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THE EXPLOITATION OF INFANCY.
DEATH OF DR. BRISTOWE. ’Vaccination is no excuse for neglect in the application of the Vaccination Acts. If some of the boards of guardians are remiss in the fulfilment of their duty in this respect, the present Government has power enough to so alter the law on vaccination that its application shall be entrusted to the Local Government Board. If, with the more strict enforcement of vaccination, such places as the Salvation Army shelters were brought under the Common Lodging-houses Act, the danger of a small-pox epidemic would be reduced to
apart
minimum. These are, however, matters that stand from the question of water-supply, and we mention them only to show that care must be taken not to confuse two totally clifferent issues. To return to the water famine, we repeat that many measures must be taken before any thought of ,,abolishing the constant supply system can be entertained. First the water mains and all the pipes must be proved to .s,
be
sound.
Then better
surveillance exercised to
taps must be employed, and better prevent waste in private dwellings.
471
of the addresses. At St. Thomas’s Hospital Sir Edwin Arnold will address the students, and lie who has so ably dealt with the work of two of the greatest physicians of the soul the world has ever seen will surely be able to stimulate his hcarers to work nobly in that profession whose mission is to heal the body. At Middlesex Hospital Dr. W. Julius Mickle is to deliver the address, at St. Mary’s Hospital Mr. A. P. Laurie, at Westminster Hospital Dr. Monckton Copeman, at St. George’s Hospital Mr. George D. Pollock, at University College Professor J. Rose Bradford, and at Guy’s Hospital Mr. George De’Ath, who will take for his subject " Our Profession, our Patients, our Public, and our Press." University College, Liverpool, and the Sheffield School of Medicine are to be congratulated on securing Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Horsley respectively as the deliverers of the opening addresses. Professor Percy F. Frankland will take for his subject at Mason College, Birmingham, "Pasteur and his Work : the Debt of Medicine to Chemistry," and Professor F. H. Napier will address the students of St. Mungo’s College, Glasgow. Professor Penberthy will deliver the introductory address at the Royal
Finally, the amount of water at the disposal of the water Veterinary College. companies must-and, we understand, will-at an early date THE EXPLOITATION OF INFANCY. e considerably increased. THIS is a burning question in Italy. So disastrous are the results of impressing children of tender years into industrial service, that some time ago a law was passed by the Chamber of Deputies limiting the age at which boysor girls could be so employed. Severe penalties were imposed on any mill or owner who had engaged ’’ hands " of either sex under factory "Ne nimis." -
Annotations. quid
DEATH OF DR. BRISTOWE. IT is with much regret that we have to announce the death of Dr. John Syer Bristowe, which took place at Dixton ’Vicarage, Monmouth, on Tuesday, Aug. 20th. Dr. Bristowe 2iad been for many years a prominent figure in London medical and scientific circles. He was the senior consulting physician to St. Thomas’s Hospital, and had filled, among many other posts, the offices of President of the Medical Society, President of the Pathological Society, and President of the Neurological Society. He was not a voluminous writer, but his "Theory and Practice of Medi,cine" is a classic. He was a frequent contributor to our ’columns, and also wrote the articles in Reynolds’ Medicine He was a most - on Pyæmia and Diseases of the Intestines. - admirable clinical teacher, and his memory will ever be held in high honour at St. Thomas’s Hospital which he had served The funeral takes place so faithfully for many years. at Norwood Cemetery at 1 P.M. We shall to- day (Saturday) in an early issue. extended an notice obituary publish THE OPENING ADDRESSES AT
THE MEDICAL
SCHOOLS. THE time is rapidly approaching when those who contemplate entering the medical profession will have to decide, if c’;hey have not already done so, as to the school where they ’will receive their training. On Sept. 7th, in accordance ’with our usual custom, we shall publish " The Students’ Number" of THE LANCET, and intending students and their parents or guardians will find full information regarding the .advantages offered by the various schools as well as other matter of pressing interest to the student. Most of the and schools will provincial metropolitan open either on Oct. 1st or 2nd, while many of the Irish and Scotch schools will not commence their winter terms till some weeks later. At a large proportion of the schools the opening is characterised by an introductory address, and the names of many of the speakers will assure the quality
twelve years. This was hailed as an immense boon to the best interests of " young Italy,"but after the first enthusiasm on its enactment the law came to be quickly and systematically ignored, till the rising generation of Italians are demonstrating all too indisputably, in deteriorated physique and premature senility, that the springs of life have been drained at their source, and that persistence in this criminal breach of a wise regulation will have calamitous consequences for the future of the kingdom. Signor de Andreis, a philanthropic deputy, in a recent discourse on the subject, declared that the whole series of enactments for the protection of the child and the female against industrial employment unsuited to age or sex was in Italy so utterly set at naught that the very judges before whom a case of infringement of the law in question happened to come expressed astonishment that anyone should appeal to them for redress. The returns of the inspecting officers of the Italian army medical department speak with an eloquence all their own of the need for a stringent enforcement of the law. The augmentation of the maladies, the deformations, the stunted growth or impaired development which necessitate the rejection of the conscript has of late years become simply appalling. In the I I eircondario" (district) of Milan alone within the year now passing, out of 6844 youths enrolled for the levy more than 45 per cent. were found too infirm or too malformed to complete the term of military service. Pari passu with this physical deterioration proceeds the moral, as shown in the saddening statistics of penitentiaries, houses of correction, and prisons, all full of premature "failures or worse" in the battle of life. At the age when the budding child ought to be at school, undergoing salutary discipline, mental and bodily, he is plunged into the pernicious atmosphere of the factory or the industrial "hive," there to be initiated in all the seductions, temptations, and vices, often ending in crimes, of which these aggregations of hands " are all too prolific. Nor is it Italy alone that suffers from this sapping of her national vitality at its source. As the International Congress for the Protection of Infancy at Bordeaux has just indicated, there is no country in Europe which has not to
DEATH FROM ICE-CREAMS.—MOUNTAINEERING IN MIDDLE AGE.
472
revise its modus operandi in the upbringing of its tender in mind. the fact that middle age in itself does not constitutc, But Italy’s grinding poverty is an exceptional feature a qualification. The practised climber or walker may often in her case, at once aggravating the evil and complicating live safely according to his custom till threescore years or His brother and alter ego of sedentary occupation the machinery for remedying it. Not a day too soon, there- after. fore, do we hear of a steadfast attempt to be made in the must regard the claims of stiffened joints and sinews’next session of her Parliament to secure the observance of a long before that period has arrived. Not a few hearts salutary but shamefully violated law, and to devise other and bloodvessels, moreover, have felt the strain of life measures for the extension to the children of those conbefore even fifty years of it have passed. For them the ditions, hygienic and educational, without which no people steep ascent, the rapid blood-flow, and quick breathing, can " live and thrive " or play its normal part in the world. imply rather another and serious form’ of overstrain than a wholesome gymnastic competition of their organs. We touched upon this subject a few weeks ago1 and’ DEATH FROM ICE-CREAMS. we need not, therefore, discuss it now at greater length. IT is well known to everyone who has worked in a hospital matter for’ that there are seasonal casualties and accidents as well as The question of fitness or unfitness is, in short, and we know of one method only by individual decision, seasonal diseases. Thus the boiling kettle and fire accidents occur more while street accidents which it can be settled-namely, by medical examination. in
youth.
commonly
winter,
among children at least are of more frequent occurrence in the summer owing to the children being out more. The ice-cream season, too, claims its victims, and every year one or more deaths are registered from this cause. The cream, of course, must be held blameless, for this ingredient occurs in such small proportions that we may neglect it. It is probable that the chief offenders in the formation of poisons are the eggs, and that, as in the case recently reported from Limerick, eggs which are not exactly putrid, but have undergone some change, probably owing to a microorganism, are the cause of the alarming symptoms which sometimes arise from eating these confections. At an inquest held on Aug. 14th upon a youth aged nineteen evidence was given that he used to spend as much as 5s. to 7s. 6d. at a time upon ice-creams and sweets, which he devoured greedily. He died from acute gastro-enteritis. The sanitary conditions under which these ice-creams are made in many instances leave much to be desired, and we must continue to advise, as we have already done,2 an extension of the Factory Act so that private houses in which’ manufactures involving public interests are carried on should be duly inspected by a public official. We should be extremely sorry to eat 7s. 6d. worth of good ice-cream, and perhaps the quantity which the unfortunate youth devoured may have had something to do with his death as well as the quality.
MOUNTAINEERING IN MIDDLE AGE. THE holiday season, though well advanced, holds out, with a promise of late summer weather, the hope of leisure and recreation rendered all the more attractive by being deferred. Suggestions where to go and what to do are not yet exhausted. Sea and land everywhere have a welcome for the tourist who comes with no other object than to seek refreshment in the house of nature. Among other proposals we select one as being to some persons particularly fascinating, and affording at the same time an occasion for medical criticism-that, namely, which advises mounThe tain climbing as a pastime for the middle-aged. whose letter on the of this project, subject originator our readers may have seen, is "a superannuated climber." This description of himself is important. It is on the one hand a guarantee of his experience in the task he advises, and it affords on the other an explanation of his personal fitness to accomplish it with enjoyment and benefit. The Tatry Mountains in Austro-Hungary are described by him as being under 9000ft. in height, bathed in air of the finest purity, peopled by hospitable inhabitants who provide excellent food and quarters, and traversed by guides whose civility and other good qualities are warmly commended. Those whom nature or the incapacity due to habit or bodily condition have not disqualified may well be content to ei-ijoy such an athletic holiday as this. It is well, however, to
CHILDREN’S AILMENTS AND HOUSEHOLD PREVENTIVES. SOME ailments of children
like
simple mechanical their symptoms, in puzzle-obscure, complicated, alarming but in their troublesome if cause and very mismanaged, Last week itself. explanation simplicity a boy was taken ill from the effects, as was supposed, of a heavy dinner" Thanks to the guiding symptom of pain the true seat of his. disorder was quickly discovered, and the rectum was found to be tightly packed with the broken but unmasticated fragments of nuts, a meal of which he had recently consumed on his own account. An anaesthetic and forceps relieved him of his load, the more usual means having failed to do so. A mouth full of decayed teeth showed how, in his case, mastication was well-nigh impossible. The danger of allowing so much rough and hard matter in a state quite incapable of digestion to traverse the length of the intestinal tract, or to become impacted at some point’ in it, is such as even an unprofessional mind can appreciate. This case, unique perhaps in actual particulars, is one of many, some of them as clear, and some obscure in character, but all capable of much mischief and misunderstanding, which bear one common accusation-indiscretion in diet.. Now it is a poisonous ice-cream, now a stale fruit, now a mass of broken nuts. The inevitable question arises-Who is responsible ? And its answer will usually acquit the salesman if he be a careful and fair dealer. Child and parent, therefore, must divide the blame, if any, and of the’ two the more intelligent will naturally have the larger share. Such cases as that above quoted should at all events impress upon parents the lesson, too little regarded, that failure to’ warn, and to prevent if needful by active measures, the’ heedless indiscretions of, their children may at any time induce, perhaps by very simple means, an illness of the greatest gravity.
are
a
-
A GERMAN SCHOOL OF COOKERY. VOLTAIRE said that the English people had 100 religions (according to Whitaker’s Almanack we now have about 250) and only one sauce. This, of course, was merely national jealousy; but the fact remains that English cookery is not in general good, and the knowledge of this art among the. labouring classes is practically nil. Their batterie de cuisine consists of a frying-pan, in which they never "fry"but "do" things. Take the upper classes, again-in how many houses does the diner-out get an eatable curry, an omelette that does not resemble the sole of a boot, or coffee that has any right to that name ? In Germany an admirable institution ,exists. A philanthropic millionaire left (according to the St. James’s Gazette) a legacy to build and endow a school which is to be a model for the State schools of the country.
bear
1
2
THE LANCET, July 20th, 1895. THE LANCET, June 28th, 1890.
1
THE
LANCET, July 30th, 1895.
apart
minimum. These are, however, matters that stand from the question of water-supply, and we mention them only to show that care must be taken not to confuse two totally clifferent issues. To return to the water famine, we repeat that many measures must be taken before any thought of ,,abolishing the constant supply system can be entertained. First the water mains and all the pipes must be proved to .s,
be
sound.
Then better
surveillance exercised to
taps must be employed, and better prevent waste in private dwellings.
471
of the addresses. At St. Thomas’s Hospital Sir Edwin Arnold will address the students, and lie who has so ably dealt with the work of two of the greatest physicians of the soul the world has ever seen will surely be able to stimulate his hcarers to work nobly in that profession whose mission is to heal the body. At Middlesex Hospital Dr. W. Julius Mickle is to deliver the address, at St. Mary’s Hospital Mr. A. P. Laurie, at Westminster Hospital Dr. Monckton Copeman, at St. George’s Hospital Mr. George D. Pollock, at University College Professor J. Rose Bradford, and at Guy’s Hospital Mr. George De’Ath, who will take for his subject " Our Profession, our Patients, our Public, and our Press." University College, Liverpool, and the Sheffield School of Medicine are to be congratulated on securing Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Horsley respectively as the deliverers of the opening addresses. Professor Percy F. Frankland will take for his subject at Mason College, Birmingham, "Pasteur and his Work : the Debt of Medicine to Chemistry," and Professor F. H. Napier will address the students of St. Mungo’s College, Glasgow. Professor Penberthy will deliver the introductory address at the Royal
Finally, the amount of water at the disposal of the water Veterinary College. companies must-and, we understand, will-at an early date THE EXPLOITATION OF INFANCY. e considerably increased. THIS is a burning question in Italy. So disastrous are the results of impressing children of tender years into industrial service, that some time ago a law was passed by the Chamber of Deputies limiting the age at which boysor girls could be so employed. Severe penalties were imposed on any mill or owner who had engaged ’’ hands " of either sex under factory "Ne nimis." -
Annotations. quid
DEATH OF DR. BRISTOWE. IT is with much regret that we have to announce the death of Dr. John Syer Bristowe, which took place at Dixton ’Vicarage, Monmouth, on Tuesday, Aug. 20th. Dr. Bristowe 2iad been for many years a prominent figure in London medical and scientific circles. He was the senior consulting physician to St. Thomas’s Hospital, and had filled, among many other posts, the offices of President of the Medical Society, President of the Pathological Society, and President of the Neurological Society. He was not a voluminous writer, but his "Theory and Practice of Medi,cine" is a classic. He was a frequent contributor to our ’columns, and also wrote the articles in Reynolds’ Medicine He was a most - on Pyæmia and Diseases of the Intestines. - admirable clinical teacher, and his memory will ever be held in high honour at St. Thomas’s Hospital which he had served The funeral takes place so faithfully for many years. at Norwood Cemetery at 1 P.M. We shall to- day (Saturday) in an early issue. extended an notice obituary publish THE OPENING ADDRESSES AT
THE MEDICAL
SCHOOLS. THE time is rapidly approaching when those who contemplate entering the medical profession will have to decide, if c’;hey have not already done so, as to the school where they ’will receive their training. On Sept. 7th, in accordance ’with our usual custom, we shall publish " The Students’ Number" of THE LANCET, and intending students and their parents or guardians will find full information regarding the .advantages offered by the various schools as well as other matter of pressing interest to the student. Most of the and schools will provincial metropolitan open either on Oct. 1st or 2nd, while many of the Irish and Scotch schools will not commence their winter terms till some weeks later. At a large proportion of the schools the opening is characterised by an introductory address, and the names of many of the speakers will assure the quality
twelve years. This was hailed as an immense boon to the best interests of " young Italy,"but after the first enthusiasm on its enactment the law came to be quickly and systematically ignored, till the rising generation of Italians are demonstrating all too indisputably, in deteriorated physique and premature senility, that the springs of life have been drained at their source, and that persistence in this criminal breach of a wise regulation will have calamitous consequences for the future of the kingdom. Signor de Andreis, a philanthropic deputy, in a recent discourse on the subject, declared that the whole series of enactments for the protection of the child and the female against industrial employment unsuited to age or sex was in Italy so utterly set at naught that the very judges before whom a case of infringement of the law in question happened to come expressed astonishment that anyone should appeal to them for redress. The returns of the inspecting officers of the Italian army medical department speak with an eloquence all their own of the need for a stringent enforcement of the law. The augmentation of the maladies, the deformations, the stunted growth or impaired development which necessitate the rejection of the conscript has of late years become simply appalling. In the I I eircondario" (district) of Milan alone within the year now passing, out of 6844 youths enrolled for the levy more than 45 per cent. were found too infirm or too malformed to complete the term of military service. Pari passu with this physical deterioration proceeds the moral, as shown in the saddening statistics of penitentiaries, houses of correction, and prisons, all full of premature "failures or worse" in the battle of life. At the age when the budding child ought to be at school, undergoing salutary discipline, mental and bodily, he is plunged into the pernicious atmosphere of the factory or the industrial "hive," there to be initiated in all the seductions, temptations, and vices, often ending in crimes, of which these aggregations of hands " are all too prolific. Nor is it Italy alone that suffers from this sapping of her national vitality at its source. As the International Congress for the Protection of Infancy at Bordeaux has just indicated, there is no country in Europe which has not to
DEATH FROM ICE-CREAMS.—MOUNTAINEERING IN MIDDLE AGE.
472
revise its modus operandi in the upbringing of its tender in mind. the fact that middle age in itself does not constitutc, But Italy’s grinding poverty is an exceptional feature a qualification. The practised climber or walker may often in her case, at once aggravating the evil and complicating live safely according to his custom till threescore years or His brother and alter ego of sedentary occupation the machinery for remedying it. Not a day too soon, there- after. fore, do we hear of a steadfast attempt to be made in the must regard the claims of stiffened joints and sinews’next session of her Parliament to secure the observance of a long before that period has arrived. Not a few hearts salutary but shamefully violated law, and to devise other and bloodvessels, moreover, have felt the strain of life measures for the extension to the children of those conbefore even fifty years of it have passed. For them the ditions, hygienic and educational, without which no people steep ascent, the rapid blood-flow, and quick breathing, can " live and thrive " or play its normal part in the world. imply rather another and serious form’ of overstrain than a wholesome gymnastic competition of their organs. We touched upon this subject a few weeks ago1 and’ DEATH FROM ICE-CREAMS. we need not, therefore, discuss it now at greater length. IT is well known to everyone who has worked in a hospital matter for’ that there are seasonal casualties and accidents as well as The question of fitness or unfitness is, in short, and we know of one method only by individual decision, seasonal diseases. Thus the boiling kettle and fire accidents occur more while street accidents which it can be settled-namely, by medical examination. in
youth.
commonly
winter,
among children at least are of more frequent occurrence in the summer owing to the children being out more. The ice-cream season, too, claims its victims, and every year one or more deaths are registered from this cause. The cream, of course, must be held blameless, for this ingredient occurs in such small proportions that we may neglect it. It is probable that the chief offenders in the formation of poisons are the eggs, and that, as in the case recently reported from Limerick, eggs which are not exactly putrid, but have undergone some change, probably owing to a microorganism, are the cause of the alarming symptoms which sometimes arise from eating these confections. At an inquest held on Aug. 14th upon a youth aged nineteen evidence was given that he used to spend as much as 5s. to 7s. 6d. at a time upon ice-creams and sweets, which he devoured greedily. He died from acute gastro-enteritis. The sanitary conditions under which these ice-creams are made in many instances leave much to be desired, and we must continue to advise, as we have already done,2 an extension of the Factory Act so that private houses in which’ manufactures involving public interests are carried on should be duly inspected by a public official. We should be extremely sorry to eat 7s. 6d. worth of good ice-cream, and perhaps the quantity which the unfortunate youth devoured may have had something to do with his death as well as the quality.
MOUNTAINEERING IN MIDDLE AGE. THE holiday season, though well advanced, holds out, with a promise of late summer weather, the hope of leisure and recreation rendered all the more attractive by being deferred. Suggestions where to go and what to do are not yet exhausted. Sea and land everywhere have a welcome for the tourist who comes with no other object than to seek refreshment in the house of nature. Among other proposals we select one as being to some persons particularly fascinating, and affording at the same time an occasion for medical criticism-that, namely, which advises mounThe tain climbing as a pastime for the middle-aged. whose letter on the of this project, subject originator our readers may have seen, is "a superannuated climber." This description of himself is important. It is on the one hand a guarantee of his experience in the task he advises, and it affords on the other an explanation of his personal fitness to accomplish it with enjoyment and benefit. The Tatry Mountains in Austro-Hungary are described by him as being under 9000ft. in height, bathed in air of the finest purity, peopled by hospitable inhabitants who provide excellent food and quarters, and traversed by guides whose civility and other good qualities are warmly commended. Those whom nature or the incapacity due to habit or bodily condition have not disqualified may well be content to ei-ijoy such an athletic holiday as this. It is well, however, to
CHILDREN’S AILMENTS AND HOUSEHOLD PREVENTIVES. SOME ailments of children
like
simple mechanical their symptoms, in puzzle-obscure, complicated, alarming but in their troublesome if cause and very mismanaged, Last week itself. explanation simplicity a boy was taken ill from the effects, as was supposed, of a heavy dinner" Thanks to the guiding symptom of pain the true seat of his. disorder was quickly discovered, and the rectum was found to be tightly packed with the broken but unmasticated fragments of nuts, a meal of which he had recently consumed on his own account. An anaesthetic and forceps relieved him of his load, the more usual means having failed to do so. A mouth full of decayed teeth showed how, in his case, mastication was well-nigh impossible. The danger of allowing so much rough and hard matter in a state quite incapable of digestion to traverse the length of the intestinal tract, or to become impacted at some point’ in it, is such as even an unprofessional mind can appreciate. This case, unique perhaps in actual particulars, is one of many, some of them as clear, and some obscure in character, but all capable of much mischief and misunderstanding, which bear one common accusation-indiscretion in diet.. Now it is a poisonous ice-cream, now a stale fruit, now a mass of broken nuts. The inevitable question arises-Who is responsible ? And its answer will usually acquit the salesman if he be a careful and fair dealer. Child and parent, therefore, must divide the blame, if any, and of the’ two the more intelligent will naturally have the larger share. Such cases as that above quoted should at all events impress upon parents the lesson, too little regarded, that failure to’ warn, and to prevent if needful by active measures, the’ heedless indiscretions of, their children may at any time induce, perhaps by very simple means, an illness of the greatest gravity.
are
a
-
A GERMAN SCHOOL OF COOKERY. VOLTAIRE said that the English people had 100 religions (according to Whitaker’s Almanack we now have about 250) and only one sauce. This, of course, was merely national jealousy; but the fact remains that English cookery is not in general good, and the knowledge of this art among the. labouring classes is practically nil. Their batterie de cuisine consists of a frying-pan, in which they never "fry"but "do" things. Take the upper classes, again-in how many houses does the diner-out get an eatable curry, an omelette that does not resemble the sole of a boot, or coffee that has any right to that name ? In Germany an admirable institution ,exists. A philanthropic millionaire left (according to the St. James’s Gazette) a legacy to build and endow a school which is to be a model for the State schools of the country.
bear
1
2
THE LANCET, July 20th, 1895. THE LANCET, June 28th, 1890.
1
THE
LANCET, July 30th, 1895.