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HEALTH MATTERS IN LEICESTER.
848 If there is any foundation for the statements made in the evening journal to which we refer there ought to have been no difficulty in supplying the sanitary authority with the information necessary to enable it to remedy the evils complained of. General charges of the sort made tend only to discourage sanitary administration, and certainly tend to minimise the influence of the press. If this should result it would be greatly to be deplored, for it is chiefly owing to the influence of the press that so much good work is being done at the present time.
A mere enumeration of the or justifiable. that possessed by gentleman will suffice to qualifications mark him out as pre-eminently worthy to obtain the suffrages of the electors in the approaching struggle. Dr. Davies has. acted as deputy coroner for several months past, has lived in the principality all his life, and for over thirty years has practised his profession in Wrexham; moreover, his long experi-
either necessary
in connexion with the coroner’s court, in behalf of which he has for more than a quarter of a century conducted the post-mortem examinations, renders him peculiarly well fitted to discharge the duties of the office in question. In the interest of the inhabitants generally, we cannot but wish success to the candidature of Dr. Davies. ence
-
THE SCOTCH MEDICAL SCHOOLS.
colleges now remaining to be opened are those of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow. Aberdeen University will commence its winter session on Oct. llth and Edinburgh College and University College, Dundee, THE
HEALTH MATTERS IN LEICESTER. ’
will open on the same date. On the 18th the winter session in the faculty of medicine will be commenced at Glasgow University, when an inaugural address will be delivered by Professor Cleland, M.D., on "Anatomy : its Place in Education"; the students of Anderson’s College will listen to an address by Dr. W. L. Reid and Professor McVail will deliver the introductory address at St. Mungo’s College; whilst the lecturer on Gynascology at the Western Medical School will open the session with an address on early Ovarian and Tubal Disease." ___
MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH. AN evening contemporary nas recently publisiiecl letters from correspondents bearing upon the question whether medical officers of health should devote the whole of their time to their official duties. It is urged that the time has come when this system should be everywhere adopted, and to this claim we see no objection. But if the whole of the time of capable and reliable men is wanted by the public, some effort must be made to induce sanitary authorities to offer adequate remuneration. The present is not a time favourable to the full development of an efficient health service. The salaries which are often proposed bear no relation to the responsibilities and anxieties attaching to the office, and the disposition to abolish pensions renders the appointment of much less value than hitherto. When, in addition to this, the authorities further propose that their officers shall retire at a fixed age the candidate is led to think of what opportunity he will have of saving money wherewith to provide for the later years of his life. If the officer is allowed to keep in touch with other work he may look to this to provide for him when he leaves the public service. There is therefore something to be said against the whole-time system, which can only be generally adopted when the public is prepared to remunerate its officers adequately.
THE VACANT CORONERSHIP OF EAST DENBIGH.
-THE election to the office of Coroner for the Eastern Division of the County of Denbigh, vacant by the death of Mr. B. Heywood, will, it is announced, take place on Nov. 7th next. We understand that several applicants for the post On the respective claims of the are already in the field. candidates to fill this important and time-honoured office we do not propose to offer more than a bare opinion. Their antecedents are not for the most part sufficiently well known to us to warrant anything but a general statement, to the effect that, so far as we are aware, they are all more or less fitted to aspire to the dignity of the coronership. To this, however, we must add the reservation that in the case of most of them the want of a medical qualification is, p?’Ùnâfacie, in our view a distinct drawback. But with regard to one of the candidates, Dr. Edward Davies of Wrexham, no such hesitation on our part is
I
THE Leieesterr Daily Post discusses in a leading article several matters of interest in respect of the spread of disease. The chief of these is the disclosure by the chairman of the Sanitary Committee to the Town Council of "the ignorance or the intolerable carelessness " of practitioners in sending cases to the Fever Hospital as scarlet fever cases in which there was no scarlet fever, but measles, or even only a swollen gland. We know nothing of the details of these cases or of the justice of the charges of inaccurate diagnosis, but the charges themselves are serious enough to demand the attention of practitioners. Another point is that a local epidemic of typhoid fever has been distinctly traced by the medical officer of health to herb beer being sold in a shop where there were five cases of the disease. There has also been a "mysterious visitation of small-pox,"which has not. yet been satisfactorily traced.
INTESTINAL BACILLI. THE bacilli found in the intestines have from time to time
given rise to a good deal of controversy, and so far as appearances go there is every probability that the paper warfare will continue just as briskly as it has done in the past. In all the earlier literature concerning the bacillus coli communis this organism was spoken of as a simple saprophyte, but certain observers who maintained that it was not identical with Eberth’s typhoid bacillus eventually suggested that it might be a cause of cholera nostras. Latterly a number of observers, amongst whom must now be reckoned Dr. Gabriel Vallet have come to the conclusion that these two organisms are really identical. Of course thereare certain facts which tend to strongly support this thesis, although it must be confessed that, for the present at any rate, it is better to keep an open mind on the subject. However, the following facts may be cited in favour of Dr. Vallet’s position. At first a considerable number of observations on typhogenous water were made, as a result of which it was stated that the typhoid bacillus was invariably found ;but since investigators have come to recognise certain distinctive characters in the two organisms the bacillus coli communis is now described as occurring in typhogenous. water much more frequently than is Eberth’s typhoid bacillus;r then, again, from careful bacteriological examination of typhoid stools it has been ascertained that the bacillus coli communis is found therein much more frequently than the’ typhoid bacillus itself, which is, indeed, comparatively rarely met with. After a careful morphological and biological investigation, taking the above facts into consideration, Dr. Vallet has come to the conclusion that the bacillus coli communis of Escherich is nothing more than a transition stage of Eberth’s. typhoid bacillus, and that there are, in fact, just as Loeffler, Roux, Yersin, Klein and others have described in diphtheria, two forms of the same organism-a pathogenic and a nonpathogenic. Some of the distinctive characters are most
d’Eberth et l’Étiologie 1
Le Bacillus Coli Communis dans ses Rapports de la Fièvre Typhoïde.
avec
le Bacille
A mere enumeration of the or justifiable. that possessed by gentleman will suffice to qualifications mark him out as pre-eminently worthy to obtain the suffrages of the electors in the approaching struggle. Dr. Davies has. acted as deputy coroner for several months past, has lived in the principality all his life, and for over thirty years has practised his profession in Wrexham; moreover, his long experi-
either necessary
in connexion with the coroner’s court, in behalf of which he has for more than a quarter of a century conducted the post-mortem examinations, renders him peculiarly well fitted to discharge the duties of the office in question. In the interest of the inhabitants generally, we cannot but wish success to the candidature of Dr. Davies. ence
-
THE SCOTCH MEDICAL SCHOOLS.
colleges now remaining to be opened are those of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow. Aberdeen University will commence its winter session on Oct. llth and Edinburgh College and University College, Dundee, THE
HEALTH MATTERS IN LEICESTER. ’
will open on the same date. On the 18th the winter session in the faculty of medicine will be commenced at Glasgow University, when an inaugural address will be delivered by Professor Cleland, M.D., on "Anatomy : its Place in Education"; the students of Anderson’s College will listen to an address by Dr. W. L. Reid and Professor McVail will deliver the introductory address at St. Mungo’s College; whilst the lecturer on Gynascology at the Western Medical School will open the session with an address on early Ovarian and Tubal Disease." ___
MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH. AN evening contemporary nas recently publisiiecl letters from correspondents bearing upon the question whether medical officers of health should devote the whole of their time to their official duties. It is urged that the time has come when this system should be everywhere adopted, and to this claim we see no objection. But if the whole of the time of capable and reliable men is wanted by the public, some effort must be made to induce sanitary authorities to offer adequate remuneration. The present is not a time favourable to the full development of an efficient health service. The salaries which are often proposed bear no relation to the responsibilities and anxieties attaching to the office, and the disposition to abolish pensions renders the appointment of much less value than hitherto. When, in addition to this, the authorities further propose that their officers shall retire at a fixed age the candidate is led to think of what opportunity he will have of saving money wherewith to provide for the later years of his life. If the officer is allowed to keep in touch with other work he may look to this to provide for him when he leaves the public service. There is therefore something to be said against the whole-time system, which can only be generally adopted when the public is prepared to remunerate its officers adequately.
THE VACANT CORONERSHIP OF EAST DENBIGH.
-THE election to the office of Coroner for the Eastern Division of the County of Denbigh, vacant by the death of Mr. B. Heywood, will, it is announced, take place on Nov. 7th next. We understand that several applicants for the post On the respective claims of the are already in the field. candidates to fill this important and time-honoured office we do not propose to offer more than a bare opinion. Their antecedents are not for the most part sufficiently well known to us to warrant anything but a general statement, to the effect that, so far as we are aware, they are all more or less fitted to aspire to the dignity of the coronership. To this, however, we must add the reservation that in the case of most of them the want of a medical qualification is, p?’Ùnâfacie, in our view a distinct drawback. But with regard to one of the candidates, Dr. Edward Davies of Wrexham, no such hesitation on our part is
I
THE Leieesterr Daily Post discusses in a leading article several matters of interest in respect of the spread of disease. The chief of these is the disclosure by the chairman of the Sanitary Committee to the Town Council of "the ignorance or the intolerable carelessness " of practitioners in sending cases to the Fever Hospital as scarlet fever cases in which there was no scarlet fever, but measles, or even only a swollen gland. We know nothing of the details of these cases or of the justice of the charges of inaccurate diagnosis, but the charges themselves are serious enough to demand the attention of practitioners. Another point is that a local epidemic of typhoid fever has been distinctly traced by the medical officer of health to herb beer being sold in a shop where there were five cases of the disease. There has also been a "mysterious visitation of small-pox,"which has not. yet been satisfactorily traced.
INTESTINAL BACILLI. THE bacilli found in the intestines have from time to time
given rise to a good deal of controversy, and so far as appearances go there is every probability that the paper warfare will continue just as briskly as it has done in the past. In all the earlier literature concerning the bacillus coli communis this organism was spoken of as a simple saprophyte, but certain observers who maintained that it was not identical with Eberth’s typhoid bacillus eventually suggested that it might be a cause of cholera nostras. Latterly a number of observers, amongst whom must now be reckoned Dr. Gabriel Vallet have come to the conclusion that these two organisms are really identical. Of course thereare certain facts which tend to strongly support this thesis, although it must be confessed that, for the present at any rate, it is better to keep an open mind on the subject. However, the following facts may be cited in favour of Dr. Vallet’s position. At first a considerable number of observations on typhogenous water were made, as a result of which it was stated that the typhoid bacillus was invariably found ;but since investigators have come to recognise certain distinctive characters in the two organisms the bacillus coli communis is now described as occurring in typhogenous. water much more frequently than is Eberth’s typhoid bacillus;r then, again, from careful bacteriological examination of typhoid stools it has been ascertained that the bacillus coli communis is found therein much more frequently than the’ typhoid bacillus itself, which is, indeed, comparatively rarely met with. After a careful morphological and biological investigation, taking the above facts into consideration, Dr. Vallet has come to the conclusion that the bacillus coli communis of Escherich is nothing more than a transition stage of Eberth’s. typhoid bacillus, and that there are, in fact, just as Loeffler, Roux, Yersin, Klein and others have described in diphtheria, two forms of the same organism-a pathogenic and a nonpathogenic. Some of the distinctive characters are most
d’Eberth et l’Étiologie 1
Le Bacillus Coli Communis dans ses Rapports de la Fièvre Typhoïde.
avec
le Bacille