSFUL analysis, they say, must be founded on a good transference " between psycho-analyst and patient. But neurotics, who are as chancy-or as predetermined-in their likings as anybody else, may form their transferences with quite the wrong people. ’The frustrate young man in Mary Renault’s latest book, Return to -L B7ight,’. chooses a surgeon. Luckily for him she has read some psychology, and when not being pompous about her work (a weakness not entirely confined to surgeons, after all) is a mature and pleasant The young man has been hamstrung for any part person. in real life by his deep attachment to his mother and by the love and hate she bears him. Here, then, are materials for a psychological study of two people whose love for each other is hampered by disparity of years (the surgeon is much the older), old bondage, unfamiliar crises, and purely practical obstructions-ample material, little of which is wasted. But the discontented Miss Renault throws in all sorts of extras-underground caves, fighting drunks, calumny, runaway horses, and finally an unlikely premarital experience for the frigid mother. What do we want with these Jane Eyre-ish accessories ? Her characters, caught in their inward web, are living at many levels ; their conversations are haunted with overtones ; they are forever blundering and trespassing, healing, and restoring. But, into this personal adventure, drama keeps breaking so destructively that Miss Renault has to summarise whole phases ; and indeed at her tenth chapter, in a few pages of bald exposition, reduces her own carefully wrought mystery to dust. Her trouble is that she doesn’t know how well she writes. The book, however, has been awarded the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prize of 40,000 as the outstanding novel of the year, and will shortly be filmed. No doubt the caves and so forth will prove a "
_
EARTH-EATING
IT is hard to see why the idea of earth-eating excites repulsion, whereas the prospect of eating a dead animal seems unobjectionable-pleasant, indeed. Patients will swallow chalk or kaolin without demur when earth in such forms is prescribed by the physician ; and minerals derived from the earth, such as salt, iron, and mercury, rouse no distaste when offered in food or medicaments : and what is a barium meal but geophagy ? No doubt the mother’s horrified conviction " that earth-eating is dirty makes a strong impression on the young child ; and the association of pica with mental disorders and with parasitic infestations later heightens such "
disgust. Yet in many
1. London: Longmans, Green.
Pp. 356. 10s. 6d.
Robertson1
points fertility
He quotes Dr. Leonhart Ranwolf, who in the sixteenth noted that the women of Tripoli ate an earth called jusabar. Sir George Watt found the same practices in India in 1908. A comestible clay, found near Koluth, is sold in the bazaars to improve the complexion. The edible earth most cqmmonly eaten is said to be a light yellow ochre, called m2dtan,i mitti, which is taken in doses of about gr. 5-30 to relieve acidity of the stomach. Other edible earths are Sang-iBasri, imported from the Persian Gulf and used in tonic preparations ; a sweet-scented earth called Sausrastra mrittika, given as an astringent for internal bleeding ; and the goastone, made from fine fuller’s earth, compressed into the form of a large egg and scented and gilded, a little of which is scraped off and taken in water as a remedy for many disorders. Potter’s earth for eating is sold in the Calcutta bazaar in partly baked saucer-shaped chips about 2 in. in diameter. Robertson considers that most of the earths eaten in India are fuller’s earth containing the clay mineral montmorillonite, as well as some silica. The " Samian stone " mentioned by Pliny, between A.D. 23 and 79, is thought to have been a compact form of kaolinite such as lithomarge. Chaucer mentions " bole armoniac," or Armenian earth, which was used as an antidote for poison, and for stanching wounds. This early reputation of adsorbent earths received scientific confirmation only as late as 1914, when J. A. Lloyd reported that the finer particles of fuller’s earth would remove alkaloids from solution ; and the next year B. Fantus noted that fuller’s earth was beneficial in cases of morphine, nicotine, and ipecacuanha
century
-
SMALL and intimate, staffed entirely by women, the Marie Curie Hospital occupies a Victorian house in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead. The original hospital, founded in 1929, for the treatment of women with cancer, by the London Association of the Medical Women’s Federation, was destroyed by a bomb in 1944, and this second building was opened in May, 1946, with 11 beds. On Oct. 22 when H.R.H. the Duchess of Gloucester opened the new nurses’ home, Lady Moran, the chairman of the board of management, was able to announce that there are now some 50-60 beds in action, and that, when times allow, it is hoped to build a new hospital on the old site which will bring the full complement of beds up to 100. Fortunately the Helen Chambers research laboratory was undamaged. Since 1944, when an appeal was launched after the bombing, the hospital has received donations to the value of 120,000 from the public, and has been able to acquire, besides the new hospital building, two new houses to receive nurses and domestic staff, and another house in Fitzjohn’s Avenue which will be used by ambulatory and convalescent patients, thus sparing beds in the main hospital.
as
reasons or as a
rite.
Metro-goldmine. BY WOMEN FOR WOMEN
parts of the world,
out, earth is eaten either for medicinal
1. Robertson, R. H. S.
Discovery, 1947, 8, 213.