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MENTAL HYGIENE IN INDUSTRY.
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promising of these remedies, and accordingly careful investigation has been carried out by Dr. B. P. B. NAIDU and Col. F. P. MACKIE at the Haffkine Institute, Bombay, during the past four years for the special and avowed object of obtaining a therapeutic serum of increased potency. The successive stages and results of this inquiry are described by them at p. 893 of our present issue, and are highly instructive. It seems that in order to obtain successful curative serum for plague at least two requirements must be met. The first is to employ as antigen vaccines prepared from the most virulent strains available, and to see that this virulence is maintained throughout the process of vaccine manufacture. Emulsions made of plague-infected spleen are more virulent than cultures on artificial media on which Bacillus pestis is very apt to lose its virulence. The second requirement concerns the kind of animal employed for providing the serum. For reasons stated by them, NAIDU and MACKIE decided not to use the horse and to attempt the production of anti-plague serum from the more susceptible bovines and sheep. The degree of potency to which curative serum can attain was studied experimentally. First of all in rabbits, and by intense immunisation, a serum was prepared of such efficacy that with a comparatively small dose, given within 24 hours of infection, all the animals were saved, and even at a later stage a considerable proportion recovered under influence of the serum when the controls died. Sheep were next tried and here the process of immunisation was so severe that at the end of 16 months only 3 out of 21 survived. Nevertheless, the curative value of their serum was found to b two and a half times greater than that of the plague serum of the Pasteur Institute. In the third place, calves were used and a serum prepared that was found to have a curative value three times that of the Pasteur Institute serum. At this stage a comparison with anti-plague sera from a diversity of sources, further confirmed experimentally the superior curative potency of sera prepared at the Haffkine Institute. With regard to the presence of antibodies to B. pestis demonstrable in vitro, while the anti-plague serum prepared from horses at the Pasteur Institute and at the Lister Institute gave negative results, the serum prepared at the Haffkine Institute was found to possess both agglutinins and precipitins for local strains of the plague bacillus. NAIDU and MACKIE were now in a position to attempt the specific treatment of human cases of plague, the serum available for this purpose having been prepared from 5 sheep, 3 bullocks, and 4 buffaloes. An outbreak at Hyderabad provided 76 cases, of which 33 did not receive serum, and of these 23 died. Of the remaining 43 who were treated with the serum 15 died. Comparison of individual cases in both groups when graded by the degree of septicaemia present when treatment began showed that when the blood had become heavily infected by the plague bacillus all of 8 control cases died, whereas out of 10 such cases treated with serum 3 recovered-a very remarkable jnost .a
achievement
when all previous experience in India has shown that such cases have a mortality of 100 per cent. In view of these and further results described in their paper, and in view especially of the adequate manner in which their experiments were controlled throughout, it appears that the claim of NAIDU and MACKIE to have produced a more potent anti-plague serum than any that has hitherto been available is justified, and both these investigators and also the Haffkine Institute are to be congratulated on such an achievement. At the same time the number of human cases treated so far is admittedly small, and the position of such a serum can never be secure until the modus operandi is fully established, and a method of standardisation arrived at that will guarantee the potency of every batch and every sample. MENTAL HYGIENE IN INDUSTRY. THE need for physical hygiene in industry has become a commonplace, but wherever invalidity statistics become available the disturbing fact emerges that a serious amount of disability arises from causes psychological rather than physical. A brochure issued by the International Labour Office on " Mental Hygiene in Industry " gives a summary of observations, somewhat lessened in value by incomplete references, which indicates the extent and nature of these disabilities. Defects of mental adaptation show themselves in industrial unrest, in frankly psychoneurotic illness-to which the old name of neurasthenia is still applied by one of the authors quoted-or in bodily conditions such as the occupational neuroses or in circulatory, digestive, and somatic reactions associated with hysteria. This catalogue of troubles is startling; recommendations for coping with them include the psychophysiological selection of workers, the examination of the mental state of workers who have been the victims of accidents or shocks or have acquired mental defects at work, as well as cooperation with psychiatric clinics, presumably for purposes of treatment. These requirements demand a general knowledge of the subject that our present curriculum makes no claim to provide, and justify the provision of post-graduate instruction in the course of lectures on medical industrial psychology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The psychoneuroses have too long been regarded as imaginary maladies, as luxuries of the idle and self-indulgent. The that industrial efficiency depends upon recognition their prophylaxis and treatment is only one among many reasons for giving the subject the attention that it needs. AT a meeting of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh on Oct. 14th, it was resolved that
of in view of the national situation, the ceremonies in connexion with the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the College be postponed to some future date. Sir Edward Marriott Cooke, who died in London Oct. 17th in his eightieth year, was associated all his life with the care of mental disease. He was chairman of the Board of Control from 1916 18, when many of the public mental hospitals were converted into hospitals for sick and wounded troops. For the last ten years of his life he had acted as unpaid Commissioner under the Mental Deficiency Act. on
promising of these remedies, and accordingly careful investigation has been carried out by Dr. B. P. B. NAIDU and Col. F. P. MACKIE at the Haffkine Institute, Bombay, during the past four years for the special and avowed object of obtaining a therapeutic serum of increased potency. The successive stages and results of this inquiry are described by them at p. 893 of our present issue, and are highly instructive. It seems that in order to obtain successful curative serum for plague at least two requirements must be met. The first is to employ as antigen vaccines prepared from the most virulent strains available, and to see that this virulence is maintained throughout the process of vaccine manufacture. Emulsions made of plague-infected spleen are more virulent than cultures on artificial media on which Bacillus pestis is very apt to lose its virulence. The second requirement concerns the kind of animal employed for providing the serum. For reasons stated by them, NAIDU and MACKIE decided not to use the horse and to attempt the production of anti-plague serum from the more susceptible bovines and sheep. The degree of potency to which curative serum can attain was studied experimentally. First of all in rabbits, and by intense immunisation, a serum was prepared of such efficacy that with a comparatively small dose, given within 24 hours of infection, all the animals were saved, and even at a later stage a considerable proportion recovered under influence of the serum when the controls died. Sheep were next tried and here the process of immunisation was so severe that at the end of 16 months only 3 out of 21 survived. Nevertheless, the curative value of their serum was found to b two and a half times greater than that of the plague serum of the Pasteur Institute. In the third place, calves were used and a serum prepared that was found to have a curative value three times that of the Pasteur Institute serum. At this stage a comparison with anti-plague sera from a diversity of sources, further confirmed experimentally the superior curative potency of sera prepared at the Haffkine Institute. With regard to the presence of antibodies to B. pestis demonstrable in vitro, while the anti-plague serum prepared from horses at the Pasteur Institute and at the Lister Institute gave negative results, the serum prepared at the Haffkine Institute was found to possess both agglutinins and precipitins for local strains of the plague bacillus. NAIDU and MACKIE were now in a position to attempt the specific treatment of human cases of plague, the serum available for this purpose having been prepared from 5 sheep, 3 bullocks, and 4 buffaloes. An outbreak at Hyderabad provided 76 cases, of which 33 did not receive serum, and of these 23 died. Of the remaining 43 who were treated with the serum 15 died. Comparison of individual cases in both groups when graded by the degree of septicaemia present when treatment began showed that when the blood had become heavily infected by the plague bacillus all of 8 control cases died, whereas out of 10 such cases treated with serum 3 recovered-a very remarkable jnost .a
achievement
when all previous experience in India has shown that such cases have a mortality of 100 per cent. In view of these and further results described in their paper, and in view especially of the adequate manner in which their experiments were controlled throughout, it appears that the claim of NAIDU and MACKIE to have produced a more potent anti-plague serum than any that has hitherto been available is justified, and both these investigators and also the Haffkine Institute are to be congratulated on such an achievement. At the same time the number of human cases treated so far is admittedly small, and the position of such a serum can never be secure until the modus operandi is fully established, and a method of standardisation arrived at that will guarantee the potency of every batch and every sample. MENTAL HYGIENE IN INDUSTRY. THE need for physical hygiene in industry has become a commonplace, but wherever invalidity statistics become available the disturbing fact emerges that a serious amount of disability arises from causes psychological rather than physical. A brochure issued by the International Labour Office on " Mental Hygiene in Industry " gives a summary of observations, somewhat lessened in value by incomplete references, which indicates the extent and nature of these disabilities. Defects of mental adaptation show themselves in industrial unrest, in frankly psychoneurotic illness-to which the old name of neurasthenia is still applied by one of the authors quoted-or in bodily conditions such as the occupational neuroses or in circulatory, digestive, and somatic reactions associated with hysteria. This catalogue of troubles is startling; recommendations for coping with them include the psychophysiological selection of workers, the examination of the mental state of workers who have been the victims of accidents or shocks or have acquired mental defects at work, as well as cooperation with psychiatric clinics, presumably for purposes of treatment. These requirements demand a general knowledge of the subject that our present curriculum makes no claim to provide, and justify the provision of post-graduate instruction in the course of lectures on medical industrial psychology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The psychoneuroses have too long been regarded as imaginary maladies, as luxuries of the idle and self-indulgent. The that industrial efficiency depends upon recognition their prophylaxis and treatment is only one among many reasons for giving the subject the attention that it needs. AT a meeting of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh on Oct. 14th, it was resolved that
of in view of the national situation, the ceremonies in connexion with the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the College be postponed to some future date. Sir Edward Marriott Cooke, who died in London Oct. 17th in his eightieth year, was associated all his life with the care of mental disease. He was chairman of the Board of Control from 1916 18, when many of the public mental hospitals were converted into hospitals for sick and wounded troops. For the last ten years of his life he had acted as unpaid Commissioner under the Mental Deficiency Act. on