THE CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL ON GENERAL HEALTH QUESTIONS.

453 and dourness of defence which, we remember only too well, still resided in the armies. Says Professor STARLING: " Three years on a diet insufficient as to quantity and quality, indigestible, tasteless, and monotonous, had a marked influence on the vitality and efficiency of the great bulk of the urban population, which finally resulted in that changed mentality which rendered impossible any further efforts of attack or even resistance." This is not to say that the blockade won the war, for the blockade would have been largely ineffective I had not the Allied Armies contained and beaten back the German forces. But the moral is that when at last all the resources of the Allies were I found in concentration against the Central Empires, hunger, the cruellest weapon, brought the end. The effects of the blockade remain, and medical readers of the tabular statement which we have quoted will recognise that those effects will be active for many years, as disease takes the toll which follows innutrition.

International Medicine. THE League of Nations Council, which met in London on Saturday last, struck out a bold line in several directions, none of which is likely to have more far-reaching consequences than the appointment of a committee to draw up a scheme for an International Health Commission. How pressing is the need for such a Commission hardly requires emphasis. Many diseases hitherto snugly localised in far-away dominions and dependencies have been mobilised by the war, and are likely to remain mobile in view of the new freedom of communication by land and sea and air. Rabies in England and typhus in Paris have brought this to our knowledge. The task of the international commission which visited and reported on the typhus risk on the Russian frontiers last autumn was rendered largely nugatory by the lack of any central authority to carry out the recommendations. The International Health Commission, when it is set up, should find that its work has been facilitated by the General Council of the League of Red Cross Societies which assembles in Geneva on March 2nd. Pride of place has been there given to the department dealing with medical information and publication. There are other signs which show a tendency towards a pooling of health interests. The National Red Cross Society of Czecho-Slovakia has joined the League of Red Cross Societies. Dr. OCTAVE MONOD, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, has accepted the appointment of assistant chief of the department of tuberculosis under the League, and his experience should be invaluable. Sweden is organising a mobile antityphus hospital of a hundred beds. We commend this stirring of the waters to Dr. F. F. SIMPSON, of Pittsburgh, who visited London last week in connexion with a proposal to form a World Congress of Physicians and Surgeons, and who is now in Paris after paying a flying visit

At the

meeting of representatives of the various specialties in medicine and surgery called last Friday at the Royal Society of Medicine to meet him, Dr. SIMPSON urged the need, for the benefit of mankind, of forming an international medical council on which every country should be represented. The American view, which he was authorised to set forth, is that each international organisation should forthwith make such adjustments as would permit of a prompt resumption of international activities. He stated that France, Belgium, and Italy had expressed general approval of the scheme, and he proposed that Great Britain and the United States should join these countries in appointing two representatives each on a special investigation committee to meet in Paris next month. The Royal Society of Medicine, while expressing sympathy with Dr. SIMPSON’S objects, felt bound to admit that there were at present a number of specialties without any international organisation, and it was therefore resolved to meet again after obtaining the views of the constituent sections of the society. Wecan hardly doubt that the verdict will be in favour of using to the full to Brussels.

the place of medicine

as

international reconciler.

Annotations. "Ne quid nimis."

THE

CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL ON GENERAL HEALTH QUESTIONS.

THIS Council, appointed under the Ministry of Health Act, held its first meeting last week. The Minister of Health, Dr. Addison, who was accompanied by Lord Astor, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry, presided, and asked the Council to put before him a statement of the main defects in existing provisions for safeguarding the health of the people, and to suggest remedies from the standpoint of persons who as members of the general public will be affected by the health services supervised by the Ministry. The members of the Council have been appointed with this special Women form a majority of purpose in view. the membership. Lady Rhondda will act as chairman and Mr. Arthur Greenwood as vicechairman. The other members are as follows : Mrs. Aspinall (United Association), Councillor

Textile Factory Workers’ C. Aveling (Past-President of the National Chamber of Trade), Mrs. F. Harrison Bell and Miss Margaret McMillan (Labour Party), Mrs. Burke and Mrs. Hood (Women’s Cooperative Guild), Mr. George Goodenough (Parliamentary Committee of the Cooperative Congress), Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, D.Sc. (President of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland), Mr. W. L. Hichens (Chairman of Messrs. Cammell, Laird and Co., Ltd.), Mr. W. Littler (Civil Service Alliance), Mr. Samuel Lord, F.S.S. (National Association of Local Government Officers), Mrs. Mayo (a member of the Dorsetshire County Council), Mr. F. H. Norman (Professional Workers’ Federation), Miss E. M. Phelp (National Association of Domestic Workers), Mrs. Pember Reeves, Lady Edmund Talbot, and Miss Gertrude M. Tuckwell.