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CRIME AND RELIGION.
865 that removal from exposure to the dust may delay a - disabling fibrosis for years, but that exposure to heavy - concentrations for a short period of years will result dn disabling fibrosis, although, when the hazard is left, the worker may not notice anything amiss with his health. Asbestosis is in fact a product of two factors-concentration of dust in the air breathed, .and length of exposure thereto. With whole-hearted cooperation and modern methods of procedure, prevention of this industrial disease seems possible. First-aid equipment is being generally used in factories
with understanding and often with enthusiasm; but exceptions occur, as when the manager of a rag.sorting factory said that he only stocked iodine, as there were plenty of rags in the place. The report closes with a reference to electrical .accidents which have scarcely increased in numbers notwithstanding the vast increase in electrical hazards - due to a greater supply of current. CRIME AND RELIGION.
MANY people who do not accept the creeds of the .churches nevertheless consider that their function of guardians of morality is a sufficient justification for - their existence. For the most part they have been .content to leave this as an assumption. W. A. Bonger in his study of Criminality and Economic Conditions " -concluded that the minimum of criminality is .shown by the irreligious. M. Parmalee’s retort to this was that the irreligious group includes a larger percentage of people who think for themselves -a fact which implies a higher standard of intelli.gence and education which is not usually correlated with criminality. This, he says, is not because intelligence and education are in themselves necessarily preventives of crime, but because they are likely to place a person in a position in society where the temptations towards criminal conduct are comparatively small. Such explanation is ingenious but probably unnecessary. Bonger’s criminality rates have too fallacious an air about them to be impressive. " When the Devil was ill, the Devil a monk would be," .and once the criminal is a prisoner there are obvious .advantages, Dr. J. R. Miner points out, in claiming membership of some church and not proclaiming agnosticism too firmly. Dr. Miner himself has ,endeavoured statistically to measure the influence of the churches on crime.’ His method of approach is by correlating the percentages of church-members in different areas with the criminality of those areas, using the figures from the 1926 census of religious bodies in each of the United States and the 1923 census of prisoners. His conclusion is that though .some slight relationship between number of churchmembers and commitment ratios suggests itself, there is little evidence in these data that the churches play any large part in the prevention of crime. His .study leaves the reader still with the feeling of indefiniteness as to what " church-membership "
"
actually implies. Many people
at
a
census,
one can
believe, would return themselves as belonging to some denomination, and hesitate to proclaim them-
selves " irreligious." Their membership may merely in name and in nothing else. In the late
be war
every British combatant, no matter how unorthodox his views, had a religion ascribed upon his identification disc, but it is too much to hope that this " churchmembership " was negatively correlated with the war-time cult of wangling. In fact church membership in this case meant nothing. Another flaw in 1 Human Biology, September, 1931.
the statistics from the United States that naturally suggests itself is the possibility of inter-State variations in commitments for crime, and it is hard to say how far Dr. Miner has accurately allowed for this.
GLANDULAR FEVER.
AFTER the period of oblivion and discredit that followed its first description by Pfeiffer, glandular fever has at length attained recognition as a definite clinical entity. This has been due in part to the steady growth of clinical records of the disease, which has resulted in a better understanding of what are and what are not the essential features, but chiefly to observations on the specific blood changes which form the most characteristic single symptom. It is now agreed that the three cardinal symptoms are generalised enlargement of the lymph glands, fever, and the specific lymphocytosis. To these basic signs may be added many minor symptoms and complications whose presence or absence accounts for the variety of the different types of the disease. One of the more lately noticed of these minor symptoms is the occasional presence of a transiently Attention was positive Wassermann reaction. M. directed to this test Radford and recently by J. D. Rollestonand emphasis is again laid upon it by F. Parkes Weber and O. B. Bode2 who plead for its use in all cases. But while glandular fever has been well served from the side of diagnosis and clinical study this cannot be said of its pathology. It is not unnatural that pathological study of a benign disease should be backward but it is surprising that there are so few descriptions of the histology of lymph glands from cases of glandular fever. Apart from a description of six glands studied by Rohner, Baldridge, and Hansmann in 1925, Dr. C. L. G. i Pratt’s note in our last issue is the most important contribution to this subject. Those who have studied the histology of glands in this disease will recognise his description of reticulo-endothelial hyperplasia as more typical of the condition than the lymphoid hyperplasia that Rohner, Baldridge, and Hansmann mention. Pratt considers that the histology indicates the possibility of infection by a filtrable virus and points out its resemblance to that seen by J. O. W. Bland3 in rabbits inoculated with the blood of patients with glandular fever. Bland, at the London Hospital, has now shown, however, that the disease he evokes in rabbits is due to the presence of protozoa of the4 These protozoa differ from genus toxoplasma.4 other toxoplasmata in their ability to infect monkeys and to produce in them a disease closely resembling human glandular fever. Bland appears to think that these protozoa may be the cause of the disease in man but admits that confirmatory evidence is required. Apart from this work the only successful attempt to isolate an organism from glandular fever is that of A. G. Nyfeldt 5 whose claims to cultivate from the blood a bacillus that produces a monocytosis in rabbits have not been confirmed although his technique is easilyreproducible. Experimental work on glandular fever has been much neglected in spite of the fact that its symptoms, course, and epidemiology point to its being a specific infection. It is possible that if those who have access to cases would now direct their energies to experimental investigation rather than 2
5
1 THE LANCET, 1930, ii., 18. Münch. Med. Woch., Sept. 18th, p. 1598. 3 THE LANCET, 1930, ii., 521. 4 Brit. Jour. Exp. Path., 1931, xii., 311. Compt. rend. Soc. de biol., 1929, ci., 590.
with understanding and often with enthusiasm; but exceptions occur, as when the manager of a rag.sorting factory said that he only stocked iodine, as there were plenty of rags in the place. The report closes with a reference to electrical .accidents which have scarcely increased in numbers notwithstanding the vast increase in electrical hazards - due to a greater supply of current. CRIME AND RELIGION.
MANY people who do not accept the creeds of the .churches nevertheless consider that their function of guardians of morality is a sufficient justification for - their existence. For the most part they have been .content to leave this as an assumption. W. A. Bonger in his study of Criminality and Economic Conditions " -concluded that the minimum of criminality is .shown by the irreligious. M. Parmalee’s retort to this was that the irreligious group includes a larger percentage of people who think for themselves -a fact which implies a higher standard of intelli.gence and education which is not usually correlated with criminality. This, he says, is not because intelligence and education are in themselves necessarily preventives of crime, but because they are likely to place a person in a position in society where the temptations towards criminal conduct are comparatively small. Such explanation is ingenious but probably unnecessary. Bonger’s criminality rates have too fallacious an air about them to be impressive. " When the Devil was ill, the Devil a monk would be," .and once the criminal is a prisoner there are obvious .advantages, Dr. J. R. Miner points out, in claiming membership of some church and not proclaiming agnosticism too firmly. Dr. Miner himself has ,endeavoured statistically to measure the influence of the churches on crime.’ His method of approach is by correlating the percentages of church-members in different areas with the criminality of those areas, using the figures from the 1926 census of religious bodies in each of the United States and the 1923 census of prisoners. His conclusion is that though .some slight relationship between number of churchmembers and commitment ratios suggests itself, there is little evidence in these data that the churches play any large part in the prevention of crime. His .study leaves the reader still with the feeling of indefiniteness as to what " church-membership "
"
actually implies. Many people
at
a
census,
one can
believe, would return themselves as belonging to some denomination, and hesitate to proclaim them-
selves " irreligious." Their membership may merely in name and in nothing else. In the late
be war
every British combatant, no matter how unorthodox his views, had a religion ascribed upon his identification disc, but it is too much to hope that this " churchmembership " was negatively correlated with the war-time cult of wangling. In fact church membership in this case meant nothing. Another flaw in 1 Human Biology, September, 1931.
the statistics from the United States that naturally suggests itself is the possibility of inter-State variations in commitments for crime, and it is hard to say how far Dr. Miner has accurately allowed for this.
GLANDULAR FEVER.
AFTER the period of oblivion and discredit that followed its first description by Pfeiffer, glandular fever has at length attained recognition as a definite clinical entity. This has been due in part to the steady growth of clinical records of the disease, which has resulted in a better understanding of what are and what are not the essential features, but chiefly to observations on the specific blood changes which form the most characteristic single symptom. It is now agreed that the three cardinal symptoms are generalised enlargement of the lymph glands, fever, and the specific lymphocytosis. To these basic signs may be added many minor symptoms and complications whose presence or absence accounts for the variety of the different types of the disease. One of the more lately noticed of these minor symptoms is the occasional presence of a transiently Attention was positive Wassermann reaction. M. directed to this test Radford and recently by J. D. Rollestonand emphasis is again laid upon it by F. Parkes Weber and O. B. Bode2 who plead for its use in all cases. But while glandular fever has been well served from the side of diagnosis and clinical study this cannot be said of its pathology. It is not unnatural that pathological study of a benign disease should be backward but it is surprising that there are so few descriptions of the histology of lymph glands from cases of glandular fever. Apart from a description of six glands studied by Rohner, Baldridge, and Hansmann in 1925, Dr. C. L. G. i Pratt’s note in our last issue is the most important contribution to this subject. Those who have studied the histology of glands in this disease will recognise his description of reticulo-endothelial hyperplasia as more typical of the condition than the lymphoid hyperplasia that Rohner, Baldridge, and Hansmann mention. Pratt considers that the histology indicates the possibility of infection by a filtrable virus and points out its resemblance to that seen by J. O. W. Bland3 in rabbits inoculated with the blood of patients with glandular fever. Bland, at the London Hospital, has now shown, however, that the disease he evokes in rabbits is due to the presence of protozoa of the4 These protozoa differ from genus toxoplasma.4 other toxoplasmata in their ability to infect monkeys and to produce in them a disease closely resembling human glandular fever. Bland appears to think that these protozoa may be the cause of the disease in man but admits that confirmatory evidence is required. Apart from this work the only successful attempt to isolate an organism from glandular fever is that of A. G. Nyfeldt 5 whose claims to cultivate from the blood a bacillus that produces a monocytosis in rabbits have not been confirmed although his technique is easilyreproducible. Experimental work on glandular fever has been much neglected in spite of the fact that its symptoms, course, and epidemiology point to its being a specific infection. It is possible that if those who have access to cases would now direct their energies to experimental investigation rather than 2
5
1 THE LANCET, 1930, ii., 18. Münch. Med. Woch., Sept. 18th, p. 1598. 3 THE LANCET, 1930, ii., 521. 4 Brit. Jour. Exp. Path., 1931, xii., 311. Compt. rend. Soc. de biol., 1929, ci., 590.