557PARIS.-BERLlN,

Ileland and of enjoying all the advantages to be obtained from collegiate life. This movement follows largely the

suggested settlement of the Irish University problem made by Professor Mahaffy in his evidence before the Commission Iat its last sittings which were held in London.

Feb. 18th.

PARIS.(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

The Decay of Population in France. THERE has been founded at Paris a league, with the title of I

’’Ligue contre la Mortalite Infantile," for the study and nactive propaganda of methods calculated to combat in r

every way possible the excessive and preventable infantile S

mortality so prevalent in France. ’The league will further c

in all ways private effort for amelioration in any dis- t

trict where statistics show that such effort is desirable. IIt will also, with the aid of municipalities and of medical tmen, inquire into the causes of the excessive mortality which 9exists in certain districts and according to the results of 2

these local inquiries will publish the best measures to be t

taken, and it will give hearty aid to municipalities or privatebenefactors who may wish to start refuges, crèches, dis- 1pensaries, "gouttes de lait," or other institutions for the i

distribution of sterilised milk or any similar institution.In one word the league wishes to help forward any methodor society having for its object to help poor mothersand children brought up by them, whether such children bebrought up by their own mothers or by "minders" " or incharitable institutions. The league will also do its utmostto spread the light as far as regards infantile hygieneby collecting all information possible both from French andfrom foreign sources and by publishing pamphlets andleaflets on the subject. Among those who have given theirwarm approbation to the scheme are Dr. Budin, Professor atthe Faculty, Member of the Academy of Medicine ; Dr.Fournier, Professor at the Faculty, Member of the

Academy of Medicine ; Dr. Duclaux, Member of the

Academy of Medicine, Director of the Pasteur Institute;Dr. Josias, Member of the Academy of Medicine,physician to the Bretonneau Hospital ; Dr. Leon Labbe,Senator; Dr. Theophile Roussel, Senator; Dr. Grancher,Professor at the Faculty, Member of the Academy of

Medicine ; and Dr. Variot, physician to the Hospital for SickChildren. The president is Dr. Th. Roussel, the vice-

presidents are M. Paul Strauss and M. Pierre Budin, thesecretaries are Dr. Josias and Dr. Variot, and the treasureris Dr. Henri de Rothschild. In its turn the Government has

just appointed an extra-Parliamentary Commission to inquireinto the best means of combating the decay of population.Among the members of this commission are the followingmedical men : Dr. J. Bertillon, Dr. Borne, Dr. Budin, Dr.Dron, Dr. Drouineau, -Dr. Emile Dubois, Dr. Fumouze, Dr.

Gauthier, Dr. Labbe, Dr. Lannelongue, Dr. Letulle, Dr. A. J.Martin, Dr. Maurel, Dr. Pinard, Dr. Rey, Dr. Richet, andDr. Variot.

The Sealed Letter Archive at the Academy of Medicine.The meeting of the Academy of Medicine on Feb. 4th

was held in camerâ and important alterations in the rules ofthe society were agreed upon. The reasons for this changewere as follows. The Academy had become aware that cer-tain persons abused their privileges and the weight whichthe name of the academy carries by bringing beforeit papers which were devoid of any scientific valueand were, in fact, nothing but advertisements. Thesewere afterwards reproduced as serious works sub-mitted to the Academy. Up to the present, when anyonewho is not a member of the Academy wished to read apaper before it he was obliged to get the paper revised bythe secretary, but nothing but the title of the paper and thename of the author were reproduced in the Transactions ofthe Academy. The same rule held good with regard to thecorrespondence addressed to the President and read at theend of the sitting. However, this difficulty was sur-

mounted in the following manner. Anybody has a

right to submit a communication as a sealed letterto be kept stored in the archives of the academy.In this way, anyone engaged in research is assuredof rights of priority, even though, as is often the case,he does not wish to make public his researches until

they are quite finished, which may not be for some time.

As soon as this happens he can demand that his. sealedletter shall be opened and read before the Academy and itis finally printed in the Transactions. In this way variouscharlatans have been able to obtain not only a reading butan official recognition of their lucubrations by the Academy.However, the Academy has now decided that no such

reading or publication shall take place without the formalapprobation of the committee of the Academy. This is a wisedecision, but some means will have to be found of reconcilingthe new regulation with the approval in posse which the merereception of the sealed letter would seem to imply.

The Death of Doodica., Doodica, one of the little girls making up the xiphopagousmonster whose division by Dr. Doyen I described to yourreaders in the last issue of THE LANCET, died onSunday, Feb. 16th. The post-mortem examination revealedcomplete union of the operation wound and there was notrace of haemorrhage around the divided liver tissue. Theperitoneum was thickly studded with tubercles, and besidesthere was in the right iliac fossa an enormous peri-cascalabscess which had been set up by an -appendicitis. The

appendix was gangrenous and there was intestinal perfora-ticn. No surgical measures would have been of any avail ina condition of such widespread disease even if the conditionhad been diagnosed. Radica, the other twin, continues to

improve at the time of writing. .

.

Feb. 18th.

BERLIN.(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Accusations against Berlin Hospitals.IN the German Parliament not long ago serious accusations-

were made against the Berlin hospitals on the occasion of adebate on the Budget. The subject was introduced by Herr-Antrick, a member of the Socialist party, who drew atten-tion especially to matters connected with nursing. He saidthat the male attendants, of whom a large number wereemployed in the State and municipal hospitals, were ill-paid,over-worked, and insufficiently fed. The consequence wasthat changes were very frequent among them, for the

majority of them looked upon nursing work only as a tempo-rary occupation and resigned their situations whenever theycould find other employment. Male attendants were there--fore not so much in request now as they formerly were, andhad been replaced to some extent by female nurses belong-ing either to religious orders or to private associations.These nurses, it now appears, have their detractors, one ofwhom has recently published a pamphlet from which HerrAntrick quoted in the course of his speech. In this work,the author of which has evidently been a male attendant, itis alleged that the moral standard of the nurses other thanthose belonging to the religious orders is not very’high, thatthey do not object to nursing male patients suffering from,venereal complaints and other diseases of the generative-organs, and that they have a liking for being present at opera--tions on these organs. Another of the charges is directedagainst the matrons, who, it is said, tyrannise over the nursesand sometimes set themselves in opposition to the medicalstaff. Two cases are even mentioned in which matrons bymeans of various machinations had succeeded in bringingabout the removal of the principal medical officers of hos-

pitals. A hospital in Berlin is also referred to, where about 20children became infected with gonorrhoea, the explanation ofwhich was that they had been washed with one sponge andthis sponge contained gonococci. Another of the allegedgrounds of complaint is that the chief medical officers havetoo many patients allotted to them, so many, in fact, that theyare unable to do more than give attention to the so-calledinteresting cases, the remainder of the patients being left.to the care of the assistant and junior medical officers

(Volontararzte). In order that the last sentence may be-

intelligible to English readers it must be explained that there-! are many points of difference between the hospital systems of

England and Germany. In all the great hospitals of- Germany belonging either to the State or to municipalities’ the medical officers, both the chief medical officer and the

assistants, receive a fixed salary, which in Berlin amounts to6000 marks (£300) for the chief physicians and surgeonsapart from free house accommodation for themselves and

L their families. The position which they hold is therefore notan honorary one, as in an English hospital, but they are-

558 BERLIN.-OBITUARY.

’Government or municipal officials and as such are required to,make a daily visit to each of their wards. They may engagein private practice, but only as consultants. The number ofchief medical officers is as a rule much too small, so that ,- each of them is responsible for the care of a great many Ipatients-sometimes from 300 to 400, and in Berlin a fewyears ago the number of chief medical officers was doubled ’

with the view of relieving this pressure. As a matter offact, this system has answered well in every way ; theintellectual portion of the public are quite satisfied with it as ’,it stands, and among the physicians and surgeons of the ’,municipal hospitals of Berlin and other German cities there ’,..are men of European fame. If, as the Socialist party desires, Ithese gentlemen were debarred from private practice and I

"compelled to devote themselves exclusively to their hospital- duties, the majority of them would no doubt resign theirhospital appointments, as their emoluments derived fromprivate practice must be twenty times as great as their officialsalaries. In his reply to Herr Antrick, Count Posadowsky, theSecretary of State, said that all these charges and some othersof a like kind which were made by the Socialist party wereeither unfounded or exaggerated, and without denying theoccasional possibility of abuses, he maintained that isolatedoccurrences must not be treated as representative of the

hospital system in general. German hospitals, especiallythose of Berlin, were celebrated for their medical staffs, andforeign medical men who had visited them on such occa-sions as the meetings of congresses, spoke of them with.,admiration. Count Posadowsky added that the debate wasin any case a purely academical one, for the municipalhospitals were under the control of either the municipalities..or the Governments of the individual States, so that the

Imperial Government had nothing to do with the matter. Itis not unlikely that this debate in Parliament may tend todeter patients from seeking hospital treatment. The charges,made against the hospitals do not for the most part rest onany foundation in fact and have caused much indignation in,medical circles. The Berlin Municipal Council is the proper-authority for dealing with such questions, and some of themembers have announced that they will take steps to bringabout an investigation.

Serum Treatment of Searlet Fever.At a recent meeting of the Gesellschaft der Charite-Aerzte

,(Society of Medical Officers of the Charit6 Hospital) Pro-fessor von Leyden gave an account of experiments that hadbeen made on the treatment of scarlet fever by injections ofserum. Serum obtained from patients convalescent fromscarlet fever was injected in 12 cases, the result being- evidently favourable in three of them, less marked in eight,and inappreciable in one. The temperature decreased in onecase on the third day, in two cases on the fourth day, in four-cases on the fifth day, and in two cases on the sixth day.All the patients were adults. The quantity of serum injectedwas 10 cubic centimetres at first and 20 cubic centimetres,afterwards. In the ensuing discussion Professor Heubner- said that in order to test the efficacy of Professor von

Leyden’s serum it ought to be used in serious cases only, formild cases might recover without any treatment. He also

pointed out that injections of human serum were not freefrom the danger of transmitting syphilis or tuberculosis, and,moreover, that in the absence of any definite knowledge as tothe special virus of scarlet fever it was impossible to ascer-’tain by experiment whether the serum of convalescents.contained an antitoxin or not. Professor von Leyden, in hisreply, said that the last-mentioned objection was equallyapplicable to the serum treatment of diphtheria, the efficacy- of which was nevertheless beyond question.

His Excellency Professor von Bergmann.Dr. von Bergmann, ordinary professor of surgery in Berlin

.University and director of the university surgical clinic, hasbeen invested with the rank of Wirklicher Geheimer Rath

(Real Privy Councillor). This dignity, which is the highestof its class in Germany, carries with it the title of Excellencyand is as a rule conferred only on great ofticers of State andpersons occupying important positions at Court, very few,medical men having been thus honoured. The celebratedProfessor vun Langenbeck, who preceded Professor von

Bergmann in the chair of surgery in Berlin University, wasinvested with this rank, but not until he had reached anadvanced stage of his career, although in addition to hisscientific eminence he had distinguished himself in two

great wars. In THE LANCET of Oct. 13th, 1900, p. 1102, I.mentioned that Professor Esmarch of Kiel had been created’Wirklicher Geheimer Rath. He and Professor von

Bergmann are the only two medical men at present in

possession of this dignity.Cancer and Malaria.

Some months ago Professor Loeffler drew attention to thecircumstance that carcinoma had become more prevalentsince the decline of malaria in Europe, and, as mentioned inTHE LANCET of Nov. 30th, 1901, p. 1541, he suggested that acollective investigation should be made for the purpose ofascertaining whether cancer was less frequent in malarialthan in non-malarial countries. In an article published inthe Münchener Medioinische Wochenschrift Professor Kruseof the Hygienic Institute of Bonn has compared the death-rates from cancer and malaria in different countries. Hefound that in Italy during the period 1887-1891 the death-rate from malaria was 5’81 per 10,000, but the death-ratefrom cancer was nearly the same as in Prussia and Austriawhere no death was caused by malaria during the period inquestion. It appears that cancer is more prevalent in thenorth of Italy-than in the south, and conversely that malariais more prevalent in the south than in the north, but on thewhole he thinks that these differences are due to racialrather than to climatic or geographical causes.

Feb. 17th.

Obituary.SAMUEL ROBERT LOVETT, L.R.C.P. EDIN.,

L.R.C.S. IREL., L. S. A. LOND.BY the death of Samuel Robert Lovett the medical pro.

fession loses one of its oldest health officers. Mr. Lovett,who was born in 1833, was educated at King’s College Hos-pital. His father was one of the parish medical officers of theparish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and Mr. Lovett assisted himbefore as well as after he became qualified. From a notice inthe February number of Public Health, a proof of which hasbeen courteously supplied to us by the editor, we learn thatin 1875 Mr. Lovett was appointed medical officer of healthfor the district of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and St. George,Bloomsbury. Some years later the Ville of Lincoln’s Inn wasalso placed under his care and he held both appointmentsuntil the coming into force of the London Government Act,1899, when he retired with the highest pension possible.Unfortunately, just at the time he was seized with an acuteillness which left him’ in a very enfeebled condition. Mr.Lovett was instrumental in bringing about several radicalclearances of slum property in St. Giles district, notably theGreat Wild-street, Little Coram-street, and Shelton-streetareas, which were dealt with under the Artizan and Labourers’Dwellings Act, 1875, in addition to which he reported nearly200 houses under Part II. of the Housing of the WorkingClasses Act, and he was at all times ready to assist hiscolleagues with the benefit of his experience. Mr. Lovett’sconnexion with the Incorporated Society of Medical Officersof Health dates from 1875, and before long he was

elected a member of the council and auditor of accounts.In 1880 he was elected honorary treasurer, which officehe continued to hold, greatly to the advantage of the

society, till 1894, when he was chosen president. Afterthe International Congress of Hygiene and Demography inLondon in 1891 the society presented Mr. Lovett with aservice of plate in recognition of his services as treasurer.It will be remembered that the society’s journal, PublicHealth, was the official organ of the Congress, with a dailyissue, under the editorship of the present president, Mr. A.Wynter Blyth, and a good deal of work fell on Mr. Lovett inconnexion with the financial arrangements of the under-

taking. A few months ago, in consequence of continued ill-health, Mr. Lovett resigned his fellowship of the society,and as a further mark of its appreciation of his services thesociety unanimously elected him an honorary fellow. At therequest of the council Dr. E. C. Seaton attended the funeralat Brompton Cemetery on behalf of the society and placed awreath on the coirin. Other floral tributes included thosefrom the staff of the late St. Giles Board of Works, from theLodge of Fidelity (of which Mr. Lovett was a past masterand for many years secretary), as well as from many privatefriends and official colleagues.

CECIL LATTER, M.A., M.D., B.C. CANTAB.His many friends will learn with deep regret of the suddenI death of Dr. Cecil Latter of Folkestone, which took place