1551THE SERVICES.-LOOKING BACK.

Edward Middleton Newland, Lewis Albert Hodgkinson Lack,Kenneth William Mackenzie, Narindra Singh Sodhi, WilliamJackson Powell, and William Cowan Gray. The King hasapproved of the retirement of the following officers :-Lieutenant-Colonel Kpvasji Cursetji Sanjana (datedOct. 22nd, 1908); and Captain Donald Steel (dated Nov. lst,1908).

ARMY MEDICAL RESERVE OF OFFICERS.

Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Quinton Chalmers, havingresigned his commission in the Volunteers, ceases to belongto the Army Medical Reserve of Officers (dated Jan. 21st,1908).

TERRITORIAL FORCE.

Injantry.6th Battalion, Cheshire Regiment: The undermentioned

officers, from the 4th Volunteer Battalion, The Cheshire

Regiment, are appointed to the battalion, with rank andprecedence as in the Volunteer Force (dated April 1st,1908):-Surgeon-Captain Ralph Bennett Sidebottom and

Surgeon-Captain Eugene Charles McCarthy. 4th (Denbigh-shire) Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers : The under-mentioned officers, from the lst Volunteer Battalion, TheRoyal Welsh Fusiliers, are appointed to the battalion, withrank and precedence as in the Volunteer Force (datedApril lst, 1908) :-Surgeon-Captain Richard Drinkwater andSurgeon-Lieutenant Jonas William Anderson. 4th Bat-

talion, Welsh Regiment: The undermentioned officers,from the lst (Pembrokeshire) Volunteer Battalion, TheWelsh Regiment, are appointed to the battalion, with rankand precedence as in the Volunteer Force (dated April 1st,1908):-Surgeon-Major Evan Evans and Surgeon-LieutenantWilliam Reginald Eyton Williams. 5th Battalion, WelshRegiment : The undermentioned officers, from the 2ndVolunteer Battalion, The Welsh Regiment, are appointed tothe battalion, with rank and precedence as in the VolunteerForce (dated April lst, 1908) :-Surgeon-Captain RhysDavid Morgan and Surgeon-Lieutenant Evan JamesTrevor Jones. 4th Battalion, the King’s (ShropshireLight Infantry): The undermentioned officers, from the lstVolunteer Battalion, The King’s (Shropshire Light Infantry),are appointed to the battalion, with rank and precedence asin the Volunteer Force (dated April 1st, 1908) :-Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel and Honorary Surgeon-Colonel FrederickKnollys Pigott and Surgeon-Lieutenant William Dyson (to besupernumerary). Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel and HonorarySurgeon-Colonel Charles Henry Gwynn, from the 2ndVolunteer Battalion, The King’s (Shropshire Light Infantry),to be Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel with the honorary rank ofSurgeon-Colonel, with precedence as in the Volunteer Force(dated April lst, 1908). 4th Battalion, Alexandra, Princessof Wales’s Own (Yorkshire Regiment): The undermentionedofficers, from the 1st Volunteer Battalion, Alexandra,Princess of Wales’s Own (Yorkshire Regiment), are appointedto the battalion, with rank and precedence as in theVolunteer Force (dated April 1st, 1908) :-Surgeon-CaptainHarry Legh de Legh and Surgeon-Lieutenant Clarence BarnsWhitehead. 2nd Battalion, The Monmouthshire Regiment:The undermentioned officers, from the 3rd Volunteer

Battalion, The South Wales Borderers, are appointed to thebattalion, with rank and precedence as in the VolunteerForce (dated April lst, 1908) :-Surgeon-Lieutenant-Coloneland Honorary Surgeon-Colonel James Rowlands Essex andSurgeon-Lieutenant Edward Meredith Griffith.

Royal Army Medical Corps.Alexander Ogston is appointed to the Honorary Colonelcy

of the Royal Army Medical Corps of the Highland TerritorialDivision (dated April lst, 1908). Richard Caton is appointedto the Honorary Colonelcy of the Royal Army Medical Corpsof the West Lancashire Territorial Division (dated April lst,1908).

For attachment to itnits. -Surgeon-Lieutenant- ColonelFrederick Henry Appleby, from the 4th (Nottinghamshire)Volunteer Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters (Nottingham-shire and Derbyshire Regiment), to be Lieutenant-Colonel(dated April lst, 1908). Surgeon-Major Walter MoffettHamilton, from the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, The LancashireFusiliers, to be Major, with precedence as in the VolunteerForce (dated April lst, 1908). Surgeon-Captain WilliamHearfield Galloway, from the 2nd (Leeds) Yorkshire (WestBiding) Royal Engineers (Volunteers), to be Captain, withprecedence as in the Volunteer Force (dated April lst, 1908).

Captain William Young, to be Major (dated Sept. 25th, 1908).Lieutenant Robert Cross to be Captain (dated Sept. 25th,1908). Surgeon-Lieutenant John Alexander Nixon from the4th Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment, to be Lieu-tenant (dated April 1st, 1908).

3rd Highland Field Ambulance: The appointment to aLieutenancy of Sidney Watson Smith bears date August lst,1908.

lst East Lancashire Field Ambulance : Captain Joseph F.Wright resigns his commission (dated August 29th, 1908).

3rd East Lancashire Field Ambulance : Captain Robert W.Beesley resigns his commission (dated August 20th, 1908).

5th London Field Ambulance: Lieutenant William Cameron

Macaulay from the Royal Army Medical Corps, TerritorialForce, to be Lieutenant (dated Oct. 7th, 1908).

3rd Welsh Field Ambulance : Surgeon-Major Arthur L.Jones from the 6th (Glamorgan) Battalion, Welsh Regiment,to be Lieutenant-Colonel (dated April lst, 1908). Surgeon-Captain George A. Stephens from the 6th (Glamorgan)Battalion, Welsh Regiment, to be Captain (dated April lst,1908). Surgeon-Lieutenant Charles L. Isaac from the 6th

(Glamorgan), Battalion, Welsh Regiment, to be Lieutenant(dated April 1st, 1908).

VOLUNTEER CORPS.

Rifle: : 5th (Glasgow Highland) Volunteer Battalion, TheHighland Light Infantry : Surgeon-Lieutenant-ColonelGeorge Bell Todd resigns his commission, with permissionto retain his rank and to wear the prescribed uniform(dated March 31st, 1908). 14th Middlesex (Inns of Court)Volunteer Rifle Corps : Surgeon-Captain Arthur M. Ware

resigns his commission (dated March 31st, 1908). 2nd (Earlof Chester’s) Volunteer Battalion, The Cheshire Regiment :The undermentioned officer resigns his commission, with

permission to retain his rank and to wear the prescribeduniform (dated March 31st, 1908): Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Hamilton. lst (Brecknockshire) VolunteerBattalion, The South Wales Borderers : The undermentionedofficer resigns his commission (dated April lst, 1908):-Surgeon-Lieutenant William L. Pritchard.At the Royal United Service Institution in Whitehall on

Nov. 18th Colonel H. E. Rawson, C.B., R.E., read a paperentitled" A New Principle in Weather Forecasting and itsImportance in Naval and Military Operations." Rear-Admiral A. M. Field, F.R.S., hydrographer of the navy,presided. We hope to publish the main points of thediscourse next week.

Looking Back.FROM

THE LANCET, SATURDAY, Nov. 20th, 1830.

ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL.

CLINICAL LECTUREDELIVERED BY

DR. ELLIOTSON,Nov. 8, 1830.

VARIOUS CASES.

HOSPITAL REGULATION RESPECTING POST-MORTHMEXAMINATIONS.

DURING the last week, Gentlemen, that is, since the com-mencement of the present month, eight patients have beenadmitted, five of them men and three women. The cases

among the women were, one of phthisis, one of epilepsy, andone of rheumatism. Amongst the men were, one case ofparalysis of the wrists from lead, one of acute inflammatorydropsy, one of colic from lead, one of chronic diarrhoea, andone of inflammation of the glands at the angle of the jaw.

, There has been one death. The patient was a woman,and the case one of apoplexy. There was, I am sorry to say,no inspection of the body. It is much to be regretted that inthis hospital we cannot inspect patients who die with-out having first obtained permission from the friends.

1552 THE LATE SIR HENRY A. PITMAN: A CENTURY’S RETROSPECT.

Frequently a patient dies here in whose case we

have for months used the utmost efforts to cure

or relieve, and make an accurate diagnosis, and thenno opportunity is given of proving the correctnessof the diagnosis. I am quite satisfied that if patients ortheir friends were informed that people would not beadmitted into the hospital, except in cases of accident orsudden illness, unless permission was previously given to iinspect the body in the event of death, they would consentto it, and it would be done as a matter of course. Underthe present circumstances, in a large number of instances,when permission is at first refused, it is given as soon as weoffer money. But this is a bad habit, and I seldom yield toit. Again, in a large number of cases, the persons who refusepermission are not the immediate relatives, but mere

acquaintances ; and though the former would consent, thelatter urge them to oppose the measure, for the mere purposeof looking friendly, or exerting influence and being busy.It frequently also happens that patients are never visitedwhile in the hospital by either relatives or acquaintances, solong as they are alive, but as soon as they die, ten or twentypersons come forward to prevent the body from being opened.I am quite sure that if it were made a rule to admit none(except indeed urgent cases) but with the understanding thatthey should be opened if they died, it would be cheerfullyassented to. I am satisfied that the public feeling wouldchange on the subject,-that the world might be brought toconsider that we had not paid proper respect to thedeceased unless we had ascertained by examination afterdeath, the precise nature and cause of the complaint, andcommunicated the true state of the inside to the friends.This is always done in the case of the highest personage ofthe kingdom ; and every soldier is opened, and whatever maybe the part of the world in which he may have died, anaccount of the inspection is transmitted to the army medicalboard at Woolwich. Unfortunately, many do not distinguishbetween dissection and inspection-do not know that whiledissection means cutting up piece by piece, inspection is

merely making a cut, looking in, and sewing the cut upagain. Whenever I die I hope to be carefully inspected.

Correspondence.

THE LATE SIR HENRY A. PITMAN: ACENTURY’S RETROSPECT.

"Audi alteram partem."

To the Editor of THE LANCET.SIR,-The student of historical medicine cannot but note

the passing away of Sir Henry Pitman. The historic imagina-tion covets landmarks, and a life which covered a centuryand was passed in association with many of the leaders ofBritish medicine may afford us such tokens. By these wemay be helped to discern the march of our art, its periods andits masters, during the last few generations.

Sir Henry Pitman was born in 1808, the year before thebirth of Darwin and of Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Manyother men of note were born in 1809-Gladstone and Lincoln,Tennyson and Fitzgerald and Poe, Mendelssohn and Chopin ;it was a "year of momentous births," like 1769, whenNapoleon, Wellington, and other famous men came into theworld.) When Sir Henry Pitman was born our country was inthe throes of the Great War. He was already seven years oldwhen that war was closed by the battle of Waterloo, and theleaders of medicine and other sciences in our own land andFrance could once more come together. English savantswere again welcomed by Cuvier and Berthollet, by Dupuytrenand Laennec.The period from the death of John Hunter in 1793 until

1820 may be called the Epoch of the Pupils of the Hunters-Baillie and Abernethy and Astley Cooper and the rest-as itwas, perhaps, in the northern capital the epoch of the pupilsof Cullen and of the Monroes. Young Pitman knew thegeneration that followed these-the era when in LondonLawrence and Brodie, Bright and the younger Babingtonwere in their prime. He had heard Guthrie lecture ; hewould tell how W. F. Chambers kept the notes of his casesin Latin, of the mordant eloquence of J. A. Wilson, of the

elder Southey, and Billing, and Aston Key, and Clift, andmany more. But Sir Henry Pitman’s life was bound up withthat of the Royal College of Physicians. Of his long years

I of service to the College he loved to speak and to tell how. he had read through its centuries of Latin annals, how he, spent long years upon their index, and how the Grant of Armswas once lost until the precious parchment was discovered by

one of the Fellows in a casual shop. Sir Henry Pitman knew13 successive Presidents of the College, from Halford whocame to the chair in 1820 down to the distinguished holderof the office to-day. He was indeed examined by Sir HenryHalford in Latin for the College Licence. Thus through thelife now closed we seem to be brought into touch with thecourtly figure of that most aristocratic of physicians, thetrusted adviser of four successive sovereigns, and the undis-puted head of his profession in London for 20 years from thedeath of Matthew Baillie in 1823. Sir Henry Pitman knewHalford’s successor, Dr. Paris, an accomplished chemistrather than a man of extensive practice, whose chief famerests on his literary work in pharmacology. It was underDr. Mayo that Sir Henry Pitman began his work as regis-trar of the College; he found his President keen and

intelligent, despite a certain hesitation in his manner.But the ideal President of all his experience was Sir Thomas

Watson. He was, Sir Henry Pitman would say, a mostamiable man, with a felicitous manner, the outcome of hisown happy nature. I I I never heard him speak an evil wordof any one. Any letter he wrote was short and beautifullyexpressed. Sir Roundell Palmer, responding at a Harveiandinner, said that if he wanted happy expressions and goodlanguage he would go to the Royal College of Physicians."In Sir Henry Pitman’s earlier days the President was stillchosen, under statute of Henry VIII., by the eight College"elects " from among their own number; it was not until1860 that the choice was given to the whole body of Fellows.At the date of his birth the College was housed in Warwick-lane ; its removal to Pall Mall East was celebrated withmuch ceremony in 1825. The changes of the century maybe illustrated from the College Pharmacopoeias. That issuedin the year after Pitman’s birth introduced chemical nomen-clature and admitted arsenic and digitalis for the first time ;quinine, morphia, strychnia, and ergot had to wait until1836.No attempt can, however, be here made to measure the

advances witnessed by our venerable friend during his longlife. The stethoscope, the microscope, the thermometer, thetesting of urine and of blood,-all these were brought intouse in medicine within that century of life and they haveopened up undreamt-of vistas in the science of our art. It

may be that therapeusis has not kept pace with diagnosis,yet the age has been so full of expanding medical knowledgethat to pass from 1808 to 1908 seems like going from dark-ness into light. What may be looked for in the century tocome 2 I am, Sir, yours faithfully,London, W., Nov. 16th, 1908. R. HINGSTON Fox.R. HINGSTON FOX.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF ASPHYXIA.To the Editor of THE LANCET.

SIR,-The difficulty in explaining how the word asphyxiahas acquired its present meaning, "suffocation" " or depriva-tion of air or oxygen, must have occurred to many of yourreaders. Asphyxia (& priv. and the pulse) meanspulselessness or stoppage of the pulse. is derivedfrom o-956pw "to throb.

" But pulselessness is not a featurein what we call asphyxia, and under the heading Asphyxia in ,Sir James Murray’s "New English Dictionary " the followingcomment on this discrepancy appears: "It indicates acurious infelicity of etymology that the pulse in asphyxiatedanimals continues to beat long after all signs of respiratorymovements have ceased."The possible solution of the difficulty is that the ancients,

noticing that the arteries after death contained air and notblood, believed that during life they were air-ducts ramifyingfrom the trachea called the arteria aspera." Therefore, theword artery is probably derived from ’Ap (air) and (I guard) ; and as the pulse-beat itself was attributed to therebound of air or ’’ vital spirit " in the arteries or air carriersit follows that the word asphyxia acquired the double mean-ing, stoppage of the pulse and deprivation of air. In thelatter sense the term has survived. Thus an ancient error