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MOULDS.
817 on merchant ships in any year. Has it no medical officer to whom to refer it for criticism and advice with a view to prevention, and why should not that list go over to the Ministry of Health for expert examination and report by a staff skilled in the understanding of medical facts and ’ implications ?’?
.deaths occurring
____
Americarz Journal of Physiology Prof. R. T. Barry has called attention to the fact that, in estimating the systolic blood pressure in man by the auscultatory method, the phases of respiration have to be taken into account, for with a given compressing pressure in the armlet the pulse-beat may produce sound during one phase of the respiratory cycle whilst during the other phase it may fail to do so. Similarly in those rarer cases, to which we have referred above, where there is a slow but rhythmic variation in pulse frequency extending over a series of respiratory cycles, during the phase of more rapid heart action the Korotkow sounds may cease to be audible. This is an interesting observation from the physiological standpoint, but clinically it is of little significance, for a variation in systolic pressure of less than 10 mm. is for practical purposes negligible in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and a rhythmic variation greater than this is not likely to be attributable to respiratory factors except in those conditions which rise to the pulsus paradoxus.
MOULDS. deal of work is needed before the identification of moulds will be carried to the bacteriological precision which dissects the salmonellas and types the pneumococci. When a pathologist comes .across a mould, he is generally content enough if he can say whether it is an aspergillus or a penicillium ; there is no very readily available literature which will help him into any details which his curiosity may ask for. A book written by two members of the staff of the Microbiological Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture may therefore fill a useful placed The greater part of the book is descriptive and systematic, and this section represents well the determination of the Americans to give ,expression to their appreciation of the great truth TESTS FOR COLOUR VISION. that sound systematics is the only sure foundation of experimental biology. There is, however, also a INGENIOUS devices for testing colour vision are general introduction which summarises what is known always of interest. The well-known principle of of the physiology and pathology of aspergilli. They Stilling’s pseudo-isochromatic cards, of which a new are used in a variety of domestic and commercial edition has just been issued, is that the dichromic industries-to ferment soy beans and fish in the will be unable to decipher figures composed of red East, to improvethe flavour of coffee, to make citric dots on a background of green dots, and similarly acid-and are well known as the cause of a -fatal other pairs of complementary colours. Various shades disease of the air-sacs in birds, in a somewhat dubious are used, and in this edition cards are included which relation to inflammations of the meatus and other are meant to demonstrate a diminished blue-yellow parts of the skin in man, and as gaining a lodgment sensitivity and diminished sensibility for violet. in diseased lungs. If the obscurities of most of their One card is constructed in which those alone who pathology are to be cleared up, an accurate identifica- have a heightened sensitiveness for colour contrast tion of species is the first necessity; towards this the and variations in brightness can make out any figures, book should be of real value. and some charts are added for the detection of malingerers. The construction of these cards is based on the trichromic theory of colour vision. Some years RESPIRATORY VARIATION OF THE PULSE. ago Edridge-Green published somewhat similar ones own theory, and these were designed IN his classical work on the cardiac arrhythmias illustrating his to detect all degrees of colour defect. The chief forms Mackenzie differentiated between those of of of this is the ease and cards advantage description irregular pulse which are, and those forms which are rapidity with which they can be used. For accurate He pointed not, of serious prognostic significance. in difficult cases it is generally admitted that out that almost constantly in healthy children and testing the use of spectral colours by means of a lantern is not uncommonly in young adults the pulse frequency the best test. tends to vary with the phases of respiration, increasing Another set2 of cards has reached us on which are and during inspiration decreasing during expiration. In addition to this juvenile type of irregularity, as painted oblongs or dots which to the normal eye in all look alike-grey. They are described as Mackenzie called it, another form of sinus arrhythmia daylight " this term being used to indicate Umschlagfarben," is occasionally met with in which the pulse-rate combinations of colour which appear alike to the waxes and wanes in a perfectly regular fashion, but but by artificial light seem independently of respiration. In both these conditions normal eye by daylight the pulse is of smaller volume during the rapid than decidedly different, some spots appearing more red, The subject of partial colour green. during the slow phase. A more extreme rhythmic others more on account of his greater sensitiveness to type of variation in pulse amplitude, known as the blindness, to pulsus paradoxus, occurs in association with chronic either red or green, as the case mayofbe, is able colour which mediastinitis and is there probably attributable to recognise by daylight these differences direct compression of the subclavian artery by are apparent to the normal sighted only by artificial traction of the surrounding tissues during inspiration. light. The cards are made on the same principle The variation in heart-rate associated with respiration as the Stilling ones, but constitute a more delicate is generally attributed to alterations in vagal tone, test which can only be employed in special conditions and provided the minute-volume of the heart remains of daylight. The technical difficulties in the reproducconstant the output per beat will vary inversely with thee tion of the colours took two and a half years to overpulse-rate. There is, however, a second factor which come. It is claimed that the test is a quantitative one, comes into play, for the negative intrathoracic pressure able to detect not only the presence but different during inspiration tends to dilate the pulmonary degrees of colour defect and, therefore, of practical vessels and so to accelerate the blood flow through the use not only to the ophthalmologist but also to those lungs. Hence the venous filling of the left auricle is technical industries where good colour vision is of increased and this leads to a corresponding increase importance. It seems unlikely that under the climatic in the output of the left ventricle. The immediate conditions of Great Britain the method could be result of dilatation of the pulmonary vessels, however, widely adopted with success unless an artificial dayis to enable them to accommodate a larger quantity of light installation was also provided. blood ; so there is an appreciable lag between the 1 Stilling’s Pseudo-isochromatic Cards for Testing the Colour commencement of inspiration and the augmentation Prof. E. Hertel, Sense. Seventeenth edition. Edited in the systemic output. In a recent paper in the Director of the University Eye Clinic by at Leipzig. Leipzig : A
GREAT
give
1926. M.5.70. 2 Tafeln mit Umschlagfarben zum Nachweis von Relativer Rot- und Grünsichtigkeit. By Dr. med. Ernst Wolfflin, Professor at the University of Basle. Same publishers. 1916. M.18.
Georg Thieme.
1 The Aspergilli. By Charles Thom and Margaret B. Church. London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox. 1926. Pp. 272. Figures and microphotographs. 22s. 6d.
.deaths occurring
____
Americarz Journal of Physiology Prof. R. T. Barry has called attention to the fact that, in estimating the systolic blood pressure in man by the auscultatory method, the phases of respiration have to be taken into account, for with a given compressing pressure in the armlet the pulse-beat may produce sound during one phase of the respiratory cycle whilst during the other phase it may fail to do so. Similarly in those rarer cases, to which we have referred above, where there is a slow but rhythmic variation in pulse frequency extending over a series of respiratory cycles, during the phase of more rapid heart action the Korotkow sounds may cease to be audible. This is an interesting observation from the physiological standpoint, but clinically it is of little significance, for a variation in systolic pressure of less than 10 mm. is for practical purposes negligible in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and a rhythmic variation greater than this is not likely to be attributable to respiratory factors except in those conditions which rise to the pulsus paradoxus.
MOULDS. deal of work is needed before the identification of moulds will be carried to the bacteriological precision which dissects the salmonellas and types the pneumococci. When a pathologist comes .across a mould, he is generally content enough if he can say whether it is an aspergillus or a penicillium ; there is no very readily available literature which will help him into any details which his curiosity may ask for. A book written by two members of the staff of the Microbiological Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture may therefore fill a useful placed The greater part of the book is descriptive and systematic, and this section represents well the determination of the Americans to give ,expression to their appreciation of the great truth TESTS FOR COLOUR VISION. that sound systematics is the only sure foundation of experimental biology. There is, however, also a INGENIOUS devices for testing colour vision are general introduction which summarises what is known always of interest. The well-known principle of of the physiology and pathology of aspergilli. They Stilling’s pseudo-isochromatic cards, of which a new are used in a variety of domestic and commercial edition has just been issued, is that the dichromic industries-to ferment soy beans and fish in the will be unable to decipher figures composed of red East, to improvethe flavour of coffee, to make citric dots on a background of green dots, and similarly acid-and are well known as the cause of a -fatal other pairs of complementary colours. Various shades disease of the air-sacs in birds, in a somewhat dubious are used, and in this edition cards are included which relation to inflammations of the meatus and other are meant to demonstrate a diminished blue-yellow parts of the skin in man, and as gaining a lodgment sensitivity and diminished sensibility for violet. in diseased lungs. If the obscurities of most of their One card is constructed in which those alone who pathology are to be cleared up, an accurate identifica- have a heightened sensitiveness for colour contrast tion of species is the first necessity; towards this the and variations in brightness can make out any figures, book should be of real value. and some charts are added for the detection of malingerers. The construction of these cards is based on the trichromic theory of colour vision. Some years RESPIRATORY VARIATION OF THE PULSE. ago Edridge-Green published somewhat similar ones own theory, and these were designed IN his classical work on the cardiac arrhythmias illustrating his to detect all degrees of colour defect. The chief forms Mackenzie differentiated between those of of of this is the ease and cards advantage description irregular pulse which are, and those forms which are rapidity with which they can be used. For accurate He pointed not, of serious prognostic significance. in difficult cases it is generally admitted that out that almost constantly in healthy children and testing the use of spectral colours by means of a lantern is not uncommonly in young adults the pulse frequency the best test. tends to vary with the phases of respiration, increasing Another set2 of cards has reached us on which are and during inspiration decreasing during expiration. In addition to this juvenile type of irregularity, as painted oblongs or dots which to the normal eye in all look alike-grey. They are described as Mackenzie called it, another form of sinus arrhythmia daylight " this term being used to indicate Umschlagfarben," is occasionally met with in which the pulse-rate combinations of colour which appear alike to the waxes and wanes in a perfectly regular fashion, but but by artificial light seem independently of respiration. In both these conditions normal eye by daylight the pulse is of smaller volume during the rapid than decidedly different, some spots appearing more red, The subject of partial colour green. during the slow phase. A more extreme rhythmic others more on account of his greater sensitiveness to type of variation in pulse amplitude, known as the blindness, to pulsus paradoxus, occurs in association with chronic either red or green, as the case mayofbe, is able colour which mediastinitis and is there probably attributable to recognise by daylight these differences direct compression of the subclavian artery by are apparent to the normal sighted only by artificial traction of the surrounding tissues during inspiration. light. The cards are made on the same principle The variation in heart-rate associated with respiration as the Stilling ones, but constitute a more delicate is generally attributed to alterations in vagal tone, test which can only be employed in special conditions and provided the minute-volume of the heart remains of daylight. The technical difficulties in the reproducconstant the output per beat will vary inversely with thee tion of the colours took two and a half years to overpulse-rate. There is, however, a second factor which come. It is claimed that the test is a quantitative one, comes into play, for the negative intrathoracic pressure able to detect not only the presence but different during inspiration tends to dilate the pulmonary degrees of colour defect and, therefore, of practical vessels and so to accelerate the blood flow through the use not only to the ophthalmologist but also to those lungs. Hence the venous filling of the left auricle is technical industries where good colour vision is of increased and this leads to a corresponding increase importance. It seems unlikely that under the climatic in the output of the left ventricle. The immediate conditions of Great Britain the method could be result of dilatation of the pulmonary vessels, however, widely adopted with success unless an artificial dayis to enable them to accommodate a larger quantity of light installation was also provided. blood ; so there is an appreciable lag between the 1 Stilling’s Pseudo-isochromatic Cards for Testing the Colour commencement of inspiration and the augmentation Prof. E. Hertel, Sense. Seventeenth edition. Edited in the systemic output. In a recent paper in the Director of the University Eye Clinic by at Leipzig. Leipzig : A
GREAT
give
1926. M.5.70. 2 Tafeln mit Umschlagfarben zum Nachweis von Relativer Rot- und Grünsichtigkeit. By Dr. med. Ernst Wolfflin, Professor at the University of Basle. Same publishers. 1916. M.18.
Georg Thieme.
1 The Aspergilli. By Charles Thom and Margaret B. Church. London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox. 1926. Pp. 272. Figures and microphotographs. 22s. 6d.