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of their executive committee, decided that fusionbetween the two societies appeared impracticable inview of the constitution and incorporation of theNational Council, and that in their view combinedaction by cooperation remains the most practical andadvisable policy. This decision is regrettable ; butin view of its decisive character it becomes necessaryto fall back on such cooperative counsel between thetwo bodies as may be feasible. Were it practicablefor Sir AUCKLAND GEDDES, the president of one, toconsent to become the president of both societies, theprospect of such cooperation might be bright. In anycase the liaison should remain.

Meanwhile, there necessarily will arise questions onwhich combined Parliamentary representations maybe made, and others on which consultation will bedesirable on points on which there is common

agreement. The importance of the varied educationalwork of the National Council, which is rapidly increas-ing in scope, cannot be exaggerated. Nor can therebe doubt as to the desirability of giving exactscientific advice as to disinfection to persons requiringit, and of enabling druggists to sell materials for thispurpose, embodying the exact advice just indicated,along with warning against exposure to the need forusing it. The exact limitations of such advice arenot likely to be finally settled until or unless the

Ministry of Health make a definite pronouncementon this subject. The position demands this, and we 1trust that it will soon be given. When these con-ditions are fulfilled, we may hope that less will beheard of ardent propagandism in any special limiteddirection ; that the problem of prevention of venerealdisease will be viewed as a whole ; and that allbranches of preventive work, including a larger shareof general social educational work, will get attention.

ISO-PROPYL ALCOHOL AS A SUBSTITUTEFOR METHYLATED SPIRIT.

RECENT modifications in the composition of methy-lated spirits introduced by the Excise authoritiesare of far-reaching importance, and from the stand-point of the legitimate user of the spirit they can onlybe viewed as deplorable. The addition of a smallquantity of dye-stuff a few years ago was a subject forregret to many, but the recent addition of pyridineto the denaturants used is a far more serious matter.Pyridine is sufficiently irritant to the skin to renderthe use of the spirit containing it unsuitable for thepreparation of lotions, or for washing the skin priorto operations, or for use in a hypodermic syringe.Industrial methylated spirit may be free fromthese drawbacks, but the restrictions surroundingits employment place it outside the reach of the

. practitioner. It seems almost impossible to suggesta denaturant which could be added to the spirit which,would satisfy both the demands of the revenue

authorities and the requirements of the legitimateuser. The most important of these latter require-ments is, of course, freedom from irritant or toxicaction, while miscibility with water is also a mostdesirable characteristic. At the present time the bestway out of the difficulty appears to be found in theuse of iso-propyl alcohol. This substance, which canbe manufactured by the reduction of acetone, resembles Iordinary ethyl alcohol very closely in its properties,being almost identical in boiling-point, density,odour, and miscibility in water, and having verysimilar solvent properties. In these respects it ismore akin to ethyl alcohol than to its own isomer,normal-propyl alcohol. Furthermore, it appears tobe free from toxic and irritant action, and is quitesuitable for all purposes for which the old methylatedspirit or the modern industrial spirit could be used.Indeed, its toxicity is probably a great deal less than

that of methylated spirit.l The technical productcontains about 95 per cent. of the alcohol and isavailable under various names, such as " avantine."The only real drawback seems to be that of pricenamely, about 40s. to 45s. per gallon ; but this is, ofcourse, considerably less than that of rectified spirit,duty paid. Iso-propyl alcohol is also made in Americafrom natural gas, but there do not seem to be anyavailable data as to the physiological purity of thealcohol from this source.

Annotations."Ne quidnimis."

CORRECT POSTURE.POSTURE is defined as the relative disposition of

the various parts of anything and in a special senseas the position and carriage of the limbs and the bodyas a whole. In a more limited sense the word isused by Mr. Muirhead Little, in his article (see p. 197)on the Treatment of Postural Defects in Children andAdolescents, to mean the habitual attitude of the bodyand limbs when not in movement and especially inthe upright position of the trunk. Postural defectsare such faults of attitude as are not connectedwith permanent structural deformity and, in general,can be corrected by the patient’s volition or by theapplication of small outside forces. As in the erectposition posture must be affected by the position andform of the supporting lower limbs, it becomesnecessary to take into consideration the condition ofthe feet and legs, seeing that equilibrium is onlypossible when a vertical straight line passing throughthe centre of gravity falls inside the boundaries ofthe supporting base. According to experimentsmade by Reynolds and Lovett,2 this line falls normallyjust in front of the ankle-joint and the knee-joints,in front of most of the vertebral joints, and probablyalso in front of the hip-joints, although these latterare so situated that this position is only inferred fromexperiments made upon the dead body. This dis-position of the joints as regards the centre of gravityenables the erect position to be maintained with aminimum of muscular action, owing to the existenceof strong ligaments upon which much of the strainis thrown. To the question as to what is the normalerect posture there is no definite answer, for whileall observers will agree that certain postures are

abnormal, few will agree as to the exact degree ofcurvature in the several regions of the spinal columnwhich constitutes abnormality. It is well knownto sculptors and students of ancient art that the maleGreek figure, as represented in such statues and reliefsas have come down to us, differs considerably fromthe best models of modern times. The differencewould seem to consist chiefly of a greater sharpnessof the lumbo-sacral angle. The tracings reproducedfrom photographs of statues and casts in the BritishMuseum in Mr. Muirhead Little’s article show thispeculiarity, which seems to manifest itself in malefigures only. We have no means of knowing whetherthese sculptures were true to nature or not, but atleast they show that the ideal of manly beautyin the time of Pheidias differed from that of theorthopaedic surgeon of to-day. In the United Statesattempts have been made to establish a normalstandard by the examination of a number of healthyyoung men at the beginning of their university course.Dr. Lloyd T. Brown,3 of Boston, has published theresults of an examination of 746 freshmen at Harvard

1 Martindale and Westcott: Extra Pharmacopoeia, eighteenthedition, p. 131.

2 Reynolds and Lovett: Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., March 26th,1910; Amer. Jour. Phys., May 1st, 1909.

3 Lloyd T. Brown : A Combined Medical and PosturalExamination of 746 Young Adults, Amer. Jour. of Orthop.Surg., 1917, xv., 774.

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and Dr. Robert Cook those of 1393 at Yale Univer- Bsity, but without establishing a really definite Istandard. Lloyd Brown, however, divided his cases Iinto four grades, A, B, C, and D. Only about 7 percent. of his cases were found worthy of Grade A.Figs. 5 and 6 (see p. 198) show this type standingat attention without conscious effort (5) and whenhe has been asked to correct his posture (6). In alater paper by Lloyd Brown and Roger I. Lee,dealing still with Harvard freshmen, rather differentoutlines are given as typical of the four grades, thusshowing that the standard of normality is not yetquite established. It was found that in the highestgrade a straight line drawn from the tip of theexternal malleolus to the middle of the greattrochanter, if continued upwards, would pass throughthe shoulder (head of the humerus ?) and the frontof the external ear.

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THE GREAT PLAGUE." What eye would not weep to see so many habitations

uninhabited, the poor sick not visited, the hungry not fed,the grave not satisfied ? Death stares us continually inthe face in every infected person that passes by us, in everycoffin which is daily and hourly carried along our streets."SUCH was the impression made by the Great Plague

upon an official of St. Paul’s Cathedral, by nameJohn Tillison, and chronicled by him in a letter toDean Sancroft. Many books have been written aboutthe plague of 1665, some from the medical side, as,for instance,

" Loimographia," by William Boghurst(an admirable edition of which was edited by the lateDr. J. F. Payne for the Epidemiological Society)," Loimologia," by Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, and" Loimotomia " by Dr. George Thomson, who hasleft us the sole record of a post-mortem examinationupon a plague patient. In fiction there is, of course,Defoe’s " Journal of the Plague Year " andAinsworth’s " Old St. Paul’s." But for a carefullydocumented and vividly-written historical account ofthe plague we must allow that Mr. Bell’s recent book2is the best that we have seen, taken as a whole, andis a fitting companion for his other book the " GreatFire of London." Mr. Bell apologises in his prefacefor the quantity of references with which he sayshis pages are peppered. For our part we considerthat no apology is needed and we-only wish that morewriters would give their references as carefully.Mr. Bell has an extraordinary flair for picking outilluminating passages from the writings of hisauthorities. Quite early in the book (p. 59) we findthe following remark in a letter from Sir RobertLong, auditor of the Exchequer, to his clerk :-

" I pray you use all possible care to preserve yourselvesand my house.... Lett not the porter come into the house ;take all course you can agaynst the ratts, and take care ofthe catts ; the little ones that will not stirre out may bekept, the great ones must be killed or sent away."Long evidently had some idea that " the ratts "

were a source of danger, and it is curious that heshould not have seen that his cats might have beenvaluable assistants, even though, as is possible, theymight have conveyed infection. The two regions ofLondon where the plague was at its worst wereSt. Giles in the Field and the other parish of St. Giles-namely, Cripplegate-both being poor quarters.Cripplegate lay in a waterlogged situation, whereshallow ditches were clogged with filth, and inaddition the great laystall in Moorfields, where all therotting garbage from the streets was raked together,formed an ideal attraction for rats. Against thislaystall the College of Physicians had protested in1636, but nothing was done. Plague having obtainedfoothold, its spread was rendered easier by themistaken policy of shutting up houses with all theirinmates directly one case of plague occurred therein,a policy which, it is sad to say, was endorsed by the

1 Robert J. Cook: Report of the Orthopædic Examinationof 1393 Freshmen at Yale University, Jour. Bone and JointSurgery (Boston, Mass., U.S.A.), 1922, iv., 247.

3 The Great Plague in London in 1665. By Walter GeorgeBell, F.S.A. London : John Lane. 1924, Pp. 374. 25s.

College of Physicians. As in all epidemics, there wereinstances of both cowardice and heroism on the partof the clergy and the medical profession, and Mr.Bell gives many details in pp. 223-226 and p. 290respectively. A horror lay over the city, and as inEgypt of old there was scarce a house where therewas not one dead. Mr. Bell is rightly severe uponthe Court, which retired to Oxford, leaving Albemarleto do his best for stricken London, together withLawrence, the Lord Mayor; and admirably they didtheir work. He also gives with hardly-veiled satireEvelyn’s description of the Fellows of the RoyalSociety meeting at the Durdans, where he found Dr.Wilkins, Sir William Petty, and Mr. Hooke contrivingchariots and other mechanical inventions. In onerespect Mr. Bell has departed from his eminently" indifferent " treatment of his subject, for he goesout of his way to lament the sufferings of the Non-conformist ministers who were ejected on St.Bartholomew’s Day, 1662. It is a matter which hasbut little to do with the Plague, and granted that theejected ministers had grievances, it must also beremembered that most of them had been intrudedinto the livings when the rightful holders had beenturned out by Parliament in 1640 and later. Granted,too, that the Conventicle Act and the Five Mile Actwere oppressive, as they undoubtedly were, the latterwas only an extension of an ordinance of Parliamentdated August 19th, 1643, whereby one-fifth of theprofits of their livings might be granted by sequestrat-ing committees to the turned-out clergy, but on condi-tion amongst others that they must remove out ofthe parish. Mr. Bell has, we see, read Calamy’s bookon

"

Non-Conformity," and we imagine that so learneda man as he must have read Walker’s " Sufferingsof the Clergy." The 2000 ministers who were ejectedat Black Bartholomew-tide were not all learned andsaintly men, though it is true that some were reallysufferers for conscience’ sake. But many were not inHoly Orders, and others we find from Calamy wereilliterate. Thus, on p._ _731 of Volume II. of the 1713edition of Calamy, we find Mr. Ellis, a skinner fromLondon, Mr. Miller, a London bookseller, Mr. Milesand Mr. Froude, both Anabaptists ; on the next pageMr. Jones, an honest plowman, Mr. Jenkyn Jones,a Catabaptist, Mr. Joseph, who " spoilt an ingenioushusbandman to become an Ignorant Preacher," andlastly Mr. Thomas, who " turn’d a drunken steward."But when Mr. Bell is writing of the Plague and itsattendant horrors he is admirable.

THE SUPERIORITY OF THE NON-SMOKER.Dr. Rosslyn Earp’s statistical inquiry at Antioch

College, Ohio (U.S.A.), which we publish on p. 213,shows that while the non-smoking students of theCollege do not come out better than the smokingstudents in the ordinary cardio-vascular. tests, yetin practice the non-smokers are the better athletesand show a better record of scholarship. We agreewith him that the size of the population examinedjustifies the conclusions drawn, but it will certainlybe urged that the population, as selected, may havebias apart from the tobacco habit. Athletes, as agroup, do not smoke during training, and before anycontest all the best athletes are known to be in thenon-smoking group, with the result that that groupwould win the athletic events. Moreover, experienceamong school-children suggests that good physicaland good mental equipment go together, so that,having placed non-smoking athletes in a group, itis natural to find in that group the better mentalities.Nevertheless, Dr. Earp’s grading of Table C is goodenough to suggest that tobacco may have some

influence per se. A year or two ago an attempt wasmade on a small scalel to compare the mental workof smoking and non-smoking telegraph operators, usingoutput as the criterion. The numbers at risk werefew-viz., seven heavy smokers, five light smokers ;the heavy smokers did not do so well as the light.

1 Journal of Industrial Hygiene, October, 1920.