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THE THYMUS GLAND IN "THYMUS DEATH."
722
UREA IN PLANTS.-THE NOTIFICATION OF TUBERCULOSIS IN IRELAND.
Board of Health does not anticipate serious diffi- that the sputum discharged by the person suffering culties in securing a conviction under such a law. is liable to communicate the disease to other It is illustrative of the difficulties arising out of the persons. Furthermore, notification is only required reform of prostitution and attempts to suppress in case the person (1) habitually sleeps or works in venereal disease that the Commission has been the same room as any other person or persons unable to issue a unanimous report, two of its not so suffering; or (2) is employed or engaged members dissenting in many respects from the in handling, preparing, or distributing food intended majority report; the Board of Health has also for sale to the public. The person, therefore, who been unable to point a way to reforms endorsed by lives in one room readily escapes notification, and all its members. it is open to the practitioner, if he wishes, to arrange for the nursing of most of his cases in such a way that notification is not compulsory. UREA IN PLANTS. Differences in individual practice may accordingly THE occurrence of the enzyme urease, whicb readily account for the different figures obtained readily converts urea into ammonium carbonate, in in no real insight Belfast and Dublin, which plants, and more particularly in the soy bean, a into the relative prevalence ofgive tuberculosis in the leguminous plant named Glycine hispida, has two cities. Whilst notification as practised in naturally led to the suggestion that urea is Ireland may serve to call the attention of the probably a constituent of the vegetable kingdom. public health authority to infectious cases occurring The suggestion is interesting inasmuch as we in unhygienic surroundings, it obviously cannot be have for long regarded urea as exclusively an to give a complete picture of the preIn an interesting paper read expected animal product. valence of tuberculosis in any area or district. by Dr. Walter G. Smith before the Section of Notification in Great Britain is gradually becoming Medicine of the Royal Academy of Medicine in a sound basis for the initiation of and Ireland, and now published in the Transactions of curative measures; it has resultedpreventive in tracking the Academy, urea appears to be a fairly universal down an immense number of "contacts" in an constituent of plants. It occurs, at all events, to and curable stage and in linking the problem the extent of as much as 3’5 per cent. in ripe early of tuberculosis ever closer with the housing specimens of a fungus Lycoperdon bovista, and it with its high death-rate from has further been found in wheat, barley, maize, problem. Ireland, is equally in need of these measures buberculosis, peas, clover, and beans. It has also been detected and is unfortunate in a less effective ____
in
some species of cucumber, brassica, and potato, and so, as Dr. Smith carrot spinach, points out, we must recognise that plants, without the help of micro-organisms, can directly form urea as a product of nitrogen metabolism. Another link is established in this way between the metabolism of plants and animals. Professor Bayliss states that there does not appear to be any urea in the soy bean itself, for extracts of the seed do not yield any ammonia. He suggests that the germinating seed may contain the enzyme arginase which would produce urea from arginin. The urea on hydrolysis by urease would then serve as a nitrogen food for the plant. The action of urease is quantitative, and is now utilised in the accurate estimation of urea in urine, its conversion into ammonium carbonate admitting of alkalimetric methods. These observations are of great interest, as they not only break down once more an old distinction, but they throw a fresh light on the metabolism of nitrogen substances, and incidentally give us a new and accurate analytical procedure.
endive,
possessing
notification order. THE THYMUS GLAND IN
"THYMUS DEATH."
one of the unsatisfying and " Thymus unsatisfactory diagnoses often made in cases of sudden death in infants and children. It is said that the patients have suffered from the condition entitled the status thymicus, status lymphaticus, or, to kill two birds with one stone, the status thymicoSuch sudden death may occur in lymphaticus. many ways, and if we go briefly over very familiar ground it is only for the sake of clearness. In some infants, children, and young adults "thymus death" happens early in the administration of an anaesthetic. In others the symptoms are those of a sudden and fatal attack of shortness of breath, and the death is attributed to " thymic asthma." In a third group of cases the child dies suddenly in its sleep, in an attack of bronchitis or diarrhoea, or in the course of some other disorder such as rickets that had not been thought at all dangerous. Yet other varieties of " thymus death" have been described, with the result that the diagnosis has become suspect and is. THE NOTIFICATION OF TUBERCULOSIS IN not recognised at all by many physicians, surgeons,. IRELAND. and anæsthetists. Pathologists, on the other hand, AN Irish correspondent has called attention more are more inclined to accept it, perhaps because the than once to the curious fact that while tuberculous of an apparently enlarged thymus and an discovery phthisis is frequently notified in Dublin it is quite abnormally developed system of lymphatic glands. rarely notified in Belfast. The population of each and follicles offers a convenient explanation of the city being between a quarter and half a million occurrence of sudden deaths that are otherwise and the numbers of notifications being nearly confrom the point of view of morbid inexplicable stant from week to week, it was obvious that some Alternatively, of course, these sudden difference of practice must be present. The dis- anatomy. deaths may be attributed to anaphylaxis ; but here, crepancy is explained by a careful study of the again, the diagnosis is not wholly satisfying or Tuberculosis Order for Ireland, which differs in correct. The literature of the subject demonstrably several essential respects from the General Order is and has recently been added to by very large, for notification of tuberculosis as issued by the Dr. J. A. Hammar/ He notes that "thymus Local Government Board for England on Dec. 19th, death"" has very generally been attributed to In the first 1912. place, the Irish Order of the thymic medulla, or else to applies solely to the form of tuberculosis " known ahyperplasia ratio of the cortex to the medulla of low as tuberculosis of the lung," and only to this when 1 Svenska the medical practitioner in attendance considers Läkaresällskapets Handlingar, Stockholm, 1916, xlii., 867.
death " is
THE LINK BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY AND THE FACTORY.
723
the gland. Dr. Hammar has made careful microTHE UNIVERSITY scopical and numerical examinations of the thymus THE LINK BETWEEN AND THE FACTORY. glands in 16 cases of sudden death in infants and children, the material being supplied to him by various Swedish colleagues. He gives details of INTERESTING demonstrations were given in the Uni-
the observations he has made, and also sets them out statistically in curves and tables. His attention has been devoted to the relative amounts of cortex, medulla, and interstitial tissue in the thymus glands, and also to the relative and absolute numbers of the Hassall’s corpuscles in them, in view of the fact that " thymus death " has recently also been attributed to excessive "epithelialisation" (or deposit of Hassall’s corpuscles) in the gland. Two of his 16 cases were instances of "true thymus death," 5 were patients with acute bronchitis, 2 had broncho-pneumonia, the others had rickets or were suffocated by mucus from the gastrointestinal tract in the air-passages, and 1 had tonsillitis. In all of them death was associated with some enlargement of the thymus gland. Dr. Hammar finds that the normal newly-born child has a thymus weighing from 9 to 22 grammes, and averaging 13 grammes. Such an average thymus contains about 800,000 Hassall’s concentric corpuscles, the figure varying from rather less than half a million to a million and a third. Between the ages of 1 and 5 the average weight of the thymus is 25 grammes, the figure varying between 14 and 31 grammes ; between these ages the average thymus contains about 1,100,000 Hassall’s corpuscles, the extremes being 600,000 and 1,900,000. Summing up, Dr. Hammar comes to the conclusion that in cases of sudden death from internal causes in infants and children the thymus gland is, as a rule, of normal size and of normal histological structure. Even in cases of " true thymus death there is nothing to indicate any functional abnormality of importance in the thymus gland; the thymus shows no constant abnormality in the quantity or proportion of its medulla; the histological variations found fall within the normal, established by examination of the thymus glands from infants and children who have met with accidental death. Dr. Hammar is inclined to search the endocrine glands generally for the cause of death in these cases and to absolve the thymus gland from all responsibility. "
THE Acting Registrar of the General Medical Council is informed that an Order of the Privy Council postponing the elections of Direct Representatives, which would otherwise be held before the end of the year, may be expected in a few days. AT the first
meeting of the session of the Section Epidemiology and State Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine on Friday, Oct. 27th, at 8.30 P.M., a paper will be read by Captain C. G. Moor, R.A.M.C., on the Work of a Sanitary Section at a Base. Any officer of the Army or Navy Medical of
Services or the Indian and Colonial Services will be cordially welcomed at the meeting. ROYAL
NAVAL
HOSPITAL,
STONEHOUSE.-The
Medical Director-General of the Navy (Surgeon-General Sir Arthur W. May) recently visited the Royal Naval Hospital,
Stonehouse,
where he
was received by Surgeon-General He inspected the medical and surgical wards and expressed his appreciation at the provision made for the sick and wounded patients. On the following day the Medical Director-General inspected the medical establishments at Devonport and Plymouth.
W. H. Norman.
versities of Leeds and Sheffield last week of the facilities which the great technological schools of the Universities It was are offering for carrying out scientific research. announced that similar demonstrations would follow shortly at Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham Universities. Situated as the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield are in the midst of great industrial activities, it is encouraging to learn that the work of scientific research is being prosecuted on behalf of the manufacturers, and already some important examples of new advances may be definitely traced to the cooperation of the workshop and the University laboratory. Sheffield has been severely handicapped by the serious depletion of its students eligible for the war, but in spite of this the work done in the engineering and metallurgical departments has been of the utmost importance to the nation in the hour of its trial. The pure science side of the ’ teaching at this University, as the Dean of the Faculty of Pure Science explained, has been rapidly developed to meet any demands made either by the city, which has, of course, a large stake in the University, or by industry now or after the war is over. Schemes have been set on foot for the training of chemical engineers for which so great a demand exists at present, and of research chemists of a type so urgently in request by many firms engaged in the large A new chemical industries mobilised for war purposes. department of technology dealing with glass has been created which it is hoped will become national in character. This has been organised with the financial support of the Advisory Committee of the Privy Council for Industrial Research, of the Ministry of Munitions, and of the glass manufacturers on the one hand, and of the Sheffield University Council on the other. Suitable buildings for research work in glass technology are in process of erection, but in the meantime the work is being carried out with very promising results in the chemistry department. Amongst other work that has been taken up is the preparation of local anaesthetics formerly made exclusively in Germany, the provision of substitutes for materials formerly imported from the continent and largely used in local industries submitted by various firms. Altogether there are sure signs that the assistance which the University of Sheffield is in a position to give to trade and industry is being increasingly appreciated by the com-
munity. At Leeds the various
a most interesting demonstration was given in departments by the respective professors. The department of organic chemistry deals mainly with those
branches of science which underlie many of the most important technical processes, and provides a training for a large number of students who desire preparation for the great variety of industrial processes dependent on chemistry, such as the manufacture of dyes, explosives, and drugs, and the leather-dyeing, coal-tar, and fuel industries. This department has been actively engaged in several directions in the service of the country connected with the war. At the request of the War Committee of the Royal Society this department undertook the preparation of novocaine and eucaine, and a sufficient supply of the former has been made already. The preparation of eucaine oontinues. The chloramines are prepared in these laboratories as well as the hypochlorite boric acid mixture, the manufacture of which on a large scale is now in the hands of several firms of chemical manufacturers. There was on view also a collection of British-made dyes and drugs produced since the war, which are rapidly forming the basis of new industries, and this afforded a remarkable ocular proof of British energy well directed. The collaboration of science and industry was further fully illustrated in a special technical department representing what was being done for the great leather industries-. The work of the bacteriological laboratory of this department since the war has been devoted to the production of culture-media required by the hospitals for the isolation and identification of disease germs. Besides all this, the technical department is busily engaged controlling the output of toluene and benzene from coal-gas and making examinations of high explosives. The recent visit made by a representative group of enquirers and observers to the Universities of Sheffield and
UREA IN PLANTS.-THE NOTIFICATION OF TUBERCULOSIS IN IRELAND.
Board of Health does not anticipate serious diffi- that the sputum discharged by the person suffering culties in securing a conviction under such a law. is liable to communicate the disease to other It is illustrative of the difficulties arising out of the persons. Furthermore, notification is only required reform of prostitution and attempts to suppress in case the person (1) habitually sleeps or works in venereal disease that the Commission has been the same room as any other person or persons unable to issue a unanimous report, two of its not so suffering; or (2) is employed or engaged members dissenting in many respects from the in handling, preparing, or distributing food intended majority report; the Board of Health has also for sale to the public. The person, therefore, who been unable to point a way to reforms endorsed by lives in one room readily escapes notification, and all its members. it is open to the practitioner, if he wishes, to arrange for the nursing of most of his cases in such a way that notification is not compulsory. UREA IN PLANTS. Differences in individual practice may accordingly THE occurrence of the enzyme urease, whicb readily account for the different figures obtained readily converts urea into ammonium carbonate, in in no real insight Belfast and Dublin, which plants, and more particularly in the soy bean, a into the relative prevalence ofgive tuberculosis in the leguminous plant named Glycine hispida, has two cities. Whilst notification as practised in naturally led to the suggestion that urea is Ireland may serve to call the attention of the probably a constituent of the vegetable kingdom. public health authority to infectious cases occurring The suggestion is interesting inasmuch as we in unhygienic surroundings, it obviously cannot be have for long regarded urea as exclusively an to give a complete picture of the preIn an interesting paper read expected animal product. valence of tuberculosis in any area or district. by Dr. Walter G. Smith before the Section of Notification in Great Britain is gradually becoming Medicine of the Royal Academy of Medicine in a sound basis for the initiation of and Ireland, and now published in the Transactions of curative measures; it has resultedpreventive in tracking the Academy, urea appears to be a fairly universal down an immense number of "contacts" in an constituent of plants. It occurs, at all events, to and curable stage and in linking the problem the extent of as much as 3’5 per cent. in ripe early of tuberculosis ever closer with the housing specimens of a fungus Lycoperdon bovista, and it with its high death-rate from has further been found in wheat, barley, maize, problem. Ireland, is equally in need of these measures buberculosis, peas, clover, and beans. It has also been detected and is unfortunate in a less effective ____
in
some species of cucumber, brassica, and potato, and so, as Dr. Smith carrot spinach, points out, we must recognise that plants, without the help of micro-organisms, can directly form urea as a product of nitrogen metabolism. Another link is established in this way between the metabolism of plants and animals. Professor Bayliss states that there does not appear to be any urea in the soy bean itself, for extracts of the seed do not yield any ammonia. He suggests that the germinating seed may contain the enzyme arginase which would produce urea from arginin. The urea on hydrolysis by urease would then serve as a nitrogen food for the plant. The action of urease is quantitative, and is now utilised in the accurate estimation of urea in urine, its conversion into ammonium carbonate admitting of alkalimetric methods. These observations are of great interest, as they not only break down once more an old distinction, but they throw a fresh light on the metabolism of nitrogen substances, and incidentally give us a new and accurate analytical procedure.
endive,
possessing
notification order. THE THYMUS GLAND IN
"THYMUS DEATH."
one of the unsatisfying and " Thymus unsatisfactory diagnoses often made in cases of sudden death in infants and children. It is said that the patients have suffered from the condition entitled the status thymicus, status lymphaticus, or, to kill two birds with one stone, the status thymicoSuch sudden death may occur in lymphaticus. many ways, and if we go briefly over very familiar ground it is only for the sake of clearness. In some infants, children, and young adults "thymus death" happens early in the administration of an anaesthetic. In others the symptoms are those of a sudden and fatal attack of shortness of breath, and the death is attributed to " thymic asthma." In a third group of cases the child dies suddenly in its sleep, in an attack of bronchitis or diarrhoea, or in the course of some other disorder such as rickets that had not been thought at all dangerous. Yet other varieties of " thymus death" have been described, with the result that the diagnosis has become suspect and is. THE NOTIFICATION OF TUBERCULOSIS IN not recognised at all by many physicians, surgeons,. IRELAND. and anæsthetists. Pathologists, on the other hand, AN Irish correspondent has called attention more are more inclined to accept it, perhaps because the than once to the curious fact that while tuberculous of an apparently enlarged thymus and an discovery phthisis is frequently notified in Dublin it is quite abnormally developed system of lymphatic glands. rarely notified in Belfast. The population of each and follicles offers a convenient explanation of the city being between a quarter and half a million occurrence of sudden deaths that are otherwise and the numbers of notifications being nearly confrom the point of view of morbid inexplicable stant from week to week, it was obvious that some Alternatively, of course, these sudden difference of practice must be present. The dis- anatomy. deaths may be attributed to anaphylaxis ; but here, crepancy is explained by a careful study of the again, the diagnosis is not wholly satisfying or Tuberculosis Order for Ireland, which differs in correct. The literature of the subject demonstrably several essential respects from the General Order is and has recently been added to by very large, for notification of tuberculosis as issued by the Dr. J. A. Hammar/ He notes that "thymus Local Government Board for England on Dec. 19th, death"" has very generally been attributed to In the first 1912. place, the Irish Order of the thymic medulla, or else to applies solely to the form of tuberculosis " known ahyperplasia ratio of the cortex to the medulla of low as tuberculosis of the lung," and only to this when 1 Svenska the medical practitioner in attendance considers Läkaresällskapets Handlingar, Stockholm, 1916, xlii., 867.
death " is
THE LINK BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY AND THE FACTORY.
723
the gland. Dr. Hammar has made careful microTHE UNIVERSITY scopical and numerical examinations of the thymus THE LINK BETWEEN AND THE FACTORY. glands in 16 cases of sudden death in infants and children, the material being supplied to him by various Swedish colleagues. He gives details of INTERESTING demonstrations were given in the Uni-
the observations he has made, and also sets them out statistically in curves and tables. His attention has been devoted to the relative amounts of cortex, medulla, and interstitial tissue in the thymus glands, and also to the relative and absolute numbers of the Hassall’s corpuscles in them, in view of the fact that " thymus death " has recently also been attributed to excessive "epithelialisation" (or deposit of Hassall’s corpuscles) in the gland. Two of his 16 cases were instances of "true thymus death," 5 were patients with acute bronchitis, 2 had broncho-pneumonia, the others had rickets or were suffocated by mucus from the gastrointestinal tract in the air-passages, and 1 had tonsillitis. In all of them death was associated with some enlargement of the thymus gland. Dr. Hammar finds that the normal newly-born child has a thymus weighing from 9 to 22 grammes, and averaging 13 grammes. Such an average thymus contains about 800,000 Hassall’s concentric corpuscles, the figure varying from rather less than half a million to a million and a third. Between the ages of 1 and 5 the average weight of the thymus is 25 grammes, the figure varying between 14 and 31 grammes ; between these ages the average thymus contains about 1,100,000 Hassall’s corpuscles, the extremes being 600,000 and 1,900,000. Summing up, Dr. Hammar comes to the conclusion that in cases of sudden death from internal causes in infants and children the thymus gland is, as a rule, of normal size and of normal histological structure. Even in cases of " true thymus death there is nothing to indicate any functional abnormality of importance in the thymus gland; the thymus shows no constant abnormality in the quantity or proportion of its medulla; the histological variations found fall within the normal, established by examination of the thymus glands from infants and children who have met with accidental death. Dr. Hammar is inclined to search the endocrine glands generally for the cause of death in these cases and to absolve the thymus gland from all responsibility. "
THE Acting Registrar of the General Medical Council is informed that an Order of the Privy Council postponing the elections of Direct Representatives, which would otherwise be held before the end of the year, may be expected in a few days. AT the first
meeting of the session of the Section Epidemiology and State Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine on Friday, Oct. 27th, at 8.30 P.M., a paper will be read by Captain C. G. Moor, R.A.M.C., on the Work of a Sanitary Section at a Base. Any officer of the Army or Navy Medical of
Services or the Indian and Colonial Services will be cordially welcomed at the meeting. ROYAL
NAVAL
HOSPITAL,
STONEHOUSE.-The
Medical Director-General of the Navy (Surgeon-General Sir Arthur W. May) recently visited the Royal Naval Hospital,
Stonehouse,
where he
was received by Surgeon-General He inspected the medical and surgical wards and expressed his appreciation at the provision made for the sick and wounded patients. On the following day the Medical Director-General inspected the medical establishments at Devonport and Plymouth.
W. H. Norman.
versities of Leeds and Sheffield last week of the facilities which the great technological schools of the Universities It was are offering for carrying out scientific research. announced that similar demonstrations would follow shortly at Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham Universities. Situated as the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield are in the midst of great industrial activities, it is encouraging to learn that the work of scientific research is being prosecuted on behalf of the manufacturers, and already some important examples of new advances may be definitely traced to the cooperation of the workshop and the University laboratory. Sheffield has been severely handicapped by the serious depletion of its students eligible for the war, but in spite of this the work done in the engineering and metallurgical departments has been of the utmost importance to the nation in the hour of its trial. The pure science side of the ’ teaching at this University, as the Dean of the Faculty of Pure Science explained, has been rapidly developed to meet any demands made either by the city, which has, of course, a large stake in the University, or by industry now or after the war is over. Schemes have been set on foot for the training of chemical engineers for which so great a demand exists at present, and of research chemists of a type so urgently in request by many firms engaged in the large A new chemical industries mobilised for war purposes. department of technology dealing with glass has been created which it is hoped will become national in character. This has been organised with the financial support of the Advisory Committee of the Privy Council for Industrial Research, of the Ministry of Munitions, and of the glass manufacturers on the one hand, and of the Sheffield University Council on the other. Suitable buildings for research work in glass technology are in process of erection, but in the meantime the work is being carried out with very promising results in the chemistry department. Amongst other work that has been taken up is the preparation of local anaesthetics formerly made exclusively in Germany, the provision of substitutes for materials formerly imported from the continent and largely used in local industries submitted by various firms. Altogether there are sure signs that the assistance which the University of Sheffield is in a position to give to trade and industry is being increasingly appreciated by the com-
munity. At Leeds the various
a most interesting demonstration was given in departments by the respective professors. The department of organic chemistry deals mainly with those
branches of science which underlie many of the most important technical processes, and provides a training for a large number of students who desire preparation for the great variety of industrial processes dependent on chemistry, such as the manufacture of dyes, explosives, and drugs, and the leather-dyeing, coal-tar, and fuel industries. This department has been actively engaged in several directions in the service of the country connected with the war. At the request of the War Committee of the Royal Society this department undertook the preparation of novocaine and eucaine, and a sufficient supply of the former has been made already. The preparation of eucaine oontinues. The chloramines are prepared in these laboratories as well as the hypochlorite boric acid mixture, the manufacture of which on a large scale is now in the hands of several firms of chemical manufacturers. There was on view also a collection of British-made dyes and drugs produced since the war, which are rapidly forming the basis of new industries, and this afforded a remarkable ocular proof of British energy well directed. The collaboration of science and industry was further fully illustrated in a special technical department representing what was being done for the great leather industries-. The work of the bacteriological laboratory of this department since the war has been devoted to the production of culture-media required by the hospitals for the isolation and identification of disease germs. Besides all this, the technical department is busily engaged controlling the output of toluene and benzene from coal-gas and making examinations of high explosives. The recent visit made by a representative group of enquirers and observers to the Universities of Sheffield and