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THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY CORRECT WAY TO WRITE
849 some involved the head and occasionally the whole body, and the majority of non-industrial Over considered unavoidable. accidents were 6 per cent. of the cases were due to causes which lie outside the domain of the ophthalmologist from the point of view of treatment-vascular, renal, and cerebral diseases and diabetes in particular-and in this connexion the committee draws attention to a passage from its 1936 report : " After the early years blindness, apart from accidents, is often due to general disease, and the prevention of blindness to this extent becomes part of preventive medicine. For this reason alone it is highly desirable that persons with defects of sight should seek expert medical advice with a view to finding out whether the cause of such defects is some disorder of general health."
dent, but
SOYA-BEAN MILK AT SHANGHAI
.
OF the 350,000 destitute Chinese in camps and elsewhere in Shanghai it is the children who take most harm from food deficiencies. According to a report received from the International Red Cross at Shanghai through the Lord Mayor’s Fund for China, all the refugees, suffer more or less from beri-beri, and an attempt is being made to prevent this by supplying them with soya-bean milk and cakes, which contain vitamin B1. This milk is produced at one of the hospitals : the beans are soaked and then crushed in a mill run by a small motor, which could grind enough beans to give 15,000 lb. of milk in twelve hours ; but at present only 6000-7000 lb. is made, for this is the limit of cooking facilities. The bean mash is mixed with water and slowly boiled, and the hot solution is delivered to the camps, where sugar and calcium lactate are added. One pound is allowed to one child each day and delivery is twice daily. There are, it is stated, about 15,000 children under six years of age in the International Settlement and French Concession to whom the bean milk is a necessity, but enough is available for only about 7000. The bean residue after milk production is mixed with its own weight of whole-wheat flour and baked into cakes by a firm in Shanghai at cost price. These cakes are distributed to 3200 children between the ages of six and twelve, who receive two each day. The total cost of this project is about 11,000 dollars, but would of course be far greater if the milk and cakes were made on a sufficient scale. The best that most of the Shanghai camps can do for their refugees is two meals a day of hot rice and a little vegetable, chiefly dried and salted turnip. Even to keep them supplied with this meagre diet will become desperately difficult during the next two months. Unless fresh funds can be raised the camps will be faced with something approaching mass starvation. THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY CORRECT WAY TO WRITE
A STUDY of its history has convinced Dr. H. Callewaertthat handwriting through the ages has rightly tended to become cursive. Gothic handwriting was at least aesthetically justifiable, but the so-called " simple script," in which the letters composing a word are not linked together, is to be - commended neither from the point of view of convenience nor of physiology. An antebrachial action, with the point of the elbow used as the pivot of rotation is, in Dr. Callewaert’s view, the physiologically correct way to write, permitting of a large and practical range of movement of the forearm and
1 Physiologie de l’écriture cursive. By Dr. H. Callewaert. Paris: Desclée, de Brouwer et Cie. 1937. Pp. 122.
hand working together, and of free movements of all the fingers. A carpo-radial action, though much less ample in scope, permits of relatively rapid writing in certain circumstances, but a carpo-cubital action, often found in combination with a carpo-radial, should be avoided. The digito-radial action is fluent enough at the end of the line, but is restricted in scope even when there is a good functional dissociation between the two parts of the hand as in a mixed digito-radial movement. Similarly in the auriculoradial action there is limitation of range of movement because the action of the little finger is divorced from that of the other fingers. Any pronouncement by a medical man, of whatever country, on the subject of is likely enough to revive the age-old pleasantry on the illegibility of prescriptions, with the suggestion that of all people the doctor is least qualified to speak with authority on this subject. It is certain that though nearly all handwriting tends to become less formal and precise with the years, those who learnt in their youth to pen each letter separately remain on the whole more easy to read in later life. Perhaps the restrictions in the scope of arm and hand movements, deplored by Dr. Callewaert, play a part in the retention of relative legibility by those who started their writing in " simple script."
handwriting
FERTILITY OF THE EARTH
mechanised age it may be difficult for townsto remember that all the food of the human race is obtained by the tilling of the earth or the harvesting of the sea. Improved transport and means of food preservation have combined to reduce the effects of crop failures, at least on those nations with sufficient means to buy abroad, so that, except in time of war, the townsman is inclined to look no IN
a
people
farther than the butcher, the grocer, and the seller of what the late H. E. Armstrong called " cleaned up milk" for the supply of his daily food. It was therefore a wise move on the part of the Royal Institution to arrange for the delivery in the heart of London of a course of lectures on the fertility of the Sir Frederick Keeble, whose eloquence comearth. pleted the series, expressed some alarm at the deterioration of physique and fertility in the human race and at the decreasing fertility of the soil. He welcomed the development of grass farming at the expense of arable, but argued for the better cultivation and utilisation of grass, deploring the widespread use of concentrated cattle foods and the time-honoured method of preserving grass as hay. The specimen of artificially dried grass shown on the lecture table was as green as alpine hay, but it was difficult to assent to the view that lowland hay, when well made and stored, must lose so large a proportion of salts and protein as he suggested. A strong point, amply illustrated by numerical data, was the advantage of increasing the yield of grass by the proper use of fertilisers all through the year, enabling stock to spend more of their time grazing, and to graze on newly grown grass in which nutritious and growthpromoting constituents had not given place to fibrous Most foodmatters of use mainly as "roughage." stufes derived from land plants are, according to the lecturer, deficient in iodine and iron, whence arise lack of vitality and anaemia. His main thesis, however, was the desirability of fuller recognition of the dictum that " all flesh is grass" and of greater attention to the improvement of pasturage. Much more could be done in maintaining soil in fertile condition by better cultivation, keeping up its content of humus, and supplementing its available constituents by the judicious use of manures, including
dent, but
SOYA-BEAN MILK AT SHANGHAI
.
OF the 350,000 destitute Chinese in camps and elsewhere in Shanghai it is the children who take most harm from food deficiencies. According to a report received from the International Red Cross at Shanghai through the Lord Mayor’s Fund for China, all the refugees, suffer more or less from beri-beri, and an attempt is being made to prevent this by supplying them with soya-bean milk and cakes, which contain vitamin B1. This milk is produced at one of the hospitals : the beans are soaked and then crushed in a mill run by a small motor, which could grind enough beans to give 15,000 lb. of milk in twelve hours ; but at present only 6000-7000 lb. is made, for this is the limit of cooking facilities. The bean mash is mixed with water and slowly boiled, and the hot solution is delivered to the camps, where sugar and calcium lactate are added. One pound is allowed to one child each day and delivery is twice daily. There are, it is stated, about 15,000 children under six years of age in the International Settlement and French Concession to whom the bean milk is a necessity, but enough is available for only about 7000. The bean residue after milk production is mixed with its own weight of whole-wheat flour and baked into cakes by a firm in Shanghai at cost price. These cakes are distributed to 3200 children between the ages of six and twelve, who receive two each day. The total cost of this project is about 11,000 dollars, but would of course be far greater if the milk and cakes were made on a sufficient scale. The best that most of the Shanghai camps can do for their refugees is two meals a day of hot rice and a little vegetable, chiefly dried and salted turnip. Even to keep them supplied with this meagre diet will become desperately difficult during the next two months. Unless fresh funds can be raised the camps will be faced with something approaching mass starvation. THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY CORRECT WAY TO WRITE
A STUDY of its history has convinced Dr. H. Callewaertthat handwriting through the ages has rightly tended to become cursive. Gothic handwriting was at least aesthetically justifiable, but the so-called " simple script," in which the letters composing a word are not linked together, is to be - commended neither from the point of view of convenience nor of physiology. An antebrachial action, with the point of the elbow used as the pivot of rotation is, in Dr. Callewaert’s view, the physiologically correct way to write, permitting of a large and practical range of movement of the forearm and
1 Physiologie de l’écriture cursive. By Dr. H. Callewaert. Paris: Desclée, de Brouwer et Cie. 1937. Pp. 122.
hand working together, and of free movements of all the fingers. A carpo-radial action, though much less ample in scope, permits of relatively rapid writing in certain circumstances, but a carpo-cubital action, often found in combination with a carpo-radial, should be avoided. The digito-radial action is fluent enough at the end of the line, but is restricted in scope even when there is a good functional dissociation between the two parts of the hand as in a mixed digito-radial movement. Similarly in the auriculoradial action there is limitation of range of movement because the action of the little finger is divorced from that of the other fingers. Any pronouncement by a medical man, of whatever country, on the subject of is likely enough to revive the age-old pleasantry on the illegibility of prescriptions, with the suggestion that of all people the doctor is least qualified to speak with authority on this subject. It is certain that though nearly all handwriting tends to become less formal and precise with the years, those who learnt in their youth to pen each letter separately remain on the whole more easy to read in later life. Perhaps the restrictions in the scope of arm and hand movements, deplored by Dr. Callewaert, play a part in the retention of relative legibility by those who started their writing in " simple script."
handwriting
FERTILITY OF THE EARTH
mechanised age it may be difficult for townsto remember that all the food of the human race is obtained by the tilling of the earth or the harvesting of the sea. Improved transport and means of food preservation have combined to reduce the effects of crop failures, at least on those nations with sufficient means to buy abroad, so that, except in time of war, the townsman is inclined to look no IN
a
people
farther than the butcher, the grocer, and the seller of what the late H. E. Armstrong called " cleaned up milk" for the supply of his daily food. It was therefore a wise move on the part of the Royal Institution to arrange for the delivery in the heart of London of a course of lectures on the fertility of the Sir Frederick Keeble, whose eloquence comearth. pleted the series, expressed some alarm at the deterioration of physique and fertility in the human race and at the decreasing fertility of the soil. He welcomed the development of grass farming at the expense of arable, but argued for the better cultivation and utilisation of grass, deploring the widespread use of concentrated cattle foods and the time-honoured method of preserving grass as hay. The specimen of artificially dried grass shown on the lecture table was as green as alpine hay, but it was difficult to assent to the view that lowland hay, when well made and stored, must lose so large a proportion of salts and protein as he suggested. A strong point, amply illustrated by numerical data, was the advantage of increasing the yield of grass by the proper use of fertilisers all through the year, enabling stock to spend more of their time grazing, and to graze on newly grown grass in which nutritious and growthpromoting constituents had not given place to fibrous Most foodmatters of use mainly as "roughage." stufes derived from land plants are, according to the lecturer, deficient in iodine and iron, whence arise lack of vitality and anaemia. His main thesis, however, was the desirability of fuller recognition of the dictum that " all flesh is grass" and of greater attention to the improvement of pasturage. Much more could be done in maintaining soil in fertile condition by better cultivation, keeping up its content of humus, and supplementing its available constituents by the judicious use of manures, including