INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CAUSATION OF SMALL-POX.

1296 the Royal Army Medical Corps. Lieutenant-Colonel information. Both amendments were rejected and the R. H. Firth, R.A.M.C., in replying, said that a plan recommendation of the committee was agreed to. Great was in progress by which it was hoped a greater know- indignation was expressed at the action of a member of the ledge of elementary sanitation would be disseminated among hospitals committee who informed his board, Hackney, of Sir R. Douglas the application of Dr. Ricketts before the report with its the non-medical men in the services. " The toast of Houses of recommendation was printed on the agenda. As a result of in the Powell, proposing of the that information the following resolution from the Hackney the condition to referred Parliament," sanitary House of Commons. It appeared that legislators were board of guardians was read:The guardians having been informed that the hospitals committee condemned to breathe an atmosphere which trickled of the Metropolitan Asylums Board have under their consideration a and then tortuous and subterranean passages through proposal to obtain a licence under the Vivisection Act for Joyce ascended through a carpet soiled with the dust shed from Green Hospital permitting experiments on animals, this board hereby protests against the use of a rate-supported hospital for such the shoes of the Members of Parliament on their way to strongly purposes. That a copy of the foregoing resolution be forwarded to the Home and from the lobby. He shrank from describing the vast Secretary, the President of the Local Government Board, and the metropolitan boards of guardians, with a request to the latter that army of microbes, aerobic and anaerobic, malignant and when electing managers for the Metropolitan Asylums Board they will any attempt to use the hospitals of the Metrobeneficent, classified and unclassified, said to flourish in the request them to oppose Board for the purposes named in the resolution. politan Asylums legislative chamber. In his opinion the Sanitary Institute ought to look into the matter. Sir Francis S. Powell, M.P., A motion to refer the letter to’ the hospitals committee in replying to the toast, said that in the opinion of Sir for consideration and report was, after a heated discussion, Walter Foster there were good microbes and bad microbes lost and it was decided formally to acknowledge the comand it was a question whether in destroying them munication. they had not destroyed more good ones than bad. The result was, however, that the last state of the House was THE SPOROZOA IN RELATION TO DISEASE IN MAN AND ANIMALS. worse than the first. Referring to the work of the Sanitary Institute he considered that in London there had been an Professor E. A. Minchin resumed his lectures on the improvement in sanitary conditions which almost amounted Sporozoa and in his sixth lecturedelivered at University ’to a revolution. He recognised signs in the provinces that College, London, on April 25th, dealt with the sub-class of led him to consider that the housing problem was almost the myxosporidia. These belong to a class different from solved. He advocated sanitary missionaries who should the rest of the sporozoa dealt with in previous lectures. The proceed from house to house instructing housewives in the myxosporidia are neosporidia-that is, forms in which elementary laws of sanitation. Sir John Ure Primrose, Lord spore formation begins early in life and goes on continuously Provost of Glasgow, proposed the toast of "The Sanitary during the trophic stage. Such spore formation is not an Institute of Great Britain and the Colonies," which was interruption of the vegetative life of the parasite whereas replied to by the chairman, Dr. Farquharson, by Mr. Arthur in the telosporidia (the other great group of sporozoa) H. Reid, chairman of the board of examiners for the Sani- spore formation is the end of the trophic stage. The tary Institute of British South Africa, and by Mr. William spores are formed in the interior of the protoplasmic Whitaker. Mr. E. W. Wallis, the secretary, received many body, not on the periphery as in gregarinse, hence congratulations on the success of the dinner. It may be they are called endospores. The myxosporidia comprise -mentioned here that one of the special features of the Health four families-viz., the disporea in which the parent Exhibition of the Sanitary Institute at Glasgow in July form gives rise to only two endospores, the polysporea next will be a municipal exhibit arranged by the different which produce more than two spore?, the chloromyxidea, departments of the Glasgow corporation. The cleansing and the myxobolidea. The trophic stage of the myxosporidia department proposes to arrange for, amongst other things is marked by a large-sized amceboid phase and the spores With rare exceptions exhibits of a model up-to-date destructor and the Globe produced are also relatively large. two or four polar capsules each. These the will exhibit the the and electric possess spores fertiliser ; departments gas latest developments in illumination ; and the sewage depart- forms are parasitic in fishes and cold-blooded vertebrates ments productions from what were formerly waste products. (amphibia) but they are rare in invertebrates and not The -other departments of the corporation will also be well known to occur in any warm-blooded vertebrates. The The social and holiday aspect of the Congress parasites in fishes were first observed by the physiologist, has not been overlooked and excursions have been arranged Johannes Muller, who named them "psorosperms." They -to the following amongst other interesting places, Lcch occur in two conditions-viz., freely in the internal cavities of viscera (the gall-bladder, the urinary bladder, and the Lomond, the Trossachs, and the Falls of Clyde. pelvis of the kidney) and as tissue parasites within the parenchyma of the bodily organs. The latter form of infec. INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CAUSATION OF tion of - the host is the more serious and virulent of the SMALL-POX. two. It has been traced as the cause of epidemics among ,AT a meeting of the Metropolitan Asylums Board on fishes in Germany. Thus Döflein and Hofer have shown April 30th the hospitals committee reported that it had that certain epidemics of fish disease recently observed considered an application from Dr. T. F. Ricketts, medical in Germany-e g., among barbel in certain riverssuperintendent of Joyce Green Small-pox Hospital, request- were due to tissue infection by. a species of myxcing that authority should be given to him to carry, on in bolus. The myxobolus Lieberkuhnii, a yellowish slimyconjunction with Dr. 0. J. Martin, F.R.S , director of the looking sporozoon, is a parasite in the pike’s bladder and was Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, experimental work met with in nearly 50 per cent. of the specimens examined in connexion with the causation of small-pox. Dr. Ricketts Professor Minchin. It is comparatively harmless. The by informed the committee that such authority would only trophic stage of the parasite is amoeboid in form with an imply stabling accommodation with attendance and possibly elongated multinuclear worm-like sinuous body composed a slight increase in the expenditure usually sanctioned for of a finely granular ectoplasm and a densely crowded hospital scientific apparatus. The recommendation gave rise granular endoplasm containing various particles-e.g., dark to a great outburst of antivivisectionist oratory on the brown crystalloid bodies, oil and pigment droplets, and part of a small section of managers and amendments 1 References to the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth lectures will were moved to refer the report to the hospitals- committee be found in THE LANCET of March 12th, p. 736, and 26th, p. 889, and also to the general purposes committee for further! April 2nd, p. 950, and 9th, p. 1009.

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represented.