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INVOLUTION OF THE UTERUS.
975 in placing under the control of one medical of’flc(,r the care of the child before birth, after birth up to five years of age. and during school life, so that preventive measures may be studied and applied in the early years and a mitiimnm amount of work conseThis ideal has not yet be required later. been attained, even in Willesden, because owing to the mass of defects discovered amongst children, and the urgent need for treatment, time has not hitherto been available for the study and application of measures for prevention which should proceed pari passu with treatment. It is obvious that, if and when desired, the Willesden scheme might readily constitute the germ of a public medical service by salaried doctors. Each municipal clinic has its service of doctors, dentists, district nurses, and health visitors, with the use of a municipal hospital and the services of consultants when needed. Domiciliary medical treatment could be added by an increase of the medical staff of the clinic. The public of Willesden appear to like the arrangement.
quently
I
President and Sir St Clair Thomson as chairman of the committee and the hon. secretaries are Mr. Lionel Colledge and Mr. J. S. Fraser. No less than 100 otologists have already sent in their adhesion to the committee, and all who are interested are invited to apply to one or other of the hon. secretaries. Those who do so will be kept informed of all the arrangements for the congress as they develop. The office-bearers in Paris are Prof. P. Sebileau (President), Dr. Georges Laurens (treasurer), and Dr. A. IIautant, 28, rue Marbeuf, who is secretary-general. Although the congress remains in name purely otological, it is intended to embrace both rhinology and laryngology. Prof. Sebileau is known not only as an otologist but as a leading exponent of the surgery of the nose, throat, and neck. We are glad to hear that the congress will have a marked practical character, the mornings being devoted to visits to clinics, operating theatres, and museums.
Further details can be obtained from the secretarygeneral or from the secretaries of the British Organising
____
Committee.
---
TURTLE VACCINE.
INVOLUTION OF THE UTERUS.
JUDGING from the interminable discussions in the German medical press since the armistice, Friedmann’s remedy still continues to excite interest. The appearance of a critical monograph on the subject is now welcome; it is in the form of a supplement to the Zeitschri,f’t fur Tuberkuloce, one of a series published under the general editorship of Prof. Lydia Rabinowitsch, who has herself recently done some work on the remedy. The stuff. it will be remembered, came before the medical public with a disconcerting flourish of trumpets two or three years before the war, and was then reputed to consist of a vaccine prepared from a living avirulent culture of an acid-fast bacillus isolated from the turtle. Since the war the vaccine is stated by its critics to contain also attenuated human tubercle bacilli. The monograph sets out to investigate carefully the whole question of Friedmann’s remedy. A careful analysis is given of the published literature on its value as a means of treatment in tuberculosis. Dr. Ulrici and Dr. Grass have collected records of more than 80 authors, dealing with many hundreds of cases of pleurisy. phthisis, abdominal tuberculosis, meningitis, Addison’s and other diseases. In a second section Dr. S. Meyer sets out his investigations into the cultural properties and pathogenicity of the vaccine. with animal experiments designed to test both its protective power as an immunising agent and its curative power in gnineapigs experimentally infected with bovine and human strains of tubercle bacillus. The conclusions on both counts throw doubt on the value of Priedmann’s turtle vaccine.
conditions that determine the involution the uterus after parturition are of paramount importance, and they can perhaps be more definitely established in animals than in the human subject. C’. Kuramitsu and Leo Loeb havemade experiments on rats and guinea-pigs 1 to determine the influence of suckling and castration on this process. The degree of involution was determined quantitatively, and the condition of the whole uterus was compared with that, of its individual component tissues, It was found that the process of involution was similar in rats and guineapigs. and that sucking accelerated the process ; when sucking was suppressed the process was retarded. Castration made it more active. The effects of sucking and castration add to the normal involution changes, and both processes affect all the chief constituents of the uterus. and powerfully influence the growth and structure of the respective tissues. The influence of castration is opposed to that of the suppression of sucking, but when both occur the influence of the former overcomes that of the latter. In guinea-pigs lactation does not, interrupt the functional cycle of the ovary and uterus, though it does so in the rat. Sucking or its cessation act indirectly on the uterine tissues. As a corollary to this research, the observers studied the direct effects of lactation on the sexual cycle in the rat and guinea-pig. In the rat ovulation during lactation is inhibited. In the guinea-pig, which suckles its young, ovulation and the normal cycle of changes in the ovary take place. Possibly the corpus luteum functions for a longer time in the rat.
THE
of
____
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF OTOLOGY. THERE has been no international congress of otology since the meeting in Boston in 1912. The various national committees then appointed have been canvassed and have selected Paris for the tenth congress to be held next year. The cordiality and goodwill of the French Committee towards this country have been marked by a special visit of their secretarygeneral, Dr. A. Hautant, who came over on purpose to attend the annual dinner of the Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine under the chairmanship of Sir Charles Ballance. He joined in the first meeting of the section on Oct. 21st, when the new President, Dr. Logan Turner, occupied the chair and gave the address which we briefly report on p. 961. Dr. Hautant made the acquaintance of many otologists in London and extended to them and their colleagues a cordial invitation to the congress next summer. A committee of organisation for Great Britain and Ireland has been appointed with Prof. Urban Pritchard as 1
Tuberkulose-Bibliothek : Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Tuberkulose ; Nr. 3.—Kritische Wertung des FriedmannMittels. By H. Ulrici, H. Grass, and S. Meyer. Leipzig : Johann Ambrosius Barth. 1921. Pp. 46. M.16.
REFRACTIVE CHANGES
IN
LATER
LIFE.
CORRECTION of errors of refraction cannot be properly performed by mechanical rules alone. Even presbyopia needs to be corrected with intelligence, having regard not onlv to the age of the patient and the purposes for which the glasses are prescribed, but also
(
to the fact that the accommodation of different individuals of the same age varies considerably. The eyes of children frequently undergo considerable changes in the course of their school life, the tendency being for hypermetropia to become less in degree, for low hypermetropia or emmetropia to become myopia, and especially for astigmatism to change from the hypermetropic variety into the mixed and from the mixed into the mvopic. It was not, however, of these changes that Mr. Ernest Clarke was speaking in his interesting paper on ’’ Milestones in Refraction «Tork," read at the Ophthalmological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and briefly reported last week. There are other refractive changes which take place during mature life. Apart from progressive myopia 1
American Journal of
Physiology, vol. lv., 1921.
quently
I
President and Sir St Clair Thomson as chairman of the committee and the hon. secretaries are Mr. Lionel Colledge and Mr. J. S. Fraser. No less than 100 otologists have already sent in their adhesion to the committee, and all who are interested are invited to apply to one or other of the hon. secretaries. Those who do so will be kept informed of all the arrangements for the congress as they develop. The office-bearers in Paris are Prof. P. Sebileau (President), Dr. Georges Laurens (treasurer), and Dr. A. IIautant, 28, rue Marbeuf, who is secretary-general. Although the congress remains in name purely otological, it is intended to embrace both rhinology and laryngology. Prof. Sebileau is known not only as an otologist but as a leading exponent of the surgery of the nose, throat, and neck. We are glad to hear that the congress will have a marked practical character, the mornings being devoted to visits to clinics, operating theatres, and museums.
Further details can be obtained from the secretarygeneral or from the secretaries of the British Organising
____
Committee.
---
TURTLE VACCINE.
INVOLUTION OF THE UTERUS.
JUDGING from the interminable discussions in the German medical press since the armistice, Friedmann’s remedy still continues to excite interest. The appearance of a critical monograph on the subject is now welcome; it is in the form of a supplement to the Zeitschri,f’t fur Tuberkuloce, one of a series published under the general editorship of Prof. Lydia Rabinowitsch, who has herself recently done some work on the remedy. The stuff. it will be remembered, came before the medical public with a disconcerting flourish of trumpets two or three years before the war, and was then reputed to consist of a vaccine prepared from a living avirulent culture of an acid-fast bacillus isolated from the turtle. Since the war the vaccine is stated by its critics to contain also attenuated human tubercle bacilli. The monograph sets out to investigate carefully the whole question of Friedmann’s remedy. A careful analysis is given of the published literature on its value as a means of treatment in tuberculosis. Dr. Ulrici and Dr. Grass have collected records of more than 80 authors, dealing with many hundreds of cases of pleurisy. phthisis, abdominal tuberculosis, meningitis, Addison’s and other diseases. In a second section Dr. S. Meyer sets out his investigations into the cultural properties and pathogenicity of the vaccine. with animal experiments designed to test both its protective power as an immunising agent and its curative power in gnineapigs experimentally infected with bovine and human strains of tubercle bacillus. The conclusions on both counts throw doubt on the value of Priedmann’s turtle vaccine.
conditions that determine the involution the uterus after parturition are of paramount importance, and they can perhaps be more definitely established in animals than in the human subject. C’. Kuramitsu and Leo Loeb havemade experiments on rats and guinea-pigs 1 to determine the influence of suckling and castration on this process. The degree of involution was determined quantitatively, and the condition of the whole uterus was compared with that, of its individual component tissues, It was found that the process of involution was similar in rats and guineapigs. and that sucking accelerated the process ; when sucking was suppressed the process was retarded. Castration made it more active. The effects of sucking and castration add to the normal involution changes, and both processes affect all the chief constituents of the uterus. and powerfully influence the growth and structure of the respective tissues. The influence of castration is opposed to that of the suppression of sucking, but when both occur the influence of the former overcomes that of the latter. In guinea-pigs lactation does not, interrupt the functional cycle of the ovary and uterus, though it does so in the rat. Sucking or its cessation act indirectly on the uterine tissues. As a corollary to this research, the observers studied the direct effects of lactation on the sexual cycle in the rat and guinea-pig. In the rat ovulation during lactation is inhibited. In the guinea-pig, which suckles its young, ovulation and the normal cycle of changes in the ovary take place. Possibly the corpus luteum functions for a longer time in the rat.
THE
of
____
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF OTOLOGY. THERE has been no international congress of otology since the meeting in Boston in 1912. The various national committees then appointed have been canvassed and have selected Paris for the tenth congress to be held next year. The cordiality and goodwill of the French Committee towards this country have been marked by a special visit of their secretarygeneral, Dr. A. Hautant, who came over on purpose to attend the annual dinner of the Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine under the chairmanship of Sir Charles Ballance. He joined in the first meeting of the section on Oct. 21st, when the new President, Dr. Logan Turner, occupied the chair and gave the address which we briefly report on p. 961. Dr. Hautant made the acquaintance of many otologists in London and extended to them and their colleagues a cordial invitation to the congress next summer. A committee of organisation for Great Britain and Ireland has been appointed with Prof. Urban Pritchard as 1
Tuberkulose-Bibliothek : Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Tuberkulose ; Nr. 3.—Kritische Wertung des FriedmannMittels. By H. Ulrici, H. Grass, and S. Meyer. Leipzig : Johann Ambrosius Barth. 1921. Pp. 46. M.16.
REFRACTIVE CHANGES
IN
LATER
LIFE.
CORRECTION of errors of refraction cannot be properly performed by mechanical rules alone. Even presbyopia needs to be corrected with intelligence, having regard not onlv to the age of the patient and the purposes for which the glasses are prescribed, but also
(
to the fact that the accommodation of different individuals of the same age varies considerably. The eyes of children frequently undergo considerable changes in the course of their school life, the tendency being for hypermetropia to become less in degree, for low hypermetropia or emmetropia to become myopia, and especially for astigmatism to change from the hypermetropic variety into the mixed and from the mixed into the mvopic. It was not, however, of these changes that Mr. Ernest Clarke was speaking in his interesting paper on ’’ Milestones in Refraction «Tork," read at the Ophthalmological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and briefly reported last week. There are other refractive changes which take place during mature life. Apart from progressive myopia 1
American Journal of
Physiology, vol. lv., 1921.