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incidentally might be smaller than the bullet itself becauseof the resilience of the tissues. Around this was a zonefrom which the epithelium was removed and whichappeared bruised. The exit wound always showedtearing and splitting of the tissues, particularly of theskin. In the skull the entrance was clean-cut but wherethe bullet left the bone there was shelving. A glancingblow by a bullet, he said, might fracture the skull anddrive portions of bone into the brain and these mightcause injury or death as secondary missiles although notrace of the bullet itself might be found. Revolvers andautomatic pistols fired bullets at a medium velocity upto 1200 ft. per sec. and the track produced by thesebullets, while resulting in considerable damage, had nogreat disruptive character. The modern rifle, however,fired a bullet at 3000 ft. per sec. ; the bullet spun atabout 3600 revolutions per sec. and had in the earlystage of its trajectory a wobble which could cause greatinjury. Rifle bullets produced clean-cut entrancewounds with a surrounding zone of epithelial removal.The exit wound was much larger and grossly torn, andthere was much destruction and disruption of tissue alongthe track. It was this great internal disruption that inevery war led to accusations of the use of explosive anddum-dum bullets-accusations which were usuallyentirely unfounded. Using clay as a medium, he hadcarried out experiments on the track and action of thebullets. When a rifle was fired at a short range (between3 and 300 yards) the bullet enters the clay for about3-4 in. and then explodes, producing a cavity about14 in. in diameter. The bullet itself may completelydisintegrate. This disruption, Professor Smith said, wasnot due either to the blast of air or to a sucking action,as could be proved by firing through a rubber sheet orthrough a soap bubble ; it was due to the violent spinof the bullet. If the size of the cartridge charge wasreduced by half, both velocity and spin were also reducedand the bullet produced no disruptive effect. Dum-dumbullets cause smashing at the entrance and not withinthe structure pierced.

THE TENNENT CHAIR

Dr. W. J. B. Riddell has been appointed to theTennent chair of ophthalmology in Glasgow Universityas from Oct. 1, 1941, in succession to Prof. A. J. Ballan-tyne who retires under the age-limit. The new professoris 42 years of age and son of Brownlow Riddell who wassurgeon to the Glasgow Eye Infirmary. He was educatedin Glasgow, graduated in 1923, and studied in the eyewards at Glasgow and Moorfields, taking the D.O.M.S.in 1936. For some time he has been surgeon to theophthalmic institute of Glasgow Royal Infirmary and inhis new post he will have charge of the ophthalmicdepartment of the Western Infirmary.

Infectious Disease in England and WalesWEEK ENDED JUNE 14

Notifications.-The following cases of infectious diseasewere notified during the week : smallpox, 0 ; scarletfever, 973 ; whooping-cough, 4764 ; diphtheria, 853 ;enteric fever, 146 ; measles (excluding rubella), 11,145 ;pneumonia (primary or influenzal), 804 ; puerperalpyrexia, 110 ; cerebrospinal fever, 236 ; poliomyelitis,5 ; polio-encephalitis, 1 ; encephalitis lethargica, 3 ;dysentery, 97. No case of cholera, plague or typhusfever was notified during the week.The number of civilian and service sick in the Infectious Hospitals .

of the London County Council on June 11 was 1670, includingscarlet fever, 190 ; diphtheria, 325 ; measles, 319 ; whooping-cough,430 ; enteritis, 20 ; chicken-pox, 86 ; erysipelas, 46 ; mumps, 10 ;poliomyelitis, 1 ; dysentery, 9 ; cerebrospinal fever, 44 ; puerperalsepsis, 12 ; enteric fevers, 20 ; german measles, 17 ; glandular fever,3 ; other diseases (non-infectious), 58 ; not yet diagnosed, 80.Deaths.-In 126 great towns there was no death from

enteric fever, 1 (0) from scarlet fever, 19 (2) fromwhooping-cough, 9 (2) from measles, 26 (1) fromdiphtheria, 28 (1) from diarrhoea and enteritis under 2years, and 19 (2) from influenza. The figures in paren-theses are those for London itself.

Liverpool reported 4 deaths from diphtheria, Birmingham 3.Liverpool had also 3 deaths from whooping-cough.The number of stillbirths notified during the week was194 (corresponding to a rate of 36 per thousand totalbirths), including 10 in London.

In England Now

A Runnir2g Commentary by Peripatetic Correspoi,denfsSOME people may be able to obtain philosophic

pabulum from the works of Kant or Hegel. For myselfI find the philosophy of Alice in Wonderland singularlysustaining at the present time, since it inculcates thedoctrine that wherever one finds oneself there is no needto be astonished or surprised. After having been thrownwith considerable rapidity from one end of the earthto the other in fast-moving planes, after having descendedthousands of feet into the bowels of the earth to see howgold is dug out of the Rand, after having ridden formiles on the backs of fierce-looking, though actually verytame, bulls, or plodded on my fiat feet up the sides oftropical mountains, it seemed quite natural to be dressedin an old duffel coat doing anti-submarine watch on thebridge of a liner somewhere in the Atlantic. For theonly contribution to his own and the general safety thatthe mere passenger condemned to travel in convoy hasto make is to take a turn at submarine spotting. Thisis a very necessary job, for the modern submarine canusually see a ship long before the ship sees the sub-marine, while when travelling submerged it is onlynecessary for the submarine to raise her periscope above ewater occasionally and then only for six inches and fora few seconds at a time. Nevertheless if the periscopeis raised more than once there will be a tell-tale line ofwhite foam which with luck may be seen. Unfortun-ately for the uninitiated the wake from a submarine’speriscope is only too easily imitated by a number ofartefacts : a piece of flotsam bobbing about in a choppysea, a school of porpoises, a whale, a shoal of flying fish,and even the froth raised by a ship’s log line when seenfrom half a mile away, all gave rise to unnecessaryalarums and excursions. Sometimes, instead of takinga shot at a single ship from a distance of half a mile, asubmarine, like some old-fashioned medical practitioner,will employ a blunderbuss prescription and dischargefrom a range of as much as four thousand yards a bevyof torpedoes into the middle of a convoy on the hit ormiss principle. On rare occasions a submarine has beenknown by mistake to surface in the middle of a convoy,and then its chances of survival are not too good, for itmay well be rammed by some enthusiastic merchant-man before it has time to crash dive. -Actually travellingin convoy in war-time is far more interesting than apeace-time voyage where the sight of a single ship con-stitutes an event of major importance. Now, apartaltogether from watch-keeping, it is always possible tostudy the manoeuvres of some flurried merchantman ashe does his best to keep station or to carry out thetechnical exercises devised by the commodore of theconvoy to train the ships of his fleet to withstand airor surface attacks. Only too often some ship does notanswer its helm quickly enough when told to altercourse : on our first night out we only avoided collisionwith our next door neighbour by a smart piece of sea-manship on the part of the officer of the watch.

One’s fellow passengers are much of a muchness withthose of peace-time. The inevitable bridge fiends arethere to begin the business of the day immediately afterbreakfast, so too are the hard drinkers who prefer awhisky and soda to the most lavish breakfast rations.The inevitable bore has not been left behind and is stillthere to retail, as he fixes you with a cod-fish eye,exactly what he did in the last war and what, if only theGovernor had let him go, he would have done in Norway,France, Libya, Greece or Crete, in command (for hecould have had no lesser post) of what the Navy nowcalls the B.E.F. (Back Every Fortnight). Only oneof the types to be found on every ship has slightlyaltered : the hearty, who in peace-time organised

" com-

pulsory games or fancy-dress dances, now organiseswatches or has become an authority on Lewis guns.

While we were still in harbour, where for ten days weenjoyed the amenities of that port which not so long agowas named " the devil’s poste restante," there was muchtalk of how this ship had been torpedoed or that onebombed. Once we were under way, however, moreinterest was taken in seeing that, if and when one tookto the boats, there was a good supply of chocolate,

830

barley sugar and cross-words. As we steamed north-wards day slowly succeeded day until there seemed noparticular reason why we should ever reach our destina-tion. When this stage is reached, as it inevitably is inevery long voyage, there is a general fed-upness with thefood, the ship and one’s fellow passengers. Everyoneknows everyone else’s life history and the exact reasonswhy the last tour was so much much more trying, as italways is, than the previous one : everyone can answera written examination paper on the merits, or more

precisely demerits, of being stationed at Minnar or

Maiduguri. It was a particularly depressing morning,the sky was a uniform grey, with just here and there adash of yellow ochre as a reminder that somewhere, butcertainly not here, there may have been a rosy-fingereddawn. The sea though flecked with white looked likelead-it shows how little the Greeks can have known ofthe Atlantic, if they could use wine-dark as a stockepithet for the sea ; the Arabs were better informedwhen they called the Atlantic " the dark sea ofgreenness."On the particular morning of which I write the general

depression was heightened by a choppy sea and a halfgale from the north-west so that the ship groaned as itpitched and rolled. The wireless news was not too good-things in Crete were going badly, the Hood had beensunk and the whereabouts of the Bismarck were unknown.Worse still, the supply of marmalade on the ship wasexhausted and only enough cigarettes were left foranother two days. Then suddenly something happened.Our escorting cruiser shot out from among her flock andwith mounting bow-wave and ever-increasing speedvanished to the northwards. At once the ship was asfull of rumour as the canteen of a sergeants’ mess : thecruiser, it was said, had sighted a submarine, had beenrecalled to Plymouth ; the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenauhad got out of Brest ; the Bismarck was heading south.During the day there was no news to lighten our gloom.which gradually became more inspissated. All day thegale increased and the air was filled with scud so that the

sea and sky seemed one. To people returning from thetropics it was bitterly cold and at night even the pokerschool could not attract its usual clientele. Nextmorning was just as bad. About eleven I was walkinground the deck in a vain effort to get warm when I wasnearly knocked over by someone rushing down from thebridge with the news that the Bismarck had been sunkby our cruiser " H.M.S. Dorsetshire." At once thegloom lifted and faces that had been long as a bootsuddenly brightened. The sun too came out and oncemore it was warm and bright. Twenty-four hourslater the track of our convoy led us across the spotwhere the Bismarck had gone down. An empty raft, abaulk or two of timber and what looked like a pieceof matting was all that remained afloat of the ship thatGerman propaganda had said was unsinkable.The next few days were uneventful. Escorts dashed

around us rather like terriers smelling out a rat. Nowand again someone would drop a depth charge and twoor three of the escorts would gather in a bunch to listen.Soon we were steaming slowly into the haven where wewould be. Thanks to the Navy it is still possible to goabout one’s lawful occasions.

* * *

Like the atheist whose indignation was roused byrevision of the Prayer-book-" tampering with the rulesof the game "—or the man who had never been to theNational Gallery but wrote to protest when a Velasquezwas cleaned of the varnish which for him made it an oldmaster, most of us feel that there are certain inheritances,the patina of England, whose destruction we bitterly

. regret, though they made no contact with our workinglives. The old glass in country churches (how little ofit is ARPed), Wren’s buildings (what is to be done withtheir exoskeletons ?), the pompous rituals of civic anduniversity life which astonished Cajal the Spanishneurologist when he came to England fifty years ago-all these things we unconsciously value even if we onlyrecall them with affection when they are threatened.But libraries, those museums of old, useless and boringbooks, does anyone bother even as much as this aboutlibraries except librarians ? When we read in theaccounts of air-raid damage that " 30,000 books wereburnt " in such and such a library, that Coventry has

lost all its engineering journals, the state library in Berlinhas had its roof burnt off, the libraries of Liverpool andPlymouth have been wholly destroyed, do we reallymind ? ’,, A warlike generation, living for the present,often thinks that the best thing to do with shelves andshelves of books is to burn the lot. ’’ Do you ever readmedical books ? " I asked M. who has been a regimentalM.O. since the beginning of the war. He had just beencomplaining how little he has to do and wishing he waseither " at the war " or settled with his wife and childrenin a comfortable practice. " No, I don’t read themnow," he said at once. " Not the Lancet and B.M.J. ? "

I persisted. " In peace-time, yes," he answered, " but

not now." A more usual excuse is " too busy to read,"though the greatest readers are often the busiest men.Osler and Cushing were certainly busy and yet you couldsafely bet on their having been the best-read doctors oftheir time. But the bibliophile and the " well-readman " are. creatures of an age of peace. Who willcollect books if his library may be blown up any night ?Or read them if he has to spend his evenings in the cellaror the first-aid post ? But our semi-public medicallibraries are collections already in being, feeding withbooks that minority of the profession which still hasappetite for them. What is to be their policy ? Oughtthey to move their collections out of the front-line of thebig towns to some country place where they will betemporarily more or less useless, on the principle of" living to fight another day " ? Or ought they tobelieve the serpent who whispers " you shall not surelydie," and go on with their civilised and peaceful businessas efficiently and completely as possible ?

Everyone, even the layman with no elements ofphysiology, accepts the circulation of the blood, as theproverbial patient insists, " I’ve got blood-pressure,doctor." But how few medical men trouble to read thearguments which Harvey used in convincing his unwillingcontemporaries. Or take the blessed word " evolution "

which is a commonplace in the background of everyone’sthought. Even among professional biologists how manyhave the information to weigh Darwin’s hypothesis, notagainst the prejudices of a Wilberforce, but against thetheories of a Lamarck or of modern diffusionists ? SirCharles Sherrington in his fascinating book " Man on hisNature " makes clear the value, even in war-time, ofexamining the foundations of our beliefs. What werethe arguments from which we accept these generalisations-circulation, evolution, nervous integration-whichseem the very framework of the scientific outlook whichhas to be defended against the mysticism and mythologyof the Nazis ? Their ability to answer these questions isthe real justification of the historical collections in ourlibraries. The Nazis are thoroughly consistent in theirburning of books. They realise that books preserve thatcontinuity in development which differentiates civilisedpeople from the savage who inherits unchanging tradi-tions and from the uneducated proletariat who swallowwhatever new political religion is put over them withthe slickest advertisement. These landmarks of intellec-tual and scientific discovery, these really " holy books,"a library ought to preserve with the utmost care fromthe dangers of war. But what ninety-nine readers outof a hundred want from a scientific library is not thesephilosophical monuments and still less their undergrowthof minor books of the past, but current information in theform of textbooks and monographs by the master-workers of today and, still more, the latest periodicalswith contributions from their fellow specialists. Onfirst thought such books can be safely risked, they are newand easily replaceable-or are they, when publishers’warehouses are being bombed no less than libraries, andnot one copy but a whole edition of 1500 copies maydisappear in a night ? Almost all last November’s issuesof American journals were lost in the Atlantic, and weare quite cut off from German scientific work. And it issurely desirable, even from the most warlike motives, tofollow the course of German medicine and Germanhealth. Can we not devise a central pool for currentmedical information, supplied from America by micro-post, like the thousands of letters now being flown in asingle packet from the armies of the Middle East ? Then

; our libraries could draw on this pool as their need arises.! The problems both of supply and protection would bei simplified.