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FEWER MEDICAL JOURNALS
400 Lord
FEWER MEDICAL JOURNALS
SINCE the war we know less and less how the rest of the world wags. News becomes staler and scantier and the pile of foreign journals on the editorial table grows steadily smaller. From Europe during the past few months we have received at irregular intervals the Schiveizerische Medizinisc7u. Wochenschrift-on Sept. 2 the issue of July 30 arrived; the Acta Chirurgica 86andinavica which is published at Stockholm arrives at long intervals (the issue of June 29 came to hand on Sept. 16) ; and at the end of August we were happy to the new Spanish journal Revista Clinica Espanola. These are the only three journals we have lately received from Europe. For a belligerent this But in the current was perhaps only to be expected. issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (Aug. 24, 1940, p. 618) the growing isolation even of a neutral is described: " Gradually since the end of May there has been a diminution in the receipt of medical publications coming from abroad.... The most recent shipment from Germany arrived on July 22, at which time, however, only two periodicals were received. On June 26 eight periodicals came, but the last large shipment arrived on May 27. Already, therefore, some of the German publications are more than three months in arrears. Some Austrian weekly publications which used to arrive every seven to ten days have not
welcome
been received since early in June. Polish and Czechoslovakian journals have not been received for many months.... Within the last two months official notification has been received of the suspension of eleven French medical periodicals. From Italy the last weekly receipts were at the end of June and few Italian publications have come since that date." The article goes on to say " publications from Great Britain for June and July are being received with perhaps a very slight delay," and attributes the decline in foreign medical literature to the shortage of paper, to the fact that many men are engaged in military duties and to the blockade on shipping. A PROSPECT OF HARLEY STREET
To think of the environs of the city of London two hundred years ago is to think of pastures and meadows, outlying villages and gentle streams; and usually one makes comparison with a sigh. But in the borough of Marylebone, region of lovely building, one can more willingly exchange the rustic for the urban mood and admit that the creeping city gave a fair exchange for all it took. Mr. Flemming has traced the history of Harley Street from the days when Marylebone village was part of the manor of Tyburn, so named in Domesday Book.’ The river itself, the little Tyburn which ran down from Hampstead and found its way into the Thames at Westminster, was confined in a culvert by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even its springs are now dried, so that in 1938 it was possible to make a part of the culvert into an air-raid shelter. But this is late history. The book tells how in earlier times the mayor and corporation of London used to ride out annually to inspect the tanks and conduits of Tyburn whence the city received its water; their wives came too in wagons, to banquet in a house built above the tanks and to watch their merchant husbands hunt the hare and the fox. Later Henry VIII made a deer-park here in which he and Elizabeth took sport and exercise; and in the eighteenth century the quality walked in Marylebone gardens. The contours of the land round Tyburn can still be traced in the gentle undulations of the streets near Marylebone Lane. Part of the manor of Tyburn was purchased in 1708 by John Holles, Earl of Clare, afterwards Duke of Newcastle, who married into the Cavendish family; later, by steps which Mr. Flemming traces, the land came into the possession of Edward Harley, 1. Harley Street, by Percy Flemming, F.R.C.S. Lewis and Co. 2s. 6d.
London:
H. K.
and his wife Margaret Cavendish, and these the Adam brothers, were responsible for the streets of this charming district much as they are today. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that Harley Street became the haunt of consultants ; even then it was still a select residential quarter for the laity-Mr. Gladstone himself lived there. Cavendish Square was the Olympus of the faculty before that time and to move even as much as five hundred yards away from it was regarded as professional suicide. But by the ’sixties, Harley Street had become the goal for consultants; and now, as Mr. Flemming points out, the public does not know how to distinguish between an address and a degree.
Oxford,
two, abetted by
BELLYACHE AND THE LIKE
THE ages of man might be rewritten in terms of spasm. The windy spasm of infancy is only too familiar. The Schoolboys recognise a green-apple syndrome. young man with peptic ulcer obligingly produces an incisura opposite his lesion. In middle-age we choose any stone that takes our fancy to roll around our hollow viscera and muscular passages, and it must not be imagined that this is a time for relaxation. Having attained to years of indiscretion-which is the prostatic epoch-spasm in and about the urethra claims the attention of the male. It is not surprising, therefore, that pharmacologists search for antispasmodics with the assiduity of Jason in quest of the Golden Fleece. Graham and Lazarushave investigated the action of Messrs. Ciba’s synthetic antispasmodics Trasentin (diphenylacetyldiethylaminoethanol ester) aud; Trasentin-6H (diethylam;inoethyl ester of phenylcyclohexyl acetic acid). Their experimental work shows that trasentin-6H is about five times more powerful, weight for weight, than the original compound trasentin; and in antagonising the action of barium trasentin-6H is almost as potent as papaverine. The clinician who depends on atropine for relieving spasm is often baulked by the intolerable side effects of this drug when it is given in sufficiently large doses. He will therefore rejoice to learn that these disadvantages are nearly absent when trasentin-6H is used. This new antispasmodic is said to be 25% more toxic than atropine, but this is of no practical importance in a compound which has such remarkable pharmacological properties. Graham and Lazarus would have been excused if they had ended their paper with the classical exclamation of Archimedes; instead they merely say it seems worthy of clinical trial. 1. Graham, J. D. P., Lazarus, S. J. Pharmacol.
August, 1940, p. 331.
Arrangements for notifying relatives of air-raid casualties being modified so that members of H.M. Forces, including the associated women’s organisations, as well as relatives at are
home will be informed if their relatives have been killed or injured. Postcards for this purpose are being supplied to hospital authorities and the public are asked to carry inside their national registration card a slip of paper with the name and official particulars of the sailor, soldier or airman to be notified. Hospital authorities will forward a postcard to the appropriate service department. The postcard will state whether an injury is slight, serious or dangerous, but sometimes it may not be practicable to send it till the patient has been transferred to a base hospital. A Civil Defence (Employment) Order has been issued all male personnel of the first-aid post and ambul. ance services who are employed on a whole-time paid basis to continue in that employment until their services are dispensed with. If over 30 years of age they will not be called up for military service during the current year. These men are thus placed on the same footing as men serving in the armed forces. The officer in charge of the service, who will normally be the county medical officer or medical officer of health, will determine when anyone’s service is no longer required. As the order only applies to wholetime members it will not affect doctors in charge of fixed and mobile first-aid posts.
requiring
FEWER MEDICAL JOURNALS
SINCE the war we know less and less how the rest of the world wags. News becomes staler and scantier and the pile of foreign journals on the editorial table grows steadily smaller. From Europe during the past few months we have received at irregular intervals the Schiveizerische Medizinisc7u. Wochenschrift-on Sept. 2 the issue of July 30 arrived; the Acta Chirurgica 86andinavica which is published at Stockholm arrives at long intervals (the issue of June 29 came to hand on Sept. 16) ; and at the end of August we were happy to the new Spanish journal Revista Clinica Espanola. These are the only three journals we have lately received from Europe. For a belligerent this But in the current was perhaps only to be expected. issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (Aug. 24, 1940, p. 618) the growing isolation even of a neutral is described: " Gradually since the end of May there has been a diminution in the receipt of medical publications coming from abroad.... The most recent shipment from Germany arrived on July 22, at which time, however, only two periodicals were received. On June 26 eight periodicals came, but the last large shipment arrived on May 27. Already, therefore, some of the German publications are more than three months in arrears. Some Austrian weekly publications which used to arrive every seven to ten days have not
welcome
been received since early in June. Polish and Czechoslovakian journals have not been received for many months.... Within the last two months official notification has been received of the suspension of eleven French medical periodicals. From Italy the last weekly receipts were at the end of June and few Italian publications have come since that date." The article goes on to say " publications from Great Britain for June and July are being received with perhaps a very slight delay," and attributes the decline in foreign medical literature to the shortage of paper, to the fact that many men are engaged in military duties and to the blockade on shipping. A PROSPECT OF HARLEY STREET
To think of the environs of the city of London two hundred years ago is to think of pastures and meadows, outlying villages and gentle streams; and usually one makes comparison with a sigh. But in the borough of Marylebone, region of lovely building, one can more willingly exchange the rustic for the urban mood and admit that the creeping city gave a fair exchange for all it took. Mr. Flemming has traced the history of Harley Street from the days when Marylebone village was part of the manor of Tyburn, so named in Domesday Book.’ The river itself, the little Tyburn which ran down from Hampstead and found its way into the Thames at Westminster, was confined in a culvert by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even its springs are now dried, so that in 1938 it was possible to make a part of the culvert into an air-raid shelter. But this is late history. The book tells how in earlier times the mayor and corporation of London used to ride out annually to inspect the tanks and conduits of Tyburn whence the city received its water; their wives came too in wagons, to banquet in a house built above the tanks and to watch their merchant husbands hunt the hare and the fox. Later Henry VIII made a deer-park here in which he and Elizabeth took sport and exercise; and in the eighteenth century the quality walked in Marylebone gardens. The contours of the land round Tyburn can still be traced in the gentle undulations of the streets near Marylebone Lane. Part of the manor of Tyburn was purchased in 1708 by John Holles, Earl of Clare, afterwards Duke of Newcastle, who married into the Cavendish family; later, by steps which Mr. Flemming traces, the land came into the possession of Edward Harley, 1. Harley Street, by Percy Flemming, F.R.C.S. Lewis and Co. 2s. 6d.
London:
H. K.
and his wife Margaret Cavendish, and these the Adam brothers, were responsible for the streets of this charming district much as they are today. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that Harley Street became the haunt of consultants ; even then it was still a select residential quarter for the laity-Mr. Gladstone himself lived there. Cavendish Square was the Olympus of the faculty before that time and to move even as much as five hundred yards away from it was regarded as professional suicide. But by the ’sixties, Harley Street had become the goal for consultants; and now, as Mr. Flemming points out, the public does not know how to distinguish between an address and a degree.
Oxford,
two, abetted by
BELLYACHE AND THE LIKE
THE ages of man might be rewritten in terms of spasm. The windy spasm of infancy is only too familiar. The Schoolboys recognise a green-apple syndrome. young man with peptic ulcer obligingly produces an incisura opposite his lesion. In middle-age we choose any stone that takes our fancy to roll around our hollow viscera and muscular passages, and it must not be imagined that this is a time for relaxation. Having attained to years of indiscretion-which is the prostatic epoch-spasm in and about the urethra claims the attention of the male. It is not surprising, therefore, that pharmacologists search for antispasmodics with the assiduity of Jason in quest of the Golden Fleece. Graham and Lazarushave investigated the action of Messrs. Ciba’s synthetic antispasmodics Trasentin (diphenylacetyldiethylaminoethanol ester) aud; Trasentin-6H (diethylam;inoethyl ester of phenylcyclohexyl acetic acid). Their experimental work shows that trasentin-6H is about five times more powerful, weight for weight, than the original compound trasentin; and in antagonising the action of barium trasentin-6H is almost as potent as papaverine. The clinician who depends on atropine for relieving spasm is often baulked by the intolerable side effects of this drug when it is given in sufficiently large doses. He will therefore rejoice to learn that these disadvantages are nearly absent when trasentin-6H is used. This new antispasmodic is said to be 25% more toxic than atropine, but this is of no practical importance in a compound which has such remarkable pharmacological properties. Graham and Lazarus would have been excused if they had ended their paper with the classical exclamation of Archimedes; instead they merely say it seems worthy of clinical trial. 1. Graham, J. D. P., Lazarus, S. J. Pharmacol.
August, 1940, p. 331.
Arrangements for notifying relatives of air-raid casualties being modified so that members of H.M. Forces, including the associated women’s organisations, as well as relatives at are
home will be informed if their relatives have been killed or injured. Postcards for this purpose are being supplied to hospital authorities and the public are asked to carry inside their national registration card a slip of paper with the name and official particulars of the sailor, soldier or airman to be notified. Hospital authorities will forward a postcard to the appropriate service department. The postcard will state whether an injury is slight, serious or dangerous, but sometimes it may not be practicable to send it till the patient has been transferred to a base hospital. A Civil Defence (Employment) Order has been issued all male personnel of the first-aid post and ambul. ance services who are employed on a whole-time paid basis to continue in that employment until their services are dispensed with. If over 30 years of age they will not be called up for military service during the current year. These men are thus placed on the same footing as men serving in the armed forces. The officer in charge of the service, who will normally be the county medical officer or medical officer of health, will determine when anyone’s service is no longer required. As the order only applies to wholetime members it will not affect doctors in charge of fixed and mobile first-aid posts.
requiring