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871 the general direction of Dr. CYRIL BUI{,T, the psycho logist to the London County Council, is a guarantee of its efficiency, and he had four able helpers in Miss FRANCES GAW, who had already standardised a group of performance tests, Miss LETTICE RAMSEY, Miss MAY SMITH, and Miss WINIFRED SPIELMAN, who report individually on their own sections of the work. The schedule of investigation was comprehensive. An inquiry into home conditions, carried out at home, and including family and personal history, and a questionnaire regarding the child’s out-of-school behaviour, hobbies, and interests, were the necessary preliminaries. Reference to school medical records was made, but no special medical examination was carried out. This is evidently felt by the director of the research to be a weakness which should be remedied in future investigations. Quite frequently, however, medical contra-indications had to be ignored, and there is certainly some truth in the con- tention that temporary physical conditions should not be given much weight in the choice of an occupa- tion. The Stanford scale of intelligence tests was employed, supplemented by Miss GAW’s scale of performance tests and Pintner’s non-language group test of intelligence. Dr. BuRT’s scholastic tests served as a measure of school attainments, and, in addition, certain tests of special practical ability- mechanical, motor, or constructive-were utilised, and some interesting new tests of creative imagina- tion. It was, however, in the estimation of character qualities that the greatest difficulty arose, and some striking comparisons were made in this connexion between the estimates made at one interview by observers to whom the children were strangers, and those made by teachers or others who knew the children well. Emotional qualities were found the easiest to assess by strangers, but with regard to definitely moral qualities, the provisional conclusion is that until more reliable moral tests are available, confidential reports by teachers and parents will have to be accepted. An inquiry made into the circumstances obtaining after two years in the several occupations yielded interesting results, remarkably satisfactory considering the experimental character of the whole investigation. Of those who obtained work as advised all were satisfied (though not always with the salary), while of those who got work quite dissimilar to that advised, more than half were dissatisfied with the work or its prospects. The conclusion of the director is that the chief weakness of the scheme is imperfect knowledge, not of the children, but of occupations to suit their special aptitudes. The advice, he considers, was not always as good as the results of the tests, because of insufficient " job analysis," The booklet is of great interest, partly as an example of the wider application that is now being made of intelligence tests of different types, and partly from its own intrinsic significance. It is a matter of vast practical importance both to the country and to individuals that each person should find the occupation for which he is best fitted. One may, however, be permitted a doubt whether so comprehensive a scheme of examina- tion is practicable on any large scale. And, although the workers in this investigation have not ignored it, it does seem necessary to insist on the importance of considering a child’s own personal desires, where these are strongly marked. These desires do not always coincide with the child’s abilities, and it must in some cases be a difficult matter to decide which is to be set aside. Have not the psychologists them- selves warned us of the dangers of an uncongenial occupation ? ? AN HISTORIC ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL.-The Duke of Devonshire has formally opened Bretby Hall as an orthopaedic hospital for Derbyshire. The house, which succeeded that in which the author of the famous " Chester- field Letters lived, was built early in the nineteenth century and was ultimately inherited by the late Earl of Carnarvon, whose mother was the only daughter of the sixth Earl of Chesterfield. Annotations. MERCHANT SEAMEN. 11 Ne quid nimis." THE health of our merchant seamen, or strictly speaking their ill-health, possesses two champions in the persons of Dr. Howard Jones and Fleet Surgeon W. E. Home. Both have drawn attention to the absence of hygienic conditions in the merchant service, to the high mortality-so far as it can be estimated- existing among the men, and to the difficulty of obtaining accurate information as to the exact position. Fleet Surgeon Home has described conditions aboard ship from his own experience, and the picture he has drawn is far from pleasing ; yet no effort has been made to contradict it. During the past fortnight he has returned to the charge in our columns in an effort to estimate the serious toll of lives taken annually. The difficulties he has had to face in making his estimates are great; for un- certainty surrounds on the one side the size of the population at risk-i.e., the number of merchant seamen, and on the other the deaths to be ascribed to this population. The Board of Trade issues some information as to deaths among seamen while signed on as crews, but even here the cause of death is often only as correct as a ship’s captain can make it. The Board has no information as to deaths among seamen ashore and no longer in active service; that is to say, it has no information as to deaths from those very diseases for which an unhealthy occupation directly prepares the way. The Registrar-General, on the other hand, obtains information as to deaths of seamen ashore, but none as to deaths abroad while on service, and his population at risk is merely that of seamen at home at the moment when the decennial census is taken. It is put forward by Fleet Surgeon Home that between two stools-in this case two Government departments-the case of the merchant seamen is allowed to fall unexplored ; the plea seems sound. He asks that the whole matter should be transferred to the Ministry of Health for thorough investigation so that the facts, so far as they can be ascertained, shall be known. The available evidence displays the merchant service as no health-giving occupation, even after every latitude has been granted for errors in data. But accident risk, with the disappearance of the sailing ship, has greatly diminished, and this is something to the good. Sails, however, made way for the stoke-hole and the lot of the merchant seaman there has been far from enviable. The substitution of oil fuel for coal is now coming to act beneficially, as has been shown by Vigne and Cury.2 These investigators contrasted the time lost for sickness on Atlantic liners before and after the introduction of oil, and found great advantage on the side of the new fuel. These changes, however, cannot entirely make up for overcrowded and unventilated sleeping bunks, absence of feeding accommodation, and lack of washing facilities. The treatment of the human factor in our merchant service, when its history comes to be written, will rank alongside that meted out to children in our factories a century ago-space for cargoes is still too valuable to sacrifice for human life. HOSPITALS AND RECOVERY HOMES. FOR some years past hospital specialists have been acutely divided as to the effect of recovery homes upon the work and finance of the parent hospitals. On the one side it is argued that these homes decrease waiting-lists, reduce the cost of working, and increase the economic use of the hospital staff and apparatus. That was the line taken by Dr. 1 W. E. Home : Merchant Seamen. John Murray. 1922. 2 Vigné, C., and Cury, H. : Les Conditions d’hygiène dans les Chaufferies au mazout à bord des navires marchands. Bull. Off. Internat. d’Hyg. Pub., 1925, xvii., 979-89.
