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NON-CLINICAL TEACHING POSTS IN THE COMMONWEALTH
293
from reabsorption from long ileal segments in the dog.1 There appears to be a progressive increase in plasma clearance up to about the eighth or tenth week after the kidney is exposed to increased load. The reduced clearances observed by Dr. Klapproth after irradiation,
therefore, gain significance when they are compared, not with normal figures, but with the mgher clearances expected from a kidney undergoing hypertrophy following opposite nephrectomy. Royal Free Hospital, JOHN HOPEWELL. London, W.C.1. NON-CLINICAL TEACHING POSTS IN THE COMMONWEALTH
SiR,ņThe Commonwealth Relations Office not infrequently receives requests from countries in S.E. Asia for the loan of professors of non-clinical subjects for their universities and medical colleges under the Technical Cooperation Scheme of the Colombo Plan. Delays frequently result while universities and other interested bodies
are circularised. Readers or senior lecturers on temporary secondment are preferred, but recently retired professors or lecturers in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, bacteriology, and biochemistry are also acceptable in most cases. For the sake of ready reference the C.R.O. is making a list of suitably qualified persons who would consider offers of such work on favourable terms. I should be glad if anyone interested in spending up to two years abroad in strengthening the bonds of the Commonwealth and in teaching their own subject would communicate with me at the Commonwealth Relations Office, Matthew Parker Street, London, S.W.!. GEORGE MCROBERT.
DIMINISHED RESPONSIBILITY
SiR,ņThe idea behind the doctrine of diminished responsibility is that different degrees of culpability may attach to the same crime, according to the psychological
perpetration. This has been accompanied by popular feeling that an explicable crime is less culpable than an inexplicable one. As Dr. Maddison (Aug. 15) has pointed out, however, psychological explanation
reasons
for its
a
furnish us with much useful information about culpability, which is an ascientific, moral concept. " Dr. Maddison goes on to state his disbelief in freewill", and summarily dismisses resistible impulses by reference to psychoanalytic doctrine-as though this was a fountainhead of scientific truth-by telling us that all impulses translated into action are by definition irresistible. This definition fails to account for the fact that we may give way to an impulse on one occasion and yet resist it on another. Yet this distinction is an important one, as I believe that the popular notion of culpability rests upon it. Rape, assault, and poisoning the lodger may be taken as examples of culpable crimes. They are caused by lowlevel impulses such as greed and generalised lust, and they are thought of as culpable because the average man recognises these impulses in himself and resists them. Less culpable crimes fall into two groups. To judge from reduced sentences that have recently been given, it would appear that killing one’s girl friend when tragically in love with her, one’s child when incurably ill and in cannot
pain, or one’s wife when nagged to examples of crimes that are less culpable
distraction are than the former group. This type of crime is motivated either by higher1. Hopewell, J. Ann. R. Coll. Surg. Engl. 1959, 24, 159.
level impulses, such as pity or love, or by prolonged and unusual stress. The average citizen has not experienced the extremes of these emotions, and feels uncertain whether he could resist them if he were to be subjected to them. The other less culpable group covers those crimes that occur in psychotics, defectives, or those with brain diseases: psychiatric opinion is relevant and necessary in order to distinguish these cases. The idea of culpability can have little interest for the psychiatrist, whose attention would be more usefully employed in deciding what kind of treatment is likely to benefit the prisoner. D. P. GOLDBERG. St. Thomas’s House, London, S.E.1.
SlR,ņIn the hot and heady air of an August afternoon how welcome is the assurance of Dr. Maddison telling us that " Determinism must be accepted as the only valid scientific explanation of human conduct in all its complex facets ". It is a gladsome thought that what we meant to do, but have not done, we could not have done. A pity it is to leave the old-world calm of thirty years We must ago by reading modern scientific journals. forget Professor Brillouin writing: "
In many cases, strict causality must be replaced by statistical probabilities; a scientist may or may not believe in determinism. It is a matter of creed, and belongs to metaphysics ; physical experiments are unable to prove or to disprove it."1
in
Perhaps psychiatrists take metaphysics in their stride a way that physicists do not. T. D. F. MONEY.
JUNIOR
HOSPITAL POSTS
SiR.ņThe medical staff committee of this hospital recently approached the medical schools in this country in an attempt to find out how many medical students would be expected to qualify this year, and how many posts would be available within the teaching hospitals for those who passed the necessary examinations.
teaching hospitals were kind enough to reply; and on analysing their ’answers we learn that 705 medical students were expected to qualify, and for these successful candidates 658 posts were available in their respective teaching hospitals. Ten
Information also has been obtained from the General Medical Council about the number of overseas doctors temporarily registered each year in this country, and it would seem that approximately 500 doctors are thus registered. It is obvious from these figures that the junior hospital
posts in provincial hospitals-were it overseas
not
for the 500
doctors-cannot be filled. NORMAN KIMBELL Chairman
H. J. RICHARDSON Stamford and Rutland Hospital,
Stamford, Lincs.
Hon. secretary, Medical Staff Committee.
BOXING
excellent leader of June 6 SIR,-Referring the dangers of boxing, it may be worth mentioning that boxing has been forbidden by law in Iceland since 1957. According to this law it is forbidden: (1) to hold public boxing-matches, (2) to teach boxing, (3) to import boxing-gloves and equipment for the teaching of boxing. This law was proposed by two physicians who were to your
on
then members of Parliament and who had made themselves acquainted with the literature on the dangers of boxing, especially the paper of Martland2 in 1928 and 1. Brillouin, L. Nature, Lond. 1959, 183, 501. 2. Martland, H. S. J. Amer. med. Ass. 1928, 91, 1103.
from reabsorption from long ileal segments in the dog.1 There appears to be a progressive increase in plasma clearance up to about the eighth or tenth week after the kidney is exposed to increased load. The reduced clearances observed by Dr. Klapproth after irradiation,
therefore, gain significance when they are compared, not with normal figures, but with the mgher clearances expected from a kidney undergoing hypertrophy following opposite nephrectomy. Royal Free Hospital, JOHN HOPEWELL. London, W.C.1. NON-CLINICAL TEACHING POSTS IN THE COMMONWEALTH
SiR,ņThe Commonwealth Relations Office not infrequently receives requests from countries in S.E. Asia for the loan of professors of non-clinical subjects for their universities and medical colleges under the Technical Cooperation Scheme of the Colombo Plan. Delays frequently result while universities and other interested bodies
are circularised. Readers or senior lecturers on temporary secondment are preferred, but recently retired professors or lecturers in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, bacteriology, and biochemistry are also acceptable in most cases. For the sake of ready reference the C.R.O. is making a list of suitably qualified persons who would consider offers of such work on favourable terms. I should be glad if anyone interested in spending up to two years abroad in strengthening the bonds of the Commonwealth and in teaching their own subject would communicate with me at the Commonwealth Relations Office, Matthew Parker Street, London, S.W.!. GEORGE MCROBERT.
DIMINISHED RESPONSIBILITY
SiR,ņThe idea behind the doctrine of diminished responsibility is that different degrees of culpability may attach to the same crime, according to the psychological
perpetration. This has been accompanied by popular feeling that an explicable crime is less culpable than an inexplicable one. As Dr. Maddison (Aug. 15) has pointed out, however, psychological explanation
reasons
for its
a
furnish us with much useful information about culpability, which is an ascientific, moral concept. " Dr. Maddison goes on to state his disbelief in freewill", and summarily dismisses resistible impulses by reference to psychoanalytic doctrine-as though this was a fountainhead of scientific truth-by telling us that all impulses translated into action are by definition irresistible. This definition fails to account for the fact that we may give way to an impulse on one occasion and yet resist it on another. Yet this distinction is an important one, as I believe that the popular notion of culpability rests upon it. Rape, assault, and poisoning the lodger may be taken as examples of culpable crimes. They are caused by lowlevel impulses such as greed and generalised lust, and they are thought of as culpable because the average man recognises these impulses in himself and resists them. Less culpable crimes fall into two groups. To judge from reduced sentences that have recently been given, it would appear that killing one’s girl friend when tragically in love with her, one’s child when incurably ill and in cannot
pain, or one’s wife when nagged to examples of crimes that are less culpable
distraction are than the former group. This type of crime is motivated either by higher1. Hopewell, J. Ann. R. Coll. Surg. Engl. 1959, 24, 159.
level impulses, such as pity or love, or by prolonged and unusual stress. The average citizen has not experienced the extremes of these emotions, and feels uncertain whether he could resist them if he were to be subjected to them. The other less culpable group covers those crimes that occur in psychotics, defectives, or those with brain diseases: psychiatric opinion is relevant and necessary in order to distinguish these cases. The idea of culpability can have little interest for the psychiatrist, whose attention would be more usefully employed in deciding what kind of treatment is likely to benefit the prisoner. D. P. GOLDBERG. St. Thomas’s House, London, S.E.1.
SlR,ņIn the hot and heady air of an August afternoon how welcome is the assurance of Dr. Maddison telling us that " Determinism must be accepted as the only valid scientific explanation of human conduct in all its complex facets ". It is a gladsome thought that what we meant to do, but have not done, we could not have done. A pity it is to leave the old-world calm of thirty years We must ago by reading modern scientific journals. forget Professor Brillouin writing: "
In many cases, strict causality must be replaced by statistical probabilities; a scientist may or may not believe in determinism. It is a matter of creed, and belongs to metaphysics ; physical experiments are unable to prove or to disprove it."1
in
Perhaps psychiatrists take metaphysics in their stride a way that physicists do not. T. D. F. MONEY.
JUNIOR
HOSPITAL POSTS
SiR.ņThe medical staff committee of this hospital recently approached the medical schools in this country in an attempt to find out how many medical students would be expected to qualify this year, and how many posts would be available within the teaching hospitals for those who passed the necessary examinations.
teaching hospitals were kind enough to reply; and on analysing their ’answers we learn that 705 medical students were expected to qualify, and for these successful candidates 658 posts were available in their respective teaching hospitals. Ten
Information also has been obtained from the General Medical Council about the number of overseas doctors temporarily registered each year in this country, and it would seem that approximately 500 doctors are thus registered. It is obvious from these figures that the junior hospital
posts in provincial hospitals-were it overseas
not
for the 500
doctors-cannot be filled. NORMAN KIMBELL Chairman
H. J. RICHARDSON Stamford and Rutland Hospital,
Stamford, Lincs.
Hon. secretary, Medical Staff Committee.
BOXING
excellent leader of June 6 SIR,-Referring the dangers of boxing, it may be worth mentioning that boxing has been forbidden by law in Iceland since 1957. According to this law it is forbidden: (1) to hold public boxing-matches, (2) to teach boxing, (3) to import boxing-gloves and equipment for the teaching of boxing. This law was proposed by two physicians who were to your
on
then members of Parliament and who had made themselves acquainted with the literature on the dangers of boxing, especially the paper of Martland2 in 1928 and 1. Brillouin, L. Nature, Lond. 1959, 183, 501. 2. Martland, H. S. J. Amer. med. Ass. 1928, 91, 1103.