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SUN-BATHING IN A LONDON PARK.
1409 or " autrefois acquit," if he is tried again upon that made, it was found to agree with independent identical charge. The only form of re-trial in such judgments as to efficiency and capacity for adaptacircumstances in England is where the jury has tion, and with the results of the dotting test. A disagreed. It is surprising how seldom this happens curious feature of this test is that obsessional subjects
when the requirement of unanimity is borne in mind. A disagreement means no verdict at all; the case then comes on again, usually at the next assizes. On the whole it is unlikely that an English jury will find a man " guilty " after the previous disagreement of another jury. Indeed, if two juries disagree and the case comes before a third jury, it is usual for the prosecution to offer no evidence-which means that the accused gets his acquittal at last. It may also be noted that the Court of Criminal Appeal has no power to order a re-trial in England. The functions of the court in ordinary cases are three : (1) on an appeal against conviction, it can allow the appeal, if it thinks that the jury’s verdict is unreasonable or not supported by the evidence, or that the judgment was brought about by a wrong decision of a point of law, or that there was a miscarriage of justice-in any other case it must dismiss the appeal; (2) if it allows an appeal against conviction, it must quash the conviction and direct a verdict of acquittal to be entered ; (3) on an appeal against sentence it can substitute a sentence either more or less severe. Many critics think that, where an appeal against conviction has succeeded on some technical ground, the court should have power to order are-trial ; but Parliament does not allow this course. When the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act of 1926 set up a similar system of criminal appeal in Scotland, the power to order a re-trial was still withheld. But the Scottish Court, dealing with criminal appeals, has here one power which the English Court does not possess. On an appeal against conviction the court in Scotland is empowered not only to quash the conviction but also to quash the sentence passed and to pass another sentence as if the appeal had been an appeal against sentence and not against conviction. Such are some of the minor differences between English and Scottish criminal law, in addition to the much wider distinctions arising from variations in the legal system, the arrangement of courts, and the statutes applicable to the two countries. In England, of course, there would have been a prompt investigation by the coroner; sworn evidence would thus have been available at a very early stage.
are
peculiarly good
at it.
When the nature of the
obsessional temperament is considered, this is less
surprising than it seems at first sight, but it should prove a useful aid to diagnosis. As has already been shown by other observers, nervous illnesses depend upon occupational conditions as well as upon predisposition, and a " bad " subject may carry on contented and excellent work under good conditions of employment but break down completely if circumstances become difficult.
applications of this research to industry are obviously of the first importance. In the first place The
heavy absenteeism in some firms from sickness labelled " nervous breakdown " or one of its equivalents could be almost entirely prevented by selection of candidates and sensible attention to conditions of the
employment. Secondly, there is the choice of supervisors who can undertake the responsibility of direction without undue strain and who are able to oversee the work of others without getting on the nerves of everybody under them. Thirdly, there is the problem, known to all industrial concerns, of the erratic worker who oscillates between very good and very bad work for no apparent cause. Last, but not least in importance, is the question of alleviating the disproportionate suffering of some individuals under conditions of noise, stuffiness, or other unpleasantness which do not worry their neighbours in the least. The findings of the investigators cannot-conveniently be summarised, but " nervous " symptoms were found in a very high proportion of employees examined-sometimes as many as50 per cent. Men and women in authority suffered less than lower grades, promotion apparently acting as a form of selection in this respect. The student group had a higher percentage than the factory group, and women dramatic art students showed a very high percentage of the obsessional type. Finally there was evidence of correlation between the results of the experiments and stigmata of discomfort, such as inability to bear noise and dissatisfaction with work and environment.
SUN-BATHING IN A LONDON
PARK.
Dr. George Sowden, medical officer of health for St. Pancras, reporting upon a sun-bathing centre in THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT. Regent’s Park which was opened in August, states No part of medical practice more persistently that is of brick, one-storey high, and the eludes any scientific classification than that dealing measures building 30 feet in length by 20 feet in depth. It is with the temperamental variations of individuals divided by folding doors, and each half contains and their different reactions to stress and strain. A accommodation and a shower bath. The host of vague generalisations, hazy conceptions, and sanitary undertook to provide the salary of a. unadmitted ignorance has been concealed under the Sunlight League from the date of opening until competent supervisor term " nervous" and its many alternatives. Dr. the end of and the centre was open daily September, Millais Culpin and Miss May Smith, D.Sc., working from 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. and from 2 to 6 P.M. The for the Industrial Health Research Board, have children admitted were between the of 2 and 5 ages attempted to break the ground around this difficult years. They were not suffering from any definite problem and, although they say that their work is illness, but were selected from those attending the no more than disturbing the surface of this important various welfare centres in the borough as being likely field, yet their results are of the greatest interest.! to derive benefit from this form of treatment. The Over 1000 people of both sexes have been interparents were required to sign a form accepting all viewed while actually at work, and the authors think responsibility in connexion with the child’s attendance that it is possible as the result of a single interview and were asked to provide a towel, bathing slip, and to elicit nervous symptoms or tendencies and classify a sun hat. The children were arranged in groups individuals and of the
according to symptoms. When
the amount severity the classification had been
1 Indust. Health Res. Bd., Report No. 61. Office. 1930. Pp. 46. 1s.
H.M. Stationery
according child
was
quently
to their
susceptibility to sunlight ; each at the first attendance and subseweek. During the brief heat wave in
weighed
once a
the last week of
August
and the first few
days
of
1410
September, the attendance was very good, but it rifle, but in Mr. Baker’s opinion there was sufficient fell off during the remainder of the period when the evidence to identify the rifle. The third feature was weather was extremely unsatisfactory. The total a characteristic pattern of at least 14 marks at the number of children entered on the register during the bottom of the pin impression in the cap of the carseven weeks the centre was open was 148, and the tridge case; the general shape of the impressions number of attendances each week was as follows : was found to be sufficient to identify each of the 44, 90, 293, 249, 152, 112, 86, making a total of 1026. rifles tested. Moreover, the pin impression could It is difficult, Dr. Sowden says, to express an opinion only be produced by the act of firing and not about the effect on the health of the children. In 33 practice loading and unloading. It was a delicate who made 10 or more attendances, there was an matter to obtain photographs of these impressions. increase of weight in 30, varying from! lb. to 2! lb. They were taken through a one-inch objective and The greatest increase was recorded in the case of two the stage of the microscope was removed so that children (brothers), who made the highest number of the case could be held vertically and slowly rotated attendances-namely, 29-and whose weight increased in a slanting beam of light. The equipment used in by 2 lb. 2 oz. and 2 lb. 4 oz., respectively, a rate these investigations included a comparator eyepiece, of increase much in excess of the normal. In a few a camera lucida, and a micrometer eyepiece. To cases, children of a nervous, excitable type, who obtain bullets from firing tests in a fit state for comusually slept badly, were stated to be less restless parison, Mr. Baker used a special box divided into and to be sleeping better. Some improvement in six equal compartments by removable cardboard appetite was also recorded. The general conclusion partitions. The first two were filled with cotton waste drawn from the experience gained is that it would be and the others with fine bran ; at about four yards’ difficult and expensive to maintain a centre exclusively range the bullets came to rest in the fourth or fifth for sun-bathing. During bad weather, although the compartments with little distortion. staff would be in attendance, the number of children As Mr. G. H. Perry, chemist at the War Departwould be small or even nil. Dr. Sowden is of the ment, said in a discussion after Mr. Baker’s paper, opinion that it would be preferable to combine a it has become possible in the last few years to identify sun-bathing centre with a day nursery or nursery conclusively cartridge components with the weapon school. used. Complicated and delicate instruments are required, and the greatest possible care should be taken of the exhibits to avoid any damage or disEXPERT EVIDENCE ON GUNSHOT WOUNDS. tortion. Modern work on firearms is as refined as THE life of a person accused of murder often detection. It needs an expert for its depends on the expert evidence of the toxicologist finger-print but all medical men ought to be acquainted execution, but equally often on expert evidence about firearms with its possibilities, as it is the doctor to whom and gunshot wounds. Frequently a medical man is will first be made for expert evidence and who called upon to give this evidence, although a study appealoften has the first very opportunity of preserving of the subject forms no part of the training even of exhibits. an expert pathologist. We publish on another page important an account by Dr. W. Stewart of a case in which his OF CUTANEOUS TUBERCULIDES. careful experiments and evidence extricated an innocent man from a convincing net of circumstantial SUBCUTANEOUS and intramuscular injection of evidence. In the Analyst for December Mr. G. W. cod-liver oil and its derivatives has been employed Baker describes an investigation he was called upon for more than a decade as an auxiliary treatment to make in Jaffa, and which brought a guilty man to in tuberculous affections of the skin, bones, and justice. This case is of great interest, as it is the connective tissues. In the condition known as first occasion on which X rays have been used in for example, the subcutaneous injection the examination of bullets for forensic purposes. lupus pernio, of 5-10 minims of sodium morrhuate has been found The nose of a bullet was found in one of the bodies and on occasion has even brought about of a murdered family, and its peculiar nose-filling of satisfactory, a cure. Jaczewski’s use of iodo-morrhuate1 is lead and fibre was readily detected by radiology an outcome of these tentative methods and has been without mutilating the exhibit. A comparison with modified by 0. Blatt,2 who recommends a solution 32 different makes of ammunition of the same calibre of 1 part of tincture of iodine in 20 parts of cod-liver helped to establish the fact that it was from British 5 c.cm. being given by intramuscular injection ammunition as used by the police. Among the empty oil, 14 He does not give iodine by the every cartridge cases found about the room was one which mouth, as days. advocated by Jaczewski, and substitutes lay in a pool of clotted blood in such a way as to show topical applications of cod-liver oil for iodine paintings that the blood had flowed round it and that it had of the local lesions. The theoretical considerations not been dropped some time after the crime. This which underlie the treatment are interesting but case was brightly polished-a fact which first threw highly speculative. They concern the respective suspicion on the police. Cartridge cases from the roles of the fat and lipase metabolism in infected accused’s rifle had three characteristic features in and their reactive potentialities in the persons, The common with each other and with this exhibit. of Koch’s bacillus. Blatt lays stress on the biology first was a bulge on the side of the case diametrically almost specific action of cod-liver oil as compared opposite the extractor mark. It was found, however, with other oils (e.g., olive oil), and suggests that that the degree of bulge might vary with the same its advantage may be a function of the vitamin rifle, and that if it were present at all in a rifle it content. For this reason the cod-liver oil is always bore the same relation to the extractor mark. not previously sterilised by heat, all dangerinjected of sepsis The second feature was an extraator mark characthe 5 per cent. iodine in the mixture, terised by a series of deep cuts with rounded ends being precluded by which is said also to elicit a more potent and proparallel with the rim, and at right angles to these a tracted local reaction with the production of lymphoseries of long scratches produced on extraction. There were considerable variations in the extractor 1 Przegl. dermat., 1928, No. 3. 2 marks on different cases fired from the suspected Dermat. Woch., 1930, xc., 741. .
by
I;
I
____
____
TREATMENT
I
-
when the requirement of unanimity is borne in mind. A disagreement means no verdict at all; the case then comes on again, usually at the next assizes. On the whole it is unlikely that an English jury will find a man " guilty " after the previous disagreement of another jury. Indeed, if two juries disagree and the case comes before a third jury, it is usual for the prosecution to offer no evidence-which means that the accused gets his acquittal at last. It may also be noted that the Court of Criminal Appeal has no power to order a re-trial in England. The functions of the court in ordinary cases are three : (1) on an appeal against conviction, it can allow the appeal, if it thinks that the jury’s verdict is unreasonable or not supported by the evidence, or that the judgment was brought about by a wrong decision of a point of law, or that there was a miscarriage of justice-in any other case it must dismiss the appeal; (2) if it allows an appeal against conviction, it must quash the conviction and direct a verdict of acquittal to be entered ; (3) on an appeal against sentence it can substitute a sentence either more or less severe. Many critics think that, where an appeal against conviction has succeeded on some technical ground, the court should have power to order are-trial ; but Parliament does not allow this course. When the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act of 1926 set up a similar system of criminal appeal in Scotland, the power to order a re-trial was still withheld. But the Scottish Court, dealing with criminal appeals, has here one power which the English Court does not possess. On an appeal against conviction the court in Scotland is empowered not only to quash the conviction but also to quash the sentence passed and to pass another sentence as if the appeal had been an appeal against sentence and not against conviction. Such are some of the minor differences between English and Scottish criminal law, in addition to the much wider distinctions arising from variations in the legal system, the arrangement of courts, and the statutes applicable to the two countries. In England, of course, there would have been a prompt investigation by the coroner; sworn evidence would thus have been available at a very early stage.
are
peculiarly good
at it.
When the nature of the
obsessional temperament is considered, this is less
surprising than it seems at first sight, but it should prove a useful aid to diagnosis. As has already been shown by other observers, nervous illnesses depend upon occupational conditions as well as upon predisposition, and a " bad " subject may carry on contented and excellent work under good conditions of employment but break down completely if circumstances become difficult.
applications of this research to industry are obviously of the first importance. In the first place The
heavy absenteeism in some firms from sickness labelled " nervous breakdown " or one of its equivalents could be almost entirely prevented by selection of candidates and sensible attention to conditions of the
employment. Secondly, there is the choice of supervisors who can undertake the responsibility of direction without undue strain and who are able to oversee the work of others without getting on the nerves of everybody under them. Thirdly, there is the problem, known to all industrial concerns, of the erratic worker who oscillates between very good and very bad work for no apparent cause. Last, but not least in importance, is the question of alleviating the disproportionate suffering of some individuals under conditions of noise, stuffiness, or other unpleasantness which do not worry their neighbours in the least. The findings of the investigators cannot-conveniently be summarised, but " nervous " symptoms were found in a very high proportion of employees examined-sometimes as many as50 per cent. Men and women in authority suffered less than lower grades, promotion apparently acting as a form of selection in this respect. The student group had a higher percentage than the factory group, and women dramatic art students showed a very high percentage of the obsessional type. Finally there was evidence of correlation between the results of the experiments and stigmata of discomfort, such as inability to bear noise and dissatisfaction with work and environment.
SUN-BATHING IN A LONDON
PARK.
Dr. George Sowden, medical officer of health for St. Pancras, reporting upon a sun-bathing centre in THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT. Regent’s Park which was opened in August, states No part of medical practice more persistently that is of brick, one-storey high, and the eludes any scientific classification than that dealing measures building 30 feet in length by 20 feet in depth. It is with the temperamental variations of individuals divided by folding doors, and each half contains and their different reactions to stress and strain. A accommodation and a shower bath. The host of vague generalisations, hazy conceptions, and sanitary undertook to provide the salary of a. unadmitted ignorance has been concealed under the Sunlight League from the date of opening until competent supervisor term " nervous" and its many alternatives. Dr. the end of and the centre was open daily September, Millais Culpin and Miss May Smith, D.Sc., working from 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. and from 2 to 6 P.M. The for the Industrial Health Research Board, have children admitted were between the of 2 and 5 ages attempted to break the ground around this difficult years. They were not suffering from any definite problem and, although they say that their work is illness, but were selected from those attending the no more than disturbing the surface of this important various welfare centres in the borough as being likely field, yet their results are of the greatest interest.! to derive benefit from this form of treatment. The Over 1000 people of both sexes have been interparents were required to sign a form accepting all viewed while actually at work, and the authors think responsibility in connexion with the child’s attendance that it is possible as the result of a single interview and were asked to provide a towel, bathing slip, and to elicit nervous symptoms or tendencies and classify a sun hat. The children were arranged in groups individuals and of the
according to symptoms. When
the amount severity the classification had been
1 Indust. Health Res. Bd., Report No. 61. Office. 1930. Pp. 46. 1s.
H.M. Stationery
according child
was
quently
to their
susceptibility to sunlight ; each at the first attendance and subseweek. During the brief heat wave in
weighed
once a
the last week of
August
and the first few
days
of
1410
September, the attendance was very good, but it rifle, but in Mr. Baker’s opinion there was sufficient fell off during the remainder of the period when the evidence to identify the rifle. The third feature was weather was extremely unsatisfactory. The total a characteristic pattern of at least 14 marks at the number of children entered on the register during the bottom of the pin impression in the cap of the carseven weeks the centre was open was 148, and the tridge case; the general shape of the impressions number of attendances each week was as follows : was found to be sufficient to identify each of the 44, 90, 293, 249, 152, 112, 86, making a total of 1026. rifles tested. Moreover, the pin impression could It is difficult, Dr. Sowden says, to express an opinion only be produced by the act of firing and not about the effect on the health of the children. In 33 practice loading and unloading. It was a delicate who made 10 or more attendances, there was an matter to obtain photographs of these impressions. increase of weight in 30, varying from! lb. to 2! lb. They were taken through a one-inch objective and The greatest increase was recorded in the case of two the stage of the microscope was removed so that children (brothers), who made the highest number of the case could be held vertically and slowly rotated attendances-namely, 29-and whose weight increased in a slanting beam of light. The equipment used in by 2 lb. 2 oz. and 2 lb. 4 oz., respectively, a rate these investigations included a comparator eyepiece, of increase much in excess of the normal. In a few a camera lucida, and a micrometer eyepiece. To cases, children of a nervous, excitable type, who obtain bullets from firing tests in a fit state for comusually slept badly, were stated to be less restless parison, Mr. Baker used a special box divided into and to be sleeping better. Some improvement in six equal compartments by removable cardboard appetite was also recorded. The general conclusion partitions. The first two were filled with cotton waste drawn from the experience gained is that it would be and the others with fine bran ; at about four yards’ difficult and expensive to maintain a centre exclusively range the bullets came to rest in the fourth or fifth for sun-bathing. During bad weather, although the compartments with little distortion. staff would be in attendance, the number of children As Mr. G. H. Perry, chemist at the War Departwould be small or even nil. Dr. Sowden is of the ment, said in a discussion after Mr. Baker’s paper, opinion that it would be preferable to combine a it has become possible in the last few years to identify sun-bathing centre with a day nursery or nursery conclusively cartridge components with the weapon school. used. Complicated and delicate instruments are required, and the greatest possible care should be taken of the exhibits to avoid any damage or disEXPERT EVIDENCE ON GUNSHOT WOUNDS. tortion. Modern work on firearms is as refined as THE life of a person accused of murder often detection. It needs an expert for its depends on the expert evidence of the toxicologist finger-print but all medical men ought to be acquainted execution, but equally often on expert evidence about firearms with its possibilities, as it is the doctor to whom and gunshot wounds. Frequently a medical man is will first be made for expert evidence and who called upon to give this evidence, although a study appealoften has the first very opportunity of preserving of the subject forms no part of the training even of exhibits. an expert pathologist. We publish on another page important an account by Dr. W. Stewart of a case in which his OF CUTANEOUS TUBERCULIDES. careful experiments and evidence extricated an innocent man from a convincing net of circumstantial SUBCUTANEOUS and intramuscular injection of evidence. In the Analyst for December Mr. G. W. cod-liver oil and its derivatives has been employed Baker describes an investigation he was called upon for more than a decade as an auxiliary treatment to make in Jaffa, and which brought a guilty man to in tuberculous affections of the skin, bones, and justice. This case is of great interest, as it is the connective tissues. In the condition known as first occasion on which X rays have been used in for example, the subcutaneous injection the examination of bullets for forensic purposes. lupus pernio, of 5-10 minims of sodium morrhuate has been found The nose of a bullet was found in one of the bodies and on occasion has even brought about of a murdered family, and its peculiar nose-filling of satisfactory, a cure. Jaczewski’s use of iodo-morrhuate1 is lead and fibre was readily detected by radiology an outcome of these tentative methods and has been without mutilating the exhibit. A comparison with modified by 0. Blatt,2 who recommends a solution 32 different makes of ammunition of the same calibre of 1 part of tincture of iodine in 20 parts of cod-liver helped to establish the fact that it was from British 5 c.cm. being given by intramuscular injection ammunition as used by the police. Among the empty oil, 14 He does not give iodine by the every cartridge cases found about the room was one which mouth, as days. advocated by Jaczewski, and substitutes lay in a pool of clotted blood in such a way as to show topical applications of cod-liver oil for iodine paintings that the blood had flowed round it and that it had of the local lesions. The theoretical considerations not been dropped some time after the crime. This which underlie the treatment are interesting but case was brightly polished-a fact which first threw highly speculative. They concern the respective suspicion on the police. Cartridge cases from the roles of the fat and lipase metabolism in infected accused’s rifle had three characteristic features in and their reactive potentialities in the persons, The common with each other and with this exhibit. of Koch’s bacillus. Blatt lays stress on the biology first was a bulge on the side of the case diametrically almost specific action of cod-liver oil as compared opposite the extractor mark. It was found, however, with other oils (e.g., olive oil), and suggests that that the degree of bulge might vary with the same its advantage may be a function of the vitamin rifle, and that if it were present at all in a rifle it content. For this reason the cod-liver oil is always bore the same relation to the extractor mark. not previously sterilised by heat, all dangerinjected of sepsis The second feature was an extraator mark characthe 5 per cent. iodine in the mixture, terised by a series of deep cuts with rounded ends being precluded by which is said also to elicit a more potent and proparallel with the rim, and at right angles to these a tracted local reaction with the production of lymphoseries of long scratches produced on extraction. There were considerable variations in the extractor 1 Przegl. dermat., 1928, No. 3. 2 marks on different cases fired from the suspected Dermat. Woch., 1930, xc., 741. .
by
I;
I
____
____
TREATMENT
I
-