- Email: [email protected]
THOMSEN'S DISEASE (MYOTONIA CONGENITA) IN A BROTHER AND SISTER.
955
being nominated to it during the course of the month which follows that of the formal nomination. Candidates must also submit their age and the languages which they know. They are also warned that in case they wish to resign the post they can only do so on giving three months’ notice to the President of the Sanitary Council. The examination will close on April 30th, 1900. Applications for either of these appointments should Alexandria, Egypt.
be
sent to Dr. C. Armand
THE SUPPLY OF MEDICAL STUDENTS.
Ruffer, I
-
STREET NUISANCES.
WE are glad to see that the London County Council is persevering in its efforts to make London less objectionable. At the weekly meeting held on March 27th a recommendation of the General Purposes Committee was agreed to that a conference should be held with the various local authorities to consider the question of street and traffic regulation. All sorts of points are involved in this decision. The
traffic alone involves the ever-increasing number of omnibuses which in narrow streets, as, for instance, Bond-street, are gradually getting to be a greater nuisance than convenience. Some check, too, should be placed upon the perpetual disturbance of the streets by gas, telephone, electric lighting, water, and hydraulic power companies from one or the other of which the Strand and adjacent streets have never been free since last July. Something should also be done to stop newspaper hawkers throwing away the innumerable posters which they carry-a practice which makes Piccadilly-circus a perfect rubbish shoot. " Mud Salad Market," as Punch long ago called the market owned by the Duke of Bedford, is, we suppose, a necessary evil, but all the same it is out of place in the midst of a great
question of
city.
of the College will soon be much improved, but we agree with Dr. Williams that salvation will come from selfhelp, and that no State assistance can be hoped for. This may be regrettable, but it is a fact.
position
-
THE General Medical Council has just issued its Medical Register, which is the list of medical students registered during the year 1899. There is an increase of 102 in the number registered in the United Kingdom in 1899 as compared with the number registered in the previous year, being. 1711 and 1609 respectively. But taking the last two quinquennial periods into the estimate we find that the later, ending in 1899, gives 8441 registrations of medical students and the former 9340. In other words there are 899 fewer registrations in the later quinquennial period than in the former, or an annual average of about 177 less per year. The register contains much interesting information as to the schools and the date of commencement of medical education of the students registered, the division of the kingdom in which the registration takes place, the regulations of the General Medical Council for the examination and registration of medical students and other matters.
I Students
I
THE THREATENED EXCLUSION OF FOREIGN MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS FROM ITALY. MUCH anxiety exists among foreign practitioners in the kingdom of Italy in respect of legislation said to be contemplated by the Italian Government to prevent all foreign medical men from practising in Italy unless they hold an Italian qualification or the country from which they come grants a reciprocal right to duly qualified Italian practi-
tioners. We showed last week from an examination of the minutes of the Executive Committee of the General Medical But it is one Council that it is informed on this subject. THE first annual general meeting of this institution was calling for the serious attention of the Council in May. held on Wednesday last, March 28th, when Dr. C. Theodore We cannot imagine that the friendly Italian GovernWilliams urged the members to put their shoulders to the ment will allow itself to act hastily in a matter so wheel as Mr. Hutchinson had done and help to tide the deeply affecting not only British medical men but college over a critical position. Dr. Williams, who is also the British invalids who flock to Italy in thousands treasurer of the College, put the whole difficulty quite every winter. At the very least, they will surely not include tersely when he said that they could not carry on the in such legislation British practitioners already established work with an income of .E800 and an expenditure of .cZOOO a in Italy. On our side there must be more decision and year. In the course of his remarks one of the audience promptness or we shall provoke legislation that will be said the State ought to help, to which Dr. Williams replied unfortunate and narrow. We must not forget that Italy is that from what they knew of the British Government he did only proposing to do very much what we do already-with not think that they would find any instance in which the this difference, that Italians may practise here without any Government had so helped, but the members could persuade probability of objection on the part of the law or of the their friends to give donations. Mr. Hutchinson said that General Medical Council. they should remember the Hunterian maxim that organisation depended on life and not life on organisation. The life THOMSEN’S DISEASE (MYOTONIA CONGENITA) IN A BROTHER AND SISTER. must come from within, and they all ought to be zealous work to to a grand success. At first they could not be DR. J. S. RisiEN RUSSELL demonstrated at a meeting wholly self-supporting and must appeal to the members at of the Neurological Society of London on March 15th large to do what they could. The pecuniary liabilities of the two cases illustrating the heredity of Thomsen’s disease, College should not be entirely thrown on the medical pro- the patients being a Hebrew boy and girl. The children fession. The paucity of general practitioners on the were apparently of natural development, not backward Council led Dr. Snape to say that as the members of in speech or walking, and free from fits of any descripthe College were general practitioners and formed the tion. The boy, aged 15J2- years, seemed somewhat poorly audiences at the lectures and the students at the developed for his age. His growth appeared to have been classes their support was essential to success, and natural until he was five years old, when a difficulty in peradequate representation should be accorded to them on the forming voluntary muscular movements began to be council. Dr. Fletcher Little considered that if the College noticed. His condition gradually grew worse. It was to be a practitioners’ College, as he hoped it would be, was most marked in the morning and on attempting they must be properly represented on the council. Sir to get up or to walk the movements of the arms and legs William Broadbent, the chairman of the council of the were hampered by stiffness of the muscles. Gradually in the College, said that proper representation of the general course of the day this stiffness diminished. Walking was practitioners on the council would be granted when that always difficult, however, especially after a period of rest. body was re-elected next year. We hope that the financial On closing the eyelids tightly the patient could not readily
THE MEDICAL GRADUATES’ COLLEGE AND POLYCLINIC.
___
956 open them again and after closing the hand extension of the fingers was slow and difficult.
the The kneejerks were normal and there was no spasticity. The girl and presented similar was aged five and a half years phenomena but in a less marked degree than did her brother. Her trouble seems to have commenced at the age of four years, and at the date of the demonstration (16 months after) it was more noticeable. In the four months during which she had been under observation the condition had grown
tightly
worse. ____
THE PROGRESS OF THE MIDWIVES BILL. THE Midwives Bill, having passed through the Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Law, now awaits the report stage. Throughout the proceedings of the Standing Committee the promoters of the Bill had affairs their own way despite the vigorous resistance offered by Mr. T. P. O’Connor and Mr. Lloyd George ; while, as will be seen from our Parliamentary representative’s account, the supporters of legislation evidenced their interest in the measure with as much clearness as the opponents displayed their apathy. In spite of the favourable position which the Bill now enjoys some modifications may be expected in response to the representations of the General Medical Council. The General Medical Council has strongly urged the inclusion of a clause not yet in the Bill requiring that in obstetric cases presenting "symptoms of difficulty, disease on the part of the mother or abnormality, danger, or of the new-born c’lild " the licensed midwife must apply for qualified medical assistance. An amendment to this effect was brought before the Standing Committee by Colonel Milward, but was lost. The Council will, we are sure, use what pressure it can to ensure the addition of such a provision to the Bill before it becomes law. The Government are stated to consider that inasmuch as the rules of the Midwives Board have to be approved by the General Medical Council, the General Medical Council will have full opportunity after the Bill becomes an Act of restricting the practice of the licensed midwife to the limits of proper obstetric nursing. Under the measure which has just passed through the Standing Committee we believe verily that the licensed midwife can by no means be so restricted-a situation that will commend itself favourably to the limited intellect of Mr. Atherley Jones, Q.C.-but certainly the legal provisions making attempt to confine the new order of nurses to nursing should be an integral part of the Bill. ____
THE RESIGNATION OF SIR WILLIAM T. GAIRDNER. WE announced last week the intention of Sir William Gairdner to intimate to his class in the University of Glasgow his decision to resign his professorship of the Practice of Physic. He did so on Friday, March 23rd, in
eloquent terms of dignity and regret befitting the occasion. There was something exceedingly touching in the sentiments of Sir William Gairdner expressing the reluctance with which he took such a step while still feeling the
fessorship and the claims of the new science of bacteriology. Sir William Gairdner’s final words of acknowledgment to his ’° generations of pupils" and "succession of helpers in class and ward duty," will be cherished by men all over the world as well as by those gentlemen-Carslaw, Ness, and Watson-who close the great army of assistants and are fortunate enough to find their
associated with the work of such a master and in historical words. This is not the time, happily, to specified count up what Sir William Gairdner has done for the health of the inhabitants of Glasgow. This event of his resignation has an interest wherever medical science and medical character are prized. His forte as a teacher has been that he has always been a learner. He will, we hope, long continue to be both, and the profession at large will be glad to place itself in statu jJ1tpillari whenever he may choose to announce the results of his judgment and his experience. names
OUR Birmingham correspondent, in a note in our issue of Jan. 27th, referring to the Anglo-American Assurance Company, introduced the name of Sir William MacCormac. We have been requested to give publicity to an entire repudiation by Sir William Mac Cormac of any connexion whatever with this company. We are sure that all our readers must have seen that the name of the President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England was unwarrantably used as a decjy by the convict who was canvassing the profession recently on behalf of this swindle. ___
THE annual meeting of the Factory Girls’ Country Holiday Fund will be held on Friday, April 27th, at 3 o’clock, at the Mansion House, by permission of the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor will take the chair, and among those announced to speak are the Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of Bristol, Mrs. Scbarlieb, M.D. Lond., and the Very Rev. Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi.
DURING the .absence abroad of Sir Savile Crossley Viscount Duncannon will undertake some of the duties of the honorary secretaries of the Prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund for London. All communications to the Fund should, as before, be addressed to the honorary secretaries, Prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund, Bank of England, London, E.C. THE second Lees and Raper Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Mr. Victor Horsley in St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly, W., on Friday, April 27th. The subject is announced as the Effect of Alcohol upon the Human Brain. PROFESSOR OSLER has telegraphed from Baltimore asking to announce that he is not a candidate for the Chair of Medicine in Edinburgh University. us
THE
WAR
IN
SOUTH
AFRICA.
apart from the fact that nothing succeeds like think that a change of tone and of opinion may be traced in the foreign press in regard to the war in South EVEN
success we
keenest interest in the work of the class-room and the ward. Africa and the in which it was about and has "My class-room and my hospital remain now as they have been conducted.wayWith the arrival of brought fuller and more precise all along been, the greatest of my occupations and the information as to what was the actual condition of affairs sources of the most profound satisfaction in endeavouring to at the time when the war broke out it begins to be recognised serve thereby my day and generation." There is no abate- in this country also that, speaking generally, our generals ment in the force with which Sir William Gairdner follows in South Africa did the best which they could under the development of medicine. It is on the contrary his deep the circumstances and were, as a matter of fact, compelled to follow the course of action which they pursued. Unforsense of the rate and scale of this development which determines him to give way to one with " at least a younger tunately it was incorrectly assumed by the Government of this the assumption was founded upon the pair of eyes and perhaps a younger brain as well." He viewscountry-and held by many local authorities in South Africa-that will scarcely admit any age in the brain that should make the force under Sir George White would be able to deal with him resign, but his eyesight is not equal to the task of any army which the Boers could bring against it. It was the enormous amount of reading necessitated by his proforeseen, as it might have been, that the Boers would
not
being nominated to it during the course of the month which follows that of the formal nomination. Candidates must also submit their age and the languages which they know. They are also warned that in case they wish to resign the post they can only do so on giving three months’ notice to the President of the Sanitary Council. The examination will close on April 30th, 1900. Applications for either of these appointments should Alexandria, Egypt.
be
sent to Dr. C. Armand
THE SUPPLY OF MEDICAL STUDENTS.
Ruffer, I
-
STREET NUISANCES.
WE are glad to see that the London County Council is persevering in its efforts to make London less objectionable. At the weekly meeting held on March 27th a recommendation of the General Purposes Committee was agreed to that a conference should be held with the various local authorities to consider the question of street and traffic regulation. All sorts of points are involved in this decision. The
traffic alone involves the ever-increasing number of omnibuses which in narrow streets, as, for instance, Bond-street, are gradually getting to be a greater nuisance than convenience. Some check, too, should be placed upon the perpetual disturbance of the streets by gas, telephone, electric lighting, water, and hydraulic power companies from one or the other of which the Strand and adjacent streets have never been free since last July. Something should also be done to stop newspaper hawkers throwing away the innumerable posters which they carry-a practice which makes Piccadilly-circus a perfect rubbish shoot. " Mud Salad Market," as Punch long ago called the market owned by the Duke of Bedford, is, we suppose, a necessary evil, but all the same it is out of place in the midst of a great
question of
city.
of the College will soon be much improved, but we agree with Dr. Williams that salvation will come from selfhelp, and that no State assistance can be hoped for. This may be regrettable, but it is a fact.
position
-
THE General Medical Council has just issued its Medical Register, which is the list of medical students registered during the year 1899. There is an increase of 102 in the number registered in the United Kingdom in 1899 as compared with the number registered in the previous year, being. 1711 and 1609 respectively. But taking the last two quinquennial periods into the estimate we find that the later, ending in 1899, gives 8441 registrations of medical students and the former 9340. In other words there are 899 fewer registrations in the later quinquennial period than in the former, or an annual average of about 177 less per year. The register contains much interesting information as to the schools and the date of commencement of medical education of the students registered, the division of the kingdom in which the registration takes place, the regulations of the General Medical Council for the examination and registration of medical students and other matters.
I Students
I
THE THREATENED EXCLUSION OF FOREIGN MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS FROM ITALY. MUCH anxiety exists among foreign practitioners in the kingdom of Italy in respect of legislation said to be contemplated by the Italian Government to prevent all foreign medical men from practising in Italy unless they hold an Italian qualification or the country from which they come grants a reciprocal right to duly qualified Italian practi-
tioners. We showed last week from an examination of the minutes of the Executive Committee of the General Medical But it is one Council that it is informed on this subject. THE first annual general meeting of this institution was calling for the serious attention of the Council in May. held on Wednesday last, March 28th, when Dr. C. Theodore We cannot imagine that the friendly Italian GovernWilliams urged the members to put their shoulders to the ment will allow itself to act hastily in a matter so wheel as Mr. Hutchinson had done and help to tide the deeply affecting not only British medical men but college over a critical position. Dr. Williams, who is also the British invalids who flock to Italy in thousands treasurer of the College, put the whole difficulty quite every winter. At the very least, they will surely not include tersely when he said that they could not carry on the in such legislation British practitioners already established work with an income of .E800 and an expenditure of .cZOOO a in Italy. On our side there must be more decision and year. In the course of his remarks one of the audience promptness or we shall provoke legislation that will be said the State ought to help, to which Dr. Williams replied unfortunate and narrow. We must not forget that Italy is that from what they knew of the British Government he did only proposing to do very much what we do already-with not think that they would find any instance in which the this difference, that Italians may practise here without any Government had so helped, but the members could persuade probability of objection on the part of the law or of the their friends to give donations. Mr. Hutchinson said that General Medical Council. they should remember the Hunterian maxim that organisation depended on life and not life on organisation. The life THOMSEN’S DISEASE (MYOTONIA CONGENITA) IN A BROTHER AND SISTER. must come from within, and they all ought to be zealous work to to a grand success. At first they could not be DR. J. S. RisiEN RUSSELL demonstrated at a meeting wholly self-supporting and must appeal to the members at of the Neurological Society of London on March 15th large to do what they could. The pecuniary liabilities of the two cases illustrating the heredity of Thomsen’s disease, College should not be entirely thrown on the medical pro- the patients being a Hebrew boy and girl. The children fession. The paucity of general practitioners on the were apparently of natural development, not backward Council led Dr. Snape to say that as the members of in speech or walking, and free from fits of any descripthe College were general practitioners and formed the tion. The boy, aged 15J2- years, seemed somewhat poorly audiences at the lectures and the students at the developed for his age. His growth appeared to have been classes their support was essential to success, and natural until he was five years old, when a difficulty in peradequate representation should be accorded to them on the forming voluntary muscular movements began to be council. Dr. Fletcher Little considered that if the College noticed. His condition gradually grew worse. It was to be a practitioners’ College, as he hoped it would be, was most marked in the morning and on attempting they must be properly represented on the council. Sir to get up or to walk the movements of the arms and legs William Broadbent, the chairman of the council of the were hampered by stiffness of the muscles. Gradually in the College, said that proper representation of the general course of the day this stiffness diminished. Walking was practitioners on the council would be granted when that always difficult, however, especially after a period of rest. body was re-elected next year. We hope that the financial On closing the eyelids tightly the patient could not readily
THE MEDICAL GRADUATES’ COLLEGE AND POLYCLINIC.
___
956 open them again and after closing the hand extension of the fingers was slow and difficult.
the The kneejerks were normal and there was no spasticity. The girl and presented similar was aged five and a half years phenomena but in a less marked degree than did her brother. Her trouble seems to have commenced at the age of four years, and at the date of the demonstration (16 months after) it was more noticeable. In the four months during which she had been under observation the condition had grown
tightly
worse. ____
THE PROGRESS OF THE MIDWIVES BILL. THE Midwives Bill, having passed through the Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Law, now awaits the report stage. Throughout the proceedings of the Standing Committee the promoters of the Bill had affairs their own way despite the vigorous resistance offered by Mr. T. P. O’Connor and Mr. Lloyd George ; while, as will be seen from our Parliamentary representative’s account, the supporters of legislation evidenced their interest in the measure with as much clearness as the opponents displayed their apathy. In spite of the favourable position which the Bill now enjoys some modifications may be expected in response to the representations of the General Medical Council. The General Medical Council has strongly urged the inclusion of a clause not yet in the Bill requiring that in obstetric cases presenting "symptoms of difficulty, disease on the part of the mother or abnormality, danger, or of the new-born c’lild " the licensed midwife must apply for qualified medical assistance. An amendment to this effect was brought before the Standing Committee by Colonel Milward, but was lost. The Council will, we are sure, use what pressure it can to ensure the addition of such a provision to the Bill before it becomes law. The Government are stated to consider that inasmuch as the rules of the Midwives Board have to be approved by the General Medical Council, the General Medical Council will have full opportunity after the Bill becomes an Act of restricting the practice of the licensed midwife to the limits of proper obstetric nursing. Under the measure which has just passed through the Standing Committee we believe verily that the licensed midwife can by no means be so restricted-a situation that will commend itself favourably to the limited intellect of Mr. Atherley Jones, Q.C.-but certainly the legal provisions making attempt to confine the new order of nurses to nursing should be an integral part of the Bill. ____
THE RESIGNATION OF SIR WILLIAM T. GAIRDNER. WE announced last week the intention of Sir William Gairdner to intimate to his class in the University of Glasgow his decision to resign his professorship of the Practice of Physic. He did so on Friday, March 23rd, in
eloquent terms of dignity and regret befitting the occasion. There was something exceedingly touching in the sentiments of Sir William Gairdner expressing the reluctance with which he took such a step while still feeling the
fessorship and the claims of the new science of bacteriology. Sir William Gairdner’s final words of acknowledgment to his ’° generations of pupils" and "succession of helpers in class and ward duty," will be cherished by men all over the world as well as by those gentlemen-Carslaw, Ness, and Watson-who close the great army of assistants and are fortunate enough to find their
associated with the work of such a master and in historical words. This is not the time, happily, to specified count up what Sir William Gairdner has done for the health of the inhabitants of Glasgow. This event of his resignation has an interest wherever medical science and medical character are prized. His forte as a teacher has been that he has always been a learner. He will, we hope, long continue to be both, and the profession at large will be glad to place itself in statu jJ1tpillari whenever he may choose to announce the results of his judgment and his experience. names
OUR Birmingham correspondent, in a note in our issue of Jan. 27th, referring to the Anglo-American Assurance Company, introduced the name of Sir William MacCormac. We have been requested to give publicity to an entire repudiation by Sir William Mac Cormac of any connexion whatever with this company. We are sure that all our readers must have seen that the name of the President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England was unwarrantably used as a decjy by the convict who was canvassing the profession recently on behalf of this swindle. ___
THE annual meeting of the Factory Girls’ Country Holiday Fund will be held on Friday, April 27th, at 3 o’clock, at the Mansion House, by permission of the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor will take the chair, and among those announced to speak are the Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of Bristol, Mrs. Scbarlieb, M.D. Lond., and the Very Rev. Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi.
DURING the .absence abroad of Sir Savile Crossley Viscount Duncannon will undertake some of the duties of the honorary secretaries of the Prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund for London. All communications to the Fund should, as before, be addressed to the honorary secretaries, Prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund, Bank of England, London, E.C. THE second Lees and Raper Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Mr. Victor Horsley in St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly, W., on Friday, April 27th. The subject is announced as the Effect of Alcohol upon the Human Brain. PROFESSOR OSLER has telegraphed from Baltimore asking to announce that he is not a candidate for the Chair of Medicine in Edinburgh University. us
THE
WAR
IN
SOUTH
AFRICA.
apart from the fact that nothing succeeds like think that a change of tone and of opinion may be traced in the foreign press in regard to the war in South EVEN
success we
keenest interest in the work of the class-room and the ward. Africa and the in which it was about and has "My class-room and my hospital remain now as they have been conducted.wayWith the arrival of brought fuller and more precise all along been, the greatest of my occupations and the information as to what was the actual condition of affairs sources of the most profound satisfaction in endeavouring to at the time when the war broke out it begins to be recognised serve thereby my day and generation." There is no abate- in this country also that, speaking generally, our generals ment in the force with which Sir William Gairdner follows in South Africa did the best which they could under the development of medicine. It is on the contrary his deep the circumstances and were, as a matter of fact, compelled to follow the course of action which they pursued. Unforsense of the rate and scale of this development which determines him to give way to one with " at least a younger tunately it was incorrectly assumed by the Government of this the assumption was founded upon the pair of eyes and perhaps a younger brain as well." He viewscountry-and held by many local authorities in South Africa-that will scarcely admit any age in the brain that should make the force under Sir George White would be able to deal with him resign, but his eyesight is not equal to the task of any army which the Boers could bring against it. It was the enormous amount of reading necessitated by his proforeseen, as it might have been, that the Boers would
not