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LONGEVITY IN NORFOLK.
52 those unfortunate children whose parents are either too poor or too lazy to feed them themselves. It must be allowed that the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, does not seem to be altogether a success. Moreover, in Paris, to take a city comparable with London, the cantines scolaires provide a nutritious and interesting meal for children at about
of the Levant, and the aconitine obtained from aconite is not identical with that derived from the
feeding
2d. per head.
Wemuch doubt the capability of any English for cooking in the sensible and tasty way either municipality in which Frenchmen do or for cooking even badly at 2d. per head. English rates rise with the rapidity of the sums in the well-known problem about the farthing for each nail in But we quite agree that if the State is to ’, a horse’s shoes. educate children, and apparently it must do so, that it is mere waste of money to try to educate a child who is practically starving. The problem is a serious one, and it would be well for those politicians who have hailed the decision as a party victory to take a lesson from the Paris Municipal Council as to how that body manages to run its cantines scolaires in the excellent way in which they are run, and I more important still as to its system of inspection as to what parents can pay and as to what parents can really not pay. ’
il
MODERN FORMS OF ADULTERATIONS OF DRUGS.
distributed from one State to another were and of a suitable quality for the manufacture of medicinal preparations. The work was intrusted to Dr. H. H. Rusby, a pharmacologist, whose first report1 affords much valuable information as to the mode of adulterating drugs and the extent to which it is now carried on. Dr. Rusby examines every drug that is imported at New York about which the inspector is at all doubtful, and the admission or deportation of drugs then rests with the Treasury. A consignment of belladonna root was found to contain poke root and scopola, but it ultimately entered the country through another port. A broker imported five tons of ground olive pits on behalf of a firm who, according to his statement, intended to use the article as a filler for chicken food. This is an interesting case, because the firm in question dealt only in drugs and had no connexion with chicken foods. But as the shipment was neither adulterated nor misbranded there were no legal grounds for preventing its entry into the country. The firm’s powdered drugs were then examined and within a few months ground olive pits were found in five samples out of nine. Nearly every shipment of belladonna root contained from 15 to 42 per cent. of poke root, one contained 50 per cent. of ground olive pits. and a consignment of cut dandelion root was adulterated with more than 40 per cent. of small stones ingeniously selected The first year’s on account of their similar size and colour. work showed that much of the adulteration was intentional and studied. Sand, either alone or mixed with starch or foreign vegetable matter, was found in many drugs, including henbane (28 per cent.), aniseed (25 per cent.), benzoin (40 to Ground 50 per cent.), kamala, lycopodium, and senna. olive pits were found to a considerable extent in many drugs, including gentian and ipecacuanha. In several cases a drug which is officially ordered to be derived from one country was imported from another as the genuine article. Thus, Mexican ipomoea root arrived at one time as scammony and at another as jalap, and Japanese aconite and scopola were offered in place of the European drugs. The danger of such a procedure is great, since the so-called Mexican scammony has not been shown to be equivalent to the product
ported and those name
1
The Western
Druggist, November, 1908, p. 691.
plant. Shipments of henbane were found to be mixed with stramonium, mylabois was offered for cantharides, the trimming of chicory bark for dandelion root, and worthless maracaibo bark for cinchona, while spurious drugs were offered in place of jaborandi, arnica, buchu, gentian, and matico. A consignment of santonica was found to be largely adulterated with exhausted birch bark, and in spite of repeated exposures the worthless brown strophanthus hispidus continued to arrive, thus perpetuating a fraud which if not checked would jeopardise a great many lives. Specimens of lactucarium arrived in a mouldy condition and some jambul seeds were found to be hollowed out by worms. A shipment of nux vomica seeds consisted largely of small worthless seeds which had been rolled in a mixture of clay and vegetable matter to imitate the genuine seeds in size and general appearance. Several other drugs were found to be artificial, including benzoin, balsam of Peru, storax, and saffron, the last-named consisting of calendula heavily coated with mineral matter and dyed. Probably the most important and interesting experience of the year’s work was the importation of three shipments of hyoscyamus muticus as henbane." This is a very large plant and it is collected in Egypt so cheaply that it costs less than onetwentieth the price of the medicinal drug. It is particularly attractive to the importer from the fact that it usually contains from 1 to 1.25 per cent. of hyoscyamine, whereas the genuine drug contains only about one-twelfth of 1 per cent. On this account it is brought down to the official standard by mixing it with inferior grades of henbane and disposed of in the powdered form. Dr. Rusby’s report is of world-wide interest because it deals with medicinal products obtained from every drug-yielding country. Some of these are liable to appear on the English market and it is desirable, therefore, that home importers should be on their guard. The selection of medicinal agents should not be influenced by low commercial considerations and no precautions should be neglected to avoid the introduction of fraudulent drugs or those of poor quality into the country. It is in matters of this kind that the pharmacist, whether wholesale or retail, is called upon to exercise professional functions and to provide the physician with the very best materials with which to
.
’’
ABOUT a year ago the drug laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture was assigned the duty of ascertaining whether the drugs im. true to
Japanese European
combat disease.
LONGEVITY IN NORFOLK. THE
of extreme old age seems to be more in the country than in the towns, although many instances may be pointed to of longevity in town dwellers. Exact statistics would be difficult to come by, as the place of death may not have been the habitat of the deceased for any length of time, while the country centenarian is more apt, in the absence of other topics of conversation, to become a celebrity and to receive the honour of a paragraph in the newspapers. As a rule, no great reliance can be placed upon the statements made by old persons themselves and their relatives as to age. There is nearly always a tendency to exaggerate. "This," writes a correspondent, "has been strongly exemplified whilst gathering information regarding those who had applied for the old age pension. In the majority of instances which came under my notice applicants had added considerably to the length of their years. However, collecting the necessary details brought to light the fact that there are in the rural districts of England a very large number of persons who have exceeded the allotted span of life. For example, in Norfolk there are in every village individuals of more than 80 years of age, and not infrequently one or two over 90, and those of 70 and upwards are regarded as not even old. Many farm labourers of 70 are quite hale occurrence
frequent
i
’
53 and hearty, working from early morning up to five or six o’clock in the evening, and some are so vigorous as to earn a full man’s wages. And the women in the country are more In one tenacious of life perhaps than are the men. known me to about 300 village personally containing people within the past six months have died three women of more than 90 years of age, the oldest of these being no less than 96. In another Norfolk village with inhabitants to the number of 400 there live a man of 95, a woman of 90, a woman of 89, a woman of 87, and several of both sexes of In yet another village there is a blacksmith aged over 80. 96 and the widow of a country medical practitioner whose years mount up to 92." This longevity of the Norfolk peasant has a very interesting pathological side to it. The chief enemy of the farm labourer of the Eastern counties from the standpoint of health is rheumatism. Not many reach even middle age without having been the victims of rheumatism and a large number are crippled in their old age by this disease. But in spite of this the average of longevity seems to be very high, although as well as rheumatism he has to contend with the lack of adequate housing accommodation and want of proper sanitary arrangements. That to eat sparingly of plain wholesome food, to be much in the openL air, and to work sufficiently to occupy the mind and to exercise the body, will enable a man to defy more or lessi the evils of environment would seem to be shown by the toughness of the Norfolk labourer. ,
"rapid"and"slow"as applied to development;"brief," medium,and"long"as applied to vitality. It also has a suitable adaptation of the well-known Dewey Decimal System, providing a concise and simple numerical "
notation for some 10 or 12 salient characters sufficient to make a preliminary comparison with other organisms. On the other side of the sheet there is a simple but full list of the morphological, cultural, physical, biochemical, and pathogenic features of the organism under observation, so that an investigator has only to underline the required terms to have a description of his results and to see at a glance what points need further investigation and record. This sheet, the size of which is almost the same as a page of THE LANCET, should be of considerable value in simplifying the correlation of the work of different investigators. As an example of the concise numerical notation we may give the bacillus coli, which would be Bacillus 222.111102, these nine figures indicating Endospores not produced, facultative anaerobic, gelatin not liquefied, acid and gas from dextrose, from lactose, and from saccharose, nitrates reduced with evolution of gas, non-chromogenic, diastasic action on potato-starch feeble." Even this is only an approximate description of a variety of the bacillus colÎi since the original organism isolated by Escherich did not ferment saccharose. ___
THE
EFFECTS OF COLD STORAGE ON CHICKENS AND EGGS.
CONSIDERABLE work has recently been done by the United States Bureau of Chemistry in determining the effect of cold storage upon the healthfulness of foods.l The importance As with the higher plants, so with the lowest members of of the subject from a public health point of view is weU ill the vegetable kingdom-the schizophytes-some system of illustrated by the fact that one firm alone brings annually to for classification is required if progress is to be made. This C’ Chicago storage 6,000,000 pounds of poultry, 300 carlo of eggs, and 100 carloads of butter, 95 per cent. of implies the selection of certain characters as the basis of a loads which is sold for consumption outside the State of Illinois classification and of generally accepted and accurately de. w 0] abroad. fined descriptive terms to express those characters which may or During the month of January, 1906, this fi firm serve for the identification, even if not for the classification, shipped to Liverpool and London 1,000,000 pounds of poultry, and the total business done by the of micro-organisms. Every bacteriologist knows how diffi- o: ficult it is to recognise a micro-organism from a description firm during 1905 exceeded .6300,000 in value. Eggs and which are perhaps stored more extensively than there are numerous in brief of instances the and p poultry, history a other commodities, cannot by any system of cooling be bacteriology where organisms have been regarded as identical any k for a year in cold storage. Probably few apples are and subsequently found to be diverse, while the converse hasi kept k in cold storage for a longer period than six months. also occurred. The early literature concerning the bacillus; kept I are stored from April to July and to a less extent in the is rendered to a bacillus coli communis and , Eggs typhosus j i useless as to the extent the doubt which exists August. Those laid in April and May keep best, and as a large by c the latest eggs are sold first. In this way July of described. The in the the difficulties wayrconsequence identity organism of accurate description are rendered great, if not insuperable,, aand August eggs are never kept in storage for more than f months, while April and May eggs are disposed of during by the extreme variability of the organisms and the ease withi four in 1 which they may be modified by infinitesimal alterations i December and January, the rule being that all must be sold 1 the first day of February. Poultry is never kept longer the conditions of growth. The characters of a freshlyy by 1 isolated organism not infrequently differ greatly from thosee than eight months. The bulletin summarises the results of a of the same organism after subculture on artificial mediaa preliminary 1 study of the effect of cold storage on eggs, milk, I and quail, but the work undertaken is so comprehenfor some generations. These difficulties must be met, if the e chickens, :sive in scope that the final report is not expected to be ready subject is not to become a jungle without tracks, by a careful selection of the characters to be used for identification, The main objects of the investigation t, for some time. the terminology to be employed in their description, and by to ascertain the kinds and character of food y were : (1) the of under which Ie in conditions these cold rigidly fixing growth storage; (2) to determine the products kept characters are developed. Chester in his work on " Deterrand minimum, maximum, average length of time during minative Bacteriology " made a great effort in this direction, are i, which such products kept in storage ; (3) to and his terminology and definitions have been largely .y ascertain the usual temperatures employed; and (4) to deter1S mine the effects of such storage upon the organic impresaccepted by American authors. An interesting step has ojust been taken by the Society of American Bacteriosions, chemical, bacteriological, and histological properties of ic stored foods. It is evident that the chief effect of cold logists in issuing a descriptive chart for the systematic record of the characters of micro-organisms under observaastorage must be to inhibit the ordinary processes of fermentation with a view to the readier recognition of new ;w tion and decay. But it is incontestable that changes do go species or sub-species. It contains some 75 defini1 Bureau of Chemistry, United States Department tions of terms, including valuable (though of course arbitrary) of Bulletin No. 115, Agriculture, by H. W. Wiley and several collaborators. Washington, definitions of "long"and "short"as applied to chains; 1908, pp. 117, with photo-micrographic illustrations.
THE SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF MICROORGANISMS.
of the Levant, and the aconitine obtained from aconite is not identical with that derived from the
feeding
2d. per head.
Wemuch doubt the capability of any English for cooking in the sensible and tasty way either municipality in which Frenchmen do or for cooking even badly at 2d. per head. English rates rise with the rapidity of the sums in the well-known problem about the farthing for each nail in But we quite agree that if the State is to ’, a horse’s shoes. educate children, and apparently it must do so, that it is mere waste of money to try to educate a child who is practically starving. The problem is a serious one, and it would be well for those politicians who have hailed the decision as a party victory to take a lesson from the Paris Municipal Council as to how that body manages to run its cantines scolaires in the excellent way in which they are run, and I more important still as to its system of inspection as to what parents can pay and as to what parents can really not pay. ’
il
MODERN FORMS OF ADULTERATIONS OF DRUGS.
distributed from one State to another were and of a suitable quality for the manufacture of medicinal preparations. The work was intrusted to Dr. H. H. Rusby, a pharmacologist, whose first report1 affords much valuable information as to the mode of adulterating drugs and the extent to which it is now carried on. Dr. Rusby examines every drug that is imported at New York about which the inspector is at all doubtful, and the admission or deportation of drugs then rests with the Treasury. A consignment of belladonna root was found to contain poke root and scopola, but it ultimately entered the country through another port. A broker imported five tons of ground olive pits on behalf of a firm who, according to his statement, intended to use the article as a filler for chicken food. This is an interesting case, because the firm in question dealt only in drugs and had no connexion with chicken foods. But as the shipment was neither adulterated nor misbranded there were no legal grounds for preventing its entry into the country. The firm’s powdered drugs were then examined and within a few months ground olive pits were found in five samples out of nine. Nearly every shipment of belladonna root contained from 15 to 42 per cent. of poke root, one contained 50 per cent. of ground olive pits. and a consignment of cut dandelion root was adulterated with more than 40 per cent. of small stones ingeniously selected The first year’s on account of their similar size and colour. work showed that much of the adulteration was intentional and studied. Sand, either alone or mixed with starch or foreign vegetable matter, was found in many drugs, including henbane (28 per cent.), aniseed (25 per cent.), benzoin (40 to Ground 50 per cent.), kamala, lycopodium, and senna. olive pits were found to a considerable extent in many drugs, including gentian and ipecacuanha. In several cases a drug which is officially ordered to be derived from one country was imported from another as the genuine article. Thus, Mexican ipomoea root arrived at one time as scammony and at another as jalap, and Japanese aconite and scopola were offered in place of the European drugs. The danger of such a procedure is great, since the so-called Mexican scammony has not been shown to be equivalent to the product
ported and those name
1
The Western
Druggist, November, 1908, p. 691.
plant. Shipments of henbane were found to be mixed with stramonium, mylabois was offered for cantharides, the trimming of chicory bark for dandelion root, and worthless maracaibo bark for cinchona, while spurious drugs were offered in place of jaborandi, arnica, buchu, gentian, and matico. A consignment of santonica was found to be largely adulterated with exhausted birch bark, and in spite of repeated exposures the worthless brown strophanthus hispidus continued to arrive, thus perpetuating a fraud which if not checked would jeopardise a great many lives. Specimens of lactucarium arrived in a mouldy condition and some jambul seeds were found to be hollowed out by worms. A shipment of nux vomica seeds consisted largely of small worthless seeds which had been rolled in a mixture of clay and vegetable matter to imitate the genuine seeds in size and general appearance. Several other drugs were found to be artificial, including benzoin, balsam of Peru, storax, and saffron, the last-named consisting of calendula heavily coated with mineral matter and dyed. Probably the most important and interesting experience of the year’s work was the importation of three shipments of hyoscyamus muticus as henbane." This is a very large plant and it is collected in Egypt so cheaply that it costs less than onetwentieth the price of the medicinal drug. It is particularly attractive to the importer from the fact that it usually contains from 1 to 1.25 per cent. of hyoscyamine, whereas the genuine drug contains only about one-twelfth of 1 per cent. On this account it is brought down to the official standard by mixing it with inferior grades of henbane and disposed of in the powdered form. Dr. Rusby’s report is of world-wide interest because it deals with medicinal products obtained from every drug-yielding country. Some of these are liable to appear on the English market and it is desirable, therefore, that home importers should be on their guard. The selection of medicinal agents should not be influenced by low commercial considerations and no precautions should be neglected to avoid the introduction of fraudulent drugs or those of poor quality into the country. It is in matters of this kind that the pharmacist, whether wholesale or retail, is called upon to exercise professional functions and to provide the physician with the very best materials with which to
.
’’
ABOUT a year ago the drug laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture was assigned the duty of ascertaining whether the drugs im. true to
Japanese European
combat disease.
LONGEVITY IN NORFOLK. THE
of extreme old age seems to be more in the country than in the towns, although many instances may be pointed to of longevity in town dwellers. Exact statistics would be difficult to come by, as the place of death may not have been the habitat of the deceased for any length of time, while the country centenarian is more apt, in the absence of other topics of conversation, to become a celebrity and to receive the honour of a paragraph in the newspapers. As a rule, no great reliance can be placed upon the statements made by old persons themselves and their relatives as to age. There is nearly always a tendency to exaggerate. "This," writes a correspondent, "has been strongly exemplified whilst gathering information regarding those who had applied for the old age pension. In the majority of instances which came under my notice applicants had added considerably to the length of their years. However, collecting the necessary details brought to light the fact that there are in the rural districts of England a very large number of persons who have exceeded the allotted span of life. For example, in Norfolk there are in every village individuals of more than 80 years of age, and not infrequently one or two over 90, and those of 70 and upwards are regarded as not even old. Many farm labourers of 70 are quite hale occurrence
frequent
i
’
53 and hearty, working from early morning up to five or six o’clock in the evening, and some are so vigorous as to earn a full man’s wages. And the women in the country are more In one tenacious of life perhaps than are the men. known me to about 300 village personally containing people within the past six months have died three women of more than 90 years of age, the oldest of these being no less than 96. In another Norfolk village with inhabitants to the number of 400 there live a man of 95, a woman of 90, a woman of 89, a woman of 87, and several of both sexes of In yet another village there is a blacksmith aged over 80. 96 and the widow of a country medical practitioner whose years mount up to 92." This longevity of the Norfolk peasant has a very interesting pathological side to it. The chief enemy of the farm labourer of the Eastern counties from the standpoint of health is rheumatism. Not many reach even middle age without having been the victims of rheumatism and a large number are crippled in their old age by this disease. But in spite of this the average of longevity seems to be very high, although as well as rheumatism he has to contend with the lack of adequate housing accommodation and want of proper sanitary arrangements. That to eat sparingly of plain wholesome food, to be much in the openL air, and to work sufficiently to occupy the mind and to exercise the body, will enable a man to defy more or lessi the evils of environment would seem to be shown by the toughness of the Norfolk labourer. ,
"rapid"and"slow"as applied to development;"brief," medium,and"long"as applied to vitality. It also has a suitable adaptation of the well-known Dewey Decimal System, providing a concise and simple numerical "
notation for some 10 or 12 salient characters sufficient to make a preliminary comparison with other organisms. On the other side of the sheet there is a simple but full list of the morphological, cultural, physical, biochemical, and pathogenic features of the organism under observation, so that an investigator has only to underline the required terms to have a description of his results and to see at a glance what points need further investigation and record. This sheet, the size of which is almost the same as a page of THE LANCET, should be of considerable value in simplifying the correlation of the work of different investigators. As an example of the concise numerical notation we may give the bacillus coli, which would be Bacillus 222.111102, these nine figures indicating Endospores not produced, facultative anaerobic, gelatin not liquefied, acid and gas from dextrose, from lactose, and from saccharose, nitrates reduced with evolution of gas, non-chromogenic, diastasic action on potato-starch feeble." Even this is only an approximate description of a variety of the bacillus colÎi since the original organism isolated by Escherich did not ferment saccharose. ___
THE
EFFECTS OF COLD STORAGE ON CHICKENS AND EGGS.
CONSIDERABLE work has recently been done by the United States Bureau of Chemistry in determining the effect of cold storage upon the healthfulness of foods.l The importance As with the higher plants, so with the lowest members of of the subject from a public health point of view is weU ill the vegetable kingdom-the schizophytes-some system of illustrated by the fact that one firm alone brings annually to for classification is required if progress is to be made. This C’ Chicago storage 6,000,000 pounds of poultry, 300 carlo of eggs, and 100 carloads of butter, 95 per cent. of implies the selection of certain characters as the basis of a loads which is sold for consumption outside the State of Illinois classification and of generally accepted and accurately de. w 0] abroad. fined descriptive terms to express those characters which may or During the month of January, 1906, this fi firm serve for the identification, even if not for the classification, shipped to Liverpool and London 1,000,000 pounds of poultry, and the total business done by the of micro-organisms. Every bacteriologist knows how diffi- o: ficult it is to recognise a micro-organism from a description firm during 1905 exceeded .6300,000 in value. Eggs and which are perhaps stored more extensively than there are numerous in brief of instances the and p poultry, history a other commodities, cannot by any system of cooling be bacteriology where organisms have been regarded as identical any k for a year in cold storage. Probably few apples are and subsequently found to be diverse, while the converse hasi kept k in cold storage for a longer period than six months. also occurred. The early literature concerning the bacillus; kept I are stored from April to July and to a less extent in the is rendered to a bacillus coli communis and , Eggs typhosus j i useless as to the extent the doubt which exists August. Those laid in April and May keep best, and as a large by c the latest eggs are sold first. In this way July of described. The in the the difficulties wayrconsequence identity organism of accurate description are rendered great, if not insuperable,, aand August eggs are never kept in storage for more than f months, while April and May eggs are disposed of during by the extreme variability of the organisms and the ease withi four in 1 which they may be modified by infinitesimal alterations i December and January, the rule being that all must be sold 1 the first day of February. Poultry is never kept longer the conditions of growth. The characters of a freshlyy by 1 isolated organism not infrequently differ greatly from thosee than eight months. The bulletin summarises the results of a of the same organism after subculture on artificial mediaa preliminary 1 study of the effect of cold storage on eggs, milk, I and quail, but the work undertaken is so comprehenfor some generations. These difficulties must be met, if the e chickens, :sive in scope that the final report is not expected to be ready subject is not to become a jungle without tracks, by a careful selection of the characters to be used for identification, The main objects of the investigation t, for some time. the terminology to be employed in their description, and by to ascertain the kinds and character of food y were : (1) the of under which Ie in conditions these cold rigidly fixing growth storage; (2) to determine the products kept characters are developed. Chester in his work on " Deterrand minimum, maximum, average length of time during minative Bacteriology " made a great effort in this direction, are i, which such products kept in storage ; (3) to and his terminology and definitions have been largely .y ascertain the usual temperatures employed; and (4) to deter1S mine the effects of such storage upon the organic impresaccepted by American authors. An interesting step has ojust been taken by the Society of American Bacteriosions, chemical, bacteriological, and histological properties of ic stored foods. It is evident that the chief effect of cold logists in issuing a descriptive chart for the systematic record of the characters of micro-organisms under observaastorage must be to inhibit the ordinary processes of fermentation with a view to the readier recognition of new ;w tion and decay. But it is incontestable that changes do go species or sub-species. It contains some 75 defini1 Bureau of Chemistry, United States Department tions of terms, including valuable (though of course arbitrary) of Bulletin No. 115, Agriculture, by H. W. Wiley and several collaborators. Washington, definitions of "long"and "short"as applied to chains; 1908, pp. 117, with photo-micrographic illustrations.
THE SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF MICROORGANISMS.