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577 hospital. From the evidence of Dr. R. C. Harkness, medical superintendent of the hospital, it appeared that the injections included digitaline and anti- streptococcus serum and that they had been adminis- tered by five persons. Four of these were probationary nurses, one in her second year, two others in their fourth year, and the fourth about to take her final examination. Dr. Harkness said he regarded them all as trustworthy. Asked by the coroner why the injections were not given by medical men, he replied that it would not always be practicable as they have to be given at all sorts of hours. Asked why they should not be given by the sister of the ward or staff nurses, he answered that the probationers were under training and must have a certain experience to learn their duties. Probationers, he added, have to give injections in the course of their training and this is usually done under the supervision of the night sister. The coroner observed that it did not seem right that alkaloids like digitaline should be given by probationers in the middle of the night; he thought that a fully trained nurse should be present to supervise such injections. A verdict of " accidental death " was recorded. MEDICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. ANNIVERSARY DINNER. THE 156th Anniversary Dinner of the Medical Society of London was held in the Empire Rooms of the Trocadero Restaurant on Friday, March 8th, Dr. J. W. CARR, the President, presiding. The toast of the evening, Prosperity to the Medical Society of London, was proposed by Mr. Justice MCCARDIE, who pointed out that, such was the antiquity of the Society, the earlier dinners would have taken place when Burke was still speaking in Parliament, Johnson was walking down Fleet-street, and Boswell was taking notes. Mr. Justice McCardie recognised as two outstanding qualities in the medical profession their sense of enjoyment of life and their accuracy in their work-to the doctor, he thought Babbage’s correction of Tennyson would appeal, when the eminent calculator pointed out to the poet that his well-known lines should have run : " Every moment dies a man ; every moment one and one- sixteenth of a man is born." Judges and doctors, he said, alike were occupied in searching for the truth, and in his own case he sometimes found it hard to discover; as, for example, when, in a motor-car . accident the usual dilemma was reached, and reached through evidence, that each car had throughout been on its own side of the road, that each car had been under perfect control, and that each car had been stationary for an appreciable time before the collision occurred. Sir Henry concluded by pointing out the gain to society of professional associations, and the certainty that the sense of corporate responsibility and of trusteeship, engendered by them, would develop. In this development of trusteeship the value of tradition would have full play, and, while society as a whole might be on the threshold of fundamental changes, medicine would be safe because of the general recognition of the beneficence of medical aims. The PRESTDENT, in reply, compared the position of the Medical Society of London, standing without the Royal Society of Medicine, to the position of England, a homogeneous country, and of America, an amalga- mation of well-nigh 50 States. He gave his reasons for thinking that the Medical Society had done well in preserving its individuality, and called attention to three particular features by which it was distinguished. First, he said, it possessed a library which housed a unique collection of manuscripts, and of these a proper display had now been made possible by the work of Dr. A. F. Voelcker, the librarian, and Mr. Haines Carter, the secretary of the Society. Secondly, the Society conducted its business with no sectional divisions- its scientific voice was one and undivided. And with regard to the tendency to specialism, indicated by the treatment of disease under sections, Dr. Carr wondered who, when the whole of pathology had been regionally allotted to various specialists, was going to give a general medical opinion, and who was going to educate and examine students on general lines. Thirdly, he said he would refer to what was supposed to be a mediaeval characteristic of the Society-namely, that membership was exclusively confined to males-to him a singular situation seeing that, through his official position, he had been instrumental probably in passing into the medical profession so many of the women who might have become members. He admitted that a plebiscite of the Society had recommended their admission, but the inactivity of the council in the matter had met with no protest. Dr. Carr closed his speech by referring to the financial condition of the Society, which, he said, was a very good one, for they had bought their freehold and had every reason to , believe that as long as London was an Imperial capital their property would not depreciate. But he suggested that there was room for donations and that immor- tality could be earned by wiping out the Society’s debts. Mr. WARREN Low proposed the Health of the Guests, and commenced by stating that the Society had inherited the tradition of hospitality from its founder. Among those whom they welcomed that night, he said, were the Master of the Apothecaries Society, the Presidents of the British Medical Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Chelsea Clinical Society, and the Hunterian Society, and the Editors of The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Journalism, he said, had now become one of the great professions, and, while the Church made money out of the sins of society, medicine out of its diseases, law out of its misfortunes, journalism, it seemed, throve on its indiscretions. He regretted, however, the place that popular medicine appeared to be trying to play in lay papers, where the life work of a respectable organ like the spleen was trying to replace the details of a divorce case, to which publicity was now refused. He coupled with the toast the names of Lord RIDDELL and Sir EWEN MACLEAN, both of whom replied briefly. Public Health Services. INFLUENZA. THE epidemic is now definitely declining in Man- chester and other Lancashire towns, as well as in Liverpool and Cheshire ; it is on the wane in most I districts of London as well as at Portsmouth. But influenza is still widely prevalent in the North of England, the Yorkshire towns, and the Midlands generally, as well as in some parts of Wales. The epidemic is stated to be at its height at Newport, Isle of Wight; Shropshire is the only locality where it is reported to be on the increase. Nearly all localities report a mild type of the disease, but an increase in pneumonia is noted in some of the Lancashire and Yorkshire towns. In the week ended March 9th the mortality-rate from all causes rose to 41-8 per 1000 in Sheffield and 46-6 in Birmingham, the latter figure being the highest ever recorded in the city. Abroad a marked increase of the general death-- rate and of deaths attributed to influenza occurred in the Rhine area. Towns which normally have a very low mortality are now reporting death-rates as high as 32 in Cologne and 36 in Elberfeld and Barmen. The fall in the death-rates following the decline of the epidemic in Northern Germany, as well as in the Scandinavian countries, has been delayed by the extreme cold which persisted in February. The epidemic seems to be gaining new territory in some of the Baltic districts, the death-rate for- Konigsberg having gone up to 28. The epidemic, which is mild in character, is extending eastwards irt Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary, though now decreasing
