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NEW SOURCES OF VITAMIN A
1130
NEW SOURCES OF VITAMIN A
cancer, leprosy, cholera, plague, and sleeping sickness. It has, moreover, introduced international standards for biological preparations, concerned itself with child
welfare, and facilitated the exchange of medical knowledge and experience throughout the world.1 The story of its achievements is told in a small book of which the epilogue deserves special consideration.
richer than the cod in vitamin A, and instead of beingn wasted they can now be used in the preparation of vitamin A in uniformly high concentration and free from fishy taste and odour. A REASONABLE CANCER CAMPAIGN
THE King’s Speech on Tuesday foreshadowed proposals to ensure the earlier and more effective treatment of cancer, and in his speech at the B,&bgr;I.A. council dinner (briefly reported on another page) Mr. Elliot set out more fully what he had in mind. I regard it, he said, as a matter of urgent public necessity that we should make a sustained and organised attempt to deal with cancer on the broadest national lines. He spoke of the steady rise in the is as recognised good In the political sphere, mortality-rate from cancer and estimated that no
It is noted that all the countries concerned in the raging in Spain and in the Far East had shared enthusiastically in the international coöperation of the Health Organisation of the League, with the saving of life as its object, and the woeful contrast between the humanitarian and political tendencies of to-day are well defined. In general terms, in the humanitarian sphere,
wars now
cooperation for the common only sane mode of action. isolation, the assertion of sovereign rights, gangster rule on a large scale, predominate and threaten civilisation with destruction. It is becoming increasingly obvious, in a world brought close together by scientific inventions, that this illogical position cannot continue. Men can have world-wide coöperation controlled by reason, or they can have isolation, the rule of force and the rejection of reason ; they cannot have both, for one will destroy the other. And the choice is literally and simply a choice. Which the
choose is a matter of human will. Wars do not Men make them, because (for whatever ultimate reasons) they have not resolved to give up the war method. Cooperation does not come. Men make it ; and its achievements are wrecked by the Work like that of the Health Section war method. of the League of Nations is on the one hand ; destructive folly is on the other. It is not only in the face of disease that solidarity has become an imperious
men
come.
necessity. This plea for positive constructive effort
comes
with added force.when it is associated with a reminder of the most successful example in history of the cooperation of governments in humanitarian activities. NEW SOURCES OF VITAMIN A
than one case in four of cancer in an accessible and less than that where the disease is more site, deep-seated, is given the opportunity of cure or amelioration offered by the prompt application of modern methods. Mr. Elliot knows well the limita. tions of any such scheme and was careful not to promise too much ;in the report of his ’chief medical officer (see p. 1136) it is admitted that the incidence is not likely to be reduced until the results of research have put into our hands means of prevention. But the salient fact is that a large number of cancer patients do not receive the benefits of modern knowledge, and that existing facilities are manifestly inadequate. Mr. Elliot described it as his aim so to extend them that they are available to every member of the community. Comparatively few are now able to maintain hospitals expensive equip. ment, a difficulty which, in Sir Arthur MacNalty’s words, can only be overcome by more active coöperation between the voluntary hospitals and local authorities. Details of the scheme are still to be drawn up.
more
THE next session of the General Medical Council will open at 2 P.M. on Tuesday, Nov. 22nd, under the presidency of Sir Norman Walker.
A NEW process making use of molecular distillation for extracting vitamin A from fish livers was described Dr. A. E. EVANS, a commissioner of the Board of by Mr. F. H. Carr, D.Sc., at a meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry at Burlington House on Control, has been appointed Lord Chancellor’s visitor Nov. 7th. Dr. Carr said that insufficiency of vitamin A in lunacy in succession to Dr. Nathan Raw, who is now recognised as a contributory cause of faulty has retired. development and ill health of a large section of the Prof. J. B. S. HALDANE, F.R.S., will deliver a population. The epithelial layer of most of the Roberts lecture at the Royal College of of the the structure Lloyd linings body including respiratory His on Thursday, Nov. 17th, at 5 P.m. is and affected Physicians ducts, adversely passages, glands by its deficiency. Night-blindness, through a defect subject will be some problems of human congenital in the visual purple, is due to a shortage of disease. vitamin A, and this is a common defect in schoolTHE Royal Society of Medicine is holding a reception children. The new process has the advantage, among at its house in Wimpole-street at 8.30 P.M. on Tuesday. many others, of bringing into use new sources of the 29th of this month. Sir StClair Thomson is raw material. The technique, which has been devised to give a lecture on medical notabilities of the by a group of research workers in the laboratories Victorian age, as seen by Vanity Fair." of British Drug Houses Ltd., depends upon the use of an extraordinarily high vacuum-i.e., a pressure ELSEWHERE in our columns it is announced that Molecules Dr. as low as a millionth of an atmosphere. Morley Fletcher is representing the Royal College of the vitamin, being smaller and lighter than the of Physicians of London at the opening of the Royal oily constituents of the liver, are removed at com- Australasian College of Physicians at in paratively low temperatures and without decomposi- December. tion, leaving the fatty constituents almost free from vitamin and available for other purposes. It will Dr. C. S. MYERS, F.R.S., has resigned theprincipalship no longer be necessary to depend on the cod and of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology the halibut as principal sources of this vitamin since with which he has been associated since its foundation the livers of most sea-fish have been found to be in 1921, first as director and then as principal. We aie happy to learn that as honorary scientific at1,isè1’ 1 The Romance of the Health Work of the League of Nations. he will continue his association with the work ut By Kathleen E. Innes. Published by the author. Portway, St. Mary Bourne, Andover, Hants. 1938. Pp. 62. 1s. the Institute. "
Sydney
NEW SOURCES OF VITAMIN A
cancer, leprosy, cholera, plague, and sleeping sickness. It has, moreover, introduced international standards for biological preparations, concerned itself with child
welfare, and facilitated the exchange of medical knowledge and experience throughout the world.1 The story of its achievements is told in a small book of which the epilogue deserves special consideration.
richer than the cod in vitamin A, and instead of beingn wasted they can now be used in the preparation of vitamin A in uniformly high concentration and free from fishy taste and odour. A REASONABLE CANCER CAMPAIGN
THE King’s Speech on Tuesday foreshadowed proposals to ensure the earlier and more effective treatment of cancer, and in his speech at the B,&bgr;I.A. council dinner (briefly reported on another page) Mr. Elliot set out more fully what he had in mind. I regard it, he said, as a matter of urgent public necessity that we should make a sustained and organised attempt to deal with cancer on the broadest national lines. He spoke of the steady rise in the is as recognised good In the political sphere, mortality-rate from cancer and estimated that no
It is noted that all the countries concerned in the raging in Spain and in the Far East had shared enthusiastically in the international coöperation of the Health Organisation of the League, with the saving of life as its object, and the woeful contrast between the humanitarian and political tendencies of to-day are well defined. In general terms, in the humanitarian sphere,
wars now
cooperation for the common only sane mode of action. isolation, the assertion of sovereign rights, gangster rule on a large scale, predominate and threaten civilisation with destruction. It is becoming increasingly obvious, in a world brought close together by scientific inventions, that this illogical position cannot continue. Men can have world-wide coöperation controlled by reason, or they can have isolation, the rule of force and the rejection of reason ; they cannot have both, for one will destroy the other. And the choice is literally and simply a choice. Which the
choose is a matter of human will. Wars do not Men make them, because (for whatever ultimate reasons) they have not resolved to give up the war method. Cooperation does not come. Men make it ; and its achievements are wrecked by the Work like that of the Health Section war method. of the League of Nations is on the one hand ; destructive folly is on the other. It is not only in the face of disease that solidarity has become an imperious
men
come.
necessity. This plea for positive constructive effort
comes
with added force.when it is associated with a reminder of the most successful example in history of the cooperation of governments in humanitarian activities. NEW SOURCES OF VITAMIN A
than one case in four of cancer in an accessible and less than that where the disease is more site, deep-seated, is given the opportunity of cure or amelioration offered by the prompt application of modern methods. Mr. Elliot knows well the limita. tions of any such scheme and was careful not to promise too much ;in the report of his ’chief medical officer (see p. 1136) it is admitted that the incidence is not likely to be reduced until the results of research have put into our hands means of prevention. But the salient fact is that a large number of cancer patients do not receive the benefits of modern knowledge, and that existing facilities are manifestly inadequate. Mr. Elliot described it as his aim so to extend them that they are available to every member of the community. Comparatively few are now able to maintain hospitals expensive equip. ment, a difficulty which, in Sir Arthur MacNalty’s words, can only be overcome by more active coöperation between the voluntary hospitals and local authorities. Details of the scheme are still to be drawn up.
more
THE next session of the General Medical Council will open at 2 P.M. on Tuesday, Nov. 22nd, under the presidency of Sir Norman Walker.
A NEW process making use of molecular distillation for extracting vitamin A from fish livers was described Dr. A. E. EVANS, a commissioner of the Board of by Mr. F. H. Carr, D.Sc., at a meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry at Burlington House on Control, has been appointed Lord Chancellor’s visitor Nov. 7th. Dr. Carr said that insufficiency of vitamin A in lunacy in succession to Dr. Nathan Raw, who is now recognised as a contributory cause of faulty has retired. development and ill health of a large section of the Prof. J. B. S. HALDANE, F.R.S., will deliver a population. The epithelial layer of most of the Roberts lecture at the Royal College of of the the structure Lloyd linings body including respiratory His on Thursday, Nov. 17th, at 5 P.m. is and affected Physicians ducts, adversely passages, glands by its deficiency. Night-blindness, through a defect subject will be some problems of human congenital in the visual purple, is due to a shortage of disease. vitamin A, and this is a common defect in schoolTHE Royal Society of Medicine is holding a reception children. The new process has the advantage, among at its house in Wimpole-street at 8.30 P.M. on Tuesday. many others, of bringing into use new sources of the 29th of this month. Sir StClair Thomson is raw material. The technique, which has been devised to give a lecture on medical notabilities of the by a group of research workers in the laboratories Victorian age, as seen by Vanity Fair." of British Drug Houses Ltd., depends upon the use of an extraordinarily high vacuum-i.e., a pressure ELSEWHERE in our columns it is announced that Molecules Dr. as low as a millionth of an atmosphere. Morley Fletcher is representing the Royal College of the vitamin, being smaller and lighter than the of Physicians of London at the opening of the Royal oily constituents of the liver, are removed at com- Australasian College of Physicians at in paratively low temperatures and without decomposi- December. tion, leaving the fatty constituents almost free from vitamin and available for other purposes. It will Dr. C. S. MYERS, F.R.S., has resigned theprincipalship no longer be necessary to depend on the cod and of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology the halibut as principal sources of this vitamin since with which he has been associated since its foundation the livers of most sea-fish have been found to be in 1921, first as director and then as principal. We aie happy to learn that as honorary scientific at1,isè1’ 1 The Romance of the Health Work of the League of Nations. he will continue his association with the work ut By Kathleen E. Innes. Published by the author. Portway, St. Mary Bourne, Andover, Hants. 1938. Pp. 62. 1s. the Institute. "
Sydney