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Gas Warfare and Medical Men.
1264
GAS WARFARE AND MEDICAL MEN.
this country of the known prevalence of plague,
cholera, and yellow fever in foreign ports. The value of these reports will now be greater by their extension in scope, and by the systematic working of the important agreements which have been executed between various countries for international protection. But international agreements, however faithfully executed, will never form more than a first line of defence between affected and unaffected countries, supplementing the natural defences of climate and temperature. Any of these diseases in the most highly organised community may, if watchfulness is relaxed and geography permits, spread from place to place, eluding the international cordon; but none will have any chance of spreading where the is living under good public health conditions. To recur to the labours of the International Health Board as exemplified by its magnificent work against yellow fever, we may be certain that that work was supported throughout by rigorous attention to general hygiene, and did not stop with the destruction of the stegomyia. As Sir GEORGE NEWMAN well says, in an introduction to Dr. BRUCE Low’s Report, the great epidemics call for particular methods of prevention, such as measures to deal with carrier and contact cases in cholera, with rats in plague, and with mosquitoes in malaria and yellow fever, but attention to the universal needs of a healthy life for all men must also be forth-
population
coming.
Gas Warfare and Medical Men.
the Army Medical Service is non-combatant, and is intended to ameliorate the horrors of war.’ Universities and scientific men stand, he wrote, for something in the world higher than anything which has as yet found expression and representation in Governments, particularly in their international relations. It is now further announced in Nature for Dec. 9ththat facilities are to be offered in the Pathological Department of the University of Birmingham to train the naval and R.A.M.C. personnel required for the physiological section of the experimental station ot the Chemical Warfare Committee at Porton in Wiltshire. Professor J. SHAW DUNN, whose work on the morbid changes associated with the inhalation of poison gases is so well known, is in charge of this department. But it is surely a disquieting item in our peace programme that a university department, which has hitherto been engaged in training medical men to save life, should add to its activities instruction which is to assist in discovering new methods for destroying other people in a particularly horrible way. No doubt the particular function of the R.A.M.C. otficers engaged will be to consider masks and other methods of protection and to devise treatment for the injured and sick. But the connexion of the defensive and offensive aspects of gas warfare is so close and intimate that considerable care will have to be taken if medical men are not to find themselves propagating offensive inquiries. We hope it will be found possible to avoid introducing a distraction of this kind into the routine work of a university. The medical profession has been in the past in the unique position of being able practically to dictate how its members shall be used in war, and it has chosen that its activities shall be strictly confined to alleviating the misery It is a fine and sufferings of the combatants. tradition and should be jpalously guarded.
FIGHTING animals use tooth and claw with a complete abandonment to the one absorbing purpose of the moment. With human beings it is a curious thing that even in a life and death struggle certain rules of the game should survive so long. The soft-nosed bullet, known to be many times more effective in stopping an advancing foe, was never used to any extent in the war, and when the terrible THE MEDICAL INSURANCE AGENCY. weapon of poison gas was introduced by the enemy MEETING of the Committee of Management of the it produced a storm of horror which many of them now admit to have been one of the chief Medical Insurance Agency was held at the offices of the British Medical Association on Thursday, Dec. 2nd, Dr. factors in losing them the war. Constrained by G. E. Haslip in the chair. The chairman presented an necessity, we were not slow in retaliating with interim report of the nine months ending Sept. 30th, phosgene, chloropicrin, pbenylarsine, and it is in which he showed that, practically speaking, in all common rumour that other and still deadlier classes of insurance, the income of the Agency had respiratory poisons were in reserve when hostilities increased. The expenses have also increased, but ceased. In the meantime the Chemical Warfare there is a reasonable expectation that the new business Medical Committee, including the foremost physio- negotiated will more than compensate. The receipts motor-car insurances, from accidents, and from logists of the day, with Professor A. R. CUSHNY as from miscellaneous insurances show a rise, and the sum chairman and Dr. J. S EDKINS as secretary, studied assured in life business during 1920 now represents the pathology of pulmonary irritant gases and the £84,000. If this side of the business continues to grow means of combating them, and their labours in the manner in which. it has grown during the last two embodied in a series of reports to years. it is clear that the sums which can be devoted to were the Medical Research Council, each of which the cause of medical benevolence will become quite large. It was resolved by the Committee to make a distribuwith painful suspense by those was awaited who were called upon to treat the tortured tion out of the surplus funds of the Agency to various victims. After the armistice, and the downfall medical benevolent funds, and the sum of £557 10s. was allotted as follows : Royal Medical Benevolent Fund, for a generation of organised militarism in £175 ; Royal Medical Benevolent Fund Guild, £175 : Central Europe, it was felt by humane people Epsom College Benevolent Fund, £157 10s.; Royal that chemical warfare at least was a thing of the Medical Benevolent Fund Society of Ireland, £25 ; past and no more than an evil dream. A rude Birmingham Medical Benevolent Society, £25. As a awakening was contained in the announcement result of this distribution the total given to medical by the War Office in October last of the forma- charities for 1920 is £1015, and the sums allocated tion of a Committee whose function was to be since the start have reached £6435. The grants made with votes’for the "the development to the utmost extent of both to Epsom College provide theIfAgency medical men know of scholarships. the offensive and defensive aspects of chemical Foundation candidates whose cases command special consideration., warfare." Professor FREDERICK SODDY, in a letter they are asked to communicate with ’he Treasurer of to Nature on Nov. 4tb, declining to become an the Medical Insurance Agency, 429, or with associate member of this Committee, stated that Editor Of THE LANCET.
A
GAS WARFARE AND MEDICAL MEN.
this country of the known prevalence of plague,
cholera, and yellow fever in foreign ports. The value of these reports will now be greater by their extension in scope, and by the systematic working of the important agreements which have been executed between various countries for international protection. But international agreements, however faithfully executed, will never form more than a first line of defence between affected and unaffected countries, supplementing the natural defences of climate and temperature. Any of these diseases in the most highly organised community may, if watchfulness is relaxed and geography permits, spread from place to place, eluding the international cordon; but none will have any chance of spreading where the is living under good public health conditions. To recur to the labours of the International Health Board as exemplified by its magnificent work against yellow fever, we may be certain that that work was supported throughout by rigorous attention to general hygiene, and did not stop with the destruction of the stegomyia. As Sir GEORGE NEWMAN well says, in an introduction to Dr. BRUCE Low’s Report, the great epidemics call for particular methods of prevention, such as measures to deal with carrier and contact cases in cholera, with rats in plague, and with mosquitoes in malaria and yellow fever, but attention to the universal needs of a healthy life for all men must also be forth-
population
coming.
Gas Warfare and Medical Men.
the Army Medical Service is non-combatant, and is intended to ameliorate the horrors of war.’ Universities and scientific men stand, he wrote, for something in the world higher than anything which has as yet found expression and representation in Governments, particularly in their international relations. It is now further announced in Nature for Dec. 9ththat facilities are to be offered in the Pathological Department of the University of Birmingham to train the naval and R.A.M.C. personnel required for the physiological section of the experimental station ot the Chemical Warfare Committee at Porton in Wiltshire. Professor J. SHAW DUNN, whose work on the morbid changes associated with the inhalation of poison gases is so well known, is in charge of this department. But it is surely a disquieting item in our peace programme that a university department, which has hitherto been engaged in training medical men to save life, should add to its activities instruction which is to assist in discovering new methods for destroying other people in a particularly horrible way. No doubt the particular function of the R.A.M.C. otficers engaged will be to consider masks and other methods of protection and to devise treatment for the injured and sick. But the connexion of the defensive and offensive aspects of gas warfare is so close and intimate that considerable care will have to be taken if medical men are not to find themselves propagating offensive inquiries. We hope it will be found possible to avoid introducing a distraction of this kind into the routine work of a university. The medical profession has been in the past in the unique position of being able practically to dictate how its members shall be used in war, and it has chosen that its activities shall be strictly confined to alleviating the misery It is a fine and sufferings of the combatants. tradition and should be jpalously guarded.
FIGHTING animals use tooth and claw with a complete abandonment to the one absorbing purpose of the moment. With human beings it is a curious thing that even in a life and death struggle certain rules of the game should survive so long. The soft-nosed bullet, known to be many times more effective in stopping an advancing foe, was never used to any extent in the war, and when the terrible THE MEDICAL INSURANCE AGENCY. weapon of poison gas was introduced by the enemy MEETING of the Committee of Management of the it produced a storm of horror which many of them now admit to have been one of the chief Medical Insurance Agency was held at the offices of the British Medical Association on Thursday, Dec. 2nd, Dr. factors in losing them the war. Constrained by G. E. Haslip in the chair. The chairman presented an necessity, we were not slow in retaliating with interim report of the nine months ending Sept. 30th, phosgene, chloropicrin, pbenylarsine, and it is in which he showed that, practically speaking, in all common rumour that other and still deadlier classes of insurance, the income of the Agency had respiratory poisons were in reserve when hostilities increased. The expenses have also increased, but ceased. In the meantime the Chemical Warfare there is a reasonable expectation that the new business Medical Committee, including the foremost physio- negotiated will more than compensate. The receipts motor-car insurances, from accidents, and from logists of the day, with Professor A. R. CUSHNY as from miscellaneous insurances show a rise, and the sum chairman and Dr. J. S EDKINS as secretary, studied assured in life business during 1920 now represents the pathology of pulmonary irritant gases and the £84,000. If this side of the business continues to grow means of combating them, and their labours in the manner in which. it has grown during the last two embodied in a series of reports to years. it is clear that the sums which can be devoted to were the Medical Research Council, each of which the cause of medical benevolence will become quite large. It was resolved by the Committee to make a distribuwith painful suspense by those was awaited who were called upon to treat the tortured tion out of the surplus funds of the Agency to various victims. After the armistice, and the downfall medical benevolent funds, and the sum of £557 10s. was allotted as follows : Royal Medical Benevolent Fund, for a generation of organised militarism in £175 ; Royal Medical Benevolent Fund Guild, £175 : Central Europe, it was felt by humane people Epsom College Benevolent Fund, £157 10s.; Royal that chemical warfare at least was a thing of the Medical Benevolent Fund Society of Ireland, £25 ; past and no more than an evil dream. A rude Birmingham Medical Benevolent Society, £25. As a awakening was contained in the announcement result of this distribution the total given to medical by the War Office in October last of the forma- charities for 1920 is £1015, and the sums allocated tion of a Committee whose function was to be since the start have reached £6435. The grants made with votes’for the "the development to the utmost extent of both to Epsom College provide theIfAgency medical men know of scholarships. the offensive and defensive aspects of chemical Foundation candidates whose cases command special consideration., warfare." Professor FREDERICK SODDY, in a letter they are asked to communicate with ’he Treasurer of to Nature on Nov. 4tb, declining to become an the Medical Insurance Agency, 429, or with associate member of this Committee, stated that Editor Of THE LANCET.
A