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THE SERVICES.

ROYAL NAVY MEDICAL SERVICE. 1k;

IN accordance with the provisions of Order in Council of t

April lst, 1881, Surgeon-General Christopher Pearson has fbeen placed on the Retired List at his own request (dated *-

Feb. 2nd, 1912). The following appointment has been notified :—StaN-Sur-

geon : A. R. Thomas to the Excellent. 7 ]ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS. }

Lieutenant James R. Hill is transferred to the Reserve of (Officers under the provisions of Article 632, Royal Warrant I ’for Pay and Promotion, 1909 (dated Jan. 30th, 1912). (

Surgeon-General A. T. Sloggett, C.B., C.M.G., PrincipalMedical Officer, His Majesty’s Forces in India, has beenappointed Honorary Surgeon to the King. Surgeon- GeneralJ. G. MacNeece, C.B., has been appointed Principal MedicalOfficer of the Sixth (Poona) Division. Surgeon-General T. M.Corker has taken up duty as Principal Medical Officer of theEighth (Lucknow) Division. Colonel W. W. Pike, D S. 0., ihas taken up duty as Principal Medical Officer of the BombayBrigade.

Lieutenant-Colonel R. Kirkpatrick has joined at Cairo.Lieutenant-Colonel J. S Green has been appointed to com-mand the Station Hospital at Bangalore. Lieutenant-ColonelR. W. Wright has been posted to Fyzabad in charge of theStation Hospital. Lieutenant-Colonel T. McCulloch has takenover charge of the Medical Division at the Royal VictoriaHospital, Netley. Lieutenant-Colonel C. R. Elliott has beentransferred from Lahore to Jhansi and appointed to commandthe Station Hospital. Lieutenant-Colonel B. M. Skinner,M.V.O., has been detailed as Senior Medical Officer in chargeof the transport ss. Rema, leaving Karachi for Southamptonon Feb. 14th. Lieutenant-Colonel L. T. M. Nash will takecharge of the Military Hospital, Hounslow.Major F. G. Richards has been ordered to join in Ireland

on March 10th and will be posted to the Cork District.

Major T. H. J. C. Goodwin, D. S. 0., has taken up duty atDevonport. Major W. H. S. Nickerson, V.C., has beentransferred from Cherat to the Station Hospital atPeshawar. Major F. J. C. Heffernan has been posted tothe Fifth (Mhow) Division. Major G. S. Crawford has joinedfor duty in the Dublin District. Major L. P. Moore hasembarked for a tour of duty in India. Major W. P. Gwynnhas taken up duty at Karachi. Major E. W. Slayter hasbeen transferred from Bellary to Mount Abu and appointedto command the Station Hospital. Major St. J. B. Killeryhas been appointed to the Northern Command. Major J. M.Sloan, D.S.O., has. taken up duty in India. Major G. St. C.Thom has been transferred from Murree to the Station Hos-

pital at Rawal Pindi. Major R. H. Lloyd has embarked fora tour of service in India. Major R. J. Blackham has takenup duty at Peshawar. Major D. Harvey has joined forspecial duty with the Sleeping Sickness Commission in

Nyasaland. Major E. P. Connolly has embarked for a tourof service in India.

Captain E. T. Potts has been posted to Ireland for dutyin the Dublin District. Captain N. Low has been selectedfor attachment to the Belfast University Contingent of theSenior Division, Officers Training Corps. Captain H. C.Winckworth has been selected for appointment as Specialistin Advanced Operative Surgery to the Royal Herbert Hos-pital at Woolwich, in succession to Captain A. J. William-son, who has embarked for a tour of service in the StraitsSettlements. Captain G. W. W. Ware has been posted tothe Southern Command. Captain R. L. V. Foster, from

Devonport, has taken up duty at the Military Hospital,Crown Hill. Captain E. M. Pennefather r has beentransferred from Fermoy to Fethard. Captain C. E. L.

Harding has taken up duty at the Station Hospital, Quetta.Captain H. H. A. Emerson has been transferred from Limerick Ito Derby and appointed Adjutant at the Royal Army MedicalCorps School of Instruction of the North Midland Division.Captain M. C. Wetherell has joined for duty at Kildare.Captain J. C. L. Hingston has been appointed to the StationHospital at Wellington. The following Captains have beenposted to the Irish Command : E. W. Powell, 0. Ievers,C. E. W. S. Fawcett, V. H. Symons, and M. J. Cromie.

INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE.Colonel C. F. Willis, C. B. has taken over duty as Principal

Medical Officer of the Ninth (Secunderabad) Division of the

Southern Army in India. Colonel R. W. S. Lyons hasarrived home on leave of absence from India. Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Fearnside has been selected for appointment as-Superintendent of the Central Jail at Rajahmundry. Lieu--tenant-Colonel R. Bird, C.I.E., has taken up duty as Pro-fessor of Surgery at the Medical College, Calcutta, andSurgeon to the Medical College Hospital, vice Major E. OwenThurston.

Major C. C. Murison has been appointed Superintendentof the Lunatic Hospital at Matheran, in succession to MajorE. F. G. Tucker. The services of Major V. H. Robertshave been placed temporarily at the disposal of the ChiefCommissioner of the Central Provinces. Major F. H.

Watling has been selected to officiate as Superintendentof the Central Jail at Buxar during the leave of absence ofCaptain W. Gillitt.The services of Captain N. H. Hume have been placed!’

at the disposal of the Government of Eastern Bengal andAssam while that officer officiates as Civil Surgeon of

Jalpaiguri. Captain K. S. Singh has been appointed PlagueMedical Officer at Karnal. The services of Captain J. G. G.Swan have been placed permanently at the disposal of thePunjab Government. Captain A. W. C. Young has taken upduty as Specialist in the Prevention of Disease at Bannu, andhas been appointed in charge of the Bacteriological ResearchLaboratory at Brigade Headquarters. Captain E. H. B.

Stanley has arrived home on leave of absence from India.Captain P. Heffernan has been appointed Lecturer on MentalDiseases at the Medical College, Madras, and Superintendent.of the Madras Lunatic Asylum. Captain W. W. Jeudwine,medical officer of the 27th Punjabis at Alipore, has beenappointed to Rawal Pindi as Plague Medical Officer. CaptainD. M. C. Church has been granted leave of absence home forone year from India. Captain W. D. H. Stevensonhas been appointed to the Bacteriological Departmentunder the Sanitary Commissioner with the Governmentof India. Captain R. T. Wells, officiating civil surgeon atDera Ghazi Khan, has been appointed Plague Medical Officerat Rotak, vice Captain S. B. Mehta, whose services have been

i placed at the disposal of the Government of India for employ-ment in the Department of Education. Captain S. H.

j Lee Abbott, civil surgeon at Dalhousie, has been transferredI to hold Civil Medical Charge at Ferczepore. Captain H. B.l Steen, officiating first resident surgeon in the Presidency-I General Hospital, Calcutta, has been appointed to act asl Surgeon-Superintendent of the hospital during the absence onI privilege leave of Lieutenant-Colonel H. W. Pilgrim.I Captain K. G. Ghorpurey has been appointed to officiate asr Second-class Civil Surgeon at Aden during the absence on

leave of Lieutenant-Colonel S. E. Prall.Lieutenant G. G. James has been selected for appointment

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as Assistant to the Chief Quarantine Medical Officer in ther Persian Gulf. Lieutenant A. L. Sheppard has been appointed1 to officiate as Officer in Medical Charge of the 122nctr Rajputana Infantry. Lieutenant E. S. Goss has been placed1 under orders to embark for India. Lieutenant H. Stott hasr been appointed Specialist in Midwifery and Diseases of

Women and Children, Burma Division.

i ARMY HEADQUARTER STAFF IN INDIA.

e The following appointments have been made :-Surgeon-,

General A. T. Sloggett, C.B., C.M G., Army Medicalt Service, vice Surgeon-General Sir W. F. Trevor, K.C.S.I., 9-C.B., M.B., Army Medical Service, to be Principal Medical- Officer, His Majesty’s Forces in India (dated Dec. 31st, 1911).8Colonel H. Hendley, Indian Medical Service, vice Colonel D.Dffrench-Mullen, Indian Medical Service, to be Deputy Prin-cipal Medical Officer, His Majesty’s Forces in India (datedAugust 8th, 1911).a TERRITORIAL FORCE.I. Royal Army Medical Corps.,. Yorkshire Mounted Brigade Field Ambulance, Royal Armyk Medical Corps : Percy Kingsley Steele to be LieutenantLl (dated Oct. 6th, 1911).L. 4th Northern General Hospital, Royal Army Medical Corps >!- Charles John Coleman to be Captain (dated Dec. 15th, 1911).n n DEATHS IN THE SERVICES.

3 Brigade-Surgeon Henry Elmsley Busteed, C.I.E, lat&’

I.M.S., in his seventy-ninth year. He received a commissionin the service of the East India Company in 1855 and was admedical officer with the Horse Artillery in the mutiny of

.1 1857-58. For his services at Cawnpore and Lucknow herie received the medal with clasp. In 1865 he was appointed

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assistant assay master of the Madras Mint, and was sub-sequently appointed to the Bombay Mint in a similar capacity.In 1872 he was appointed assay master at Calcutta andretired in 1886, in which year he received the decoration ofC.I.E. While at Calcutta he collected the materials forI Echoes of Calcutta," a well-known standard work on thehistory of Calcutta.

Sir J. Porter, Director-General of the Medical Departmentof the Navy, inspected the medical establishment of PlymouthNaval Station on Jan. 31st.

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Fleet-Surgeon Robert Hill. M.V.O., of the Medina, has onthe return of the King and Queen from India been advancedto C.V.O.

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Correspondence.

GUARDIANS AND DISSECTION.To the Editor of THE LANCET.

SIR,-The report of the meeting of the Southwark boardof guardians which you publish has greatly interested me.My letter to the chairman seems to have been fairly quoted,and I have nothing to withdraw or excuse in it. The pointis that we cannot treat the human body without knowing itsstructure, and we cannot learn its structure without examiningthe dead. Put in another way, we cannot learn to operatefor the prolongation of life and the relief of suffering withoutpractising on the dead, unless we are to practise on theliving. I view the action of the important board of South-wark guardians with the greatest apprehension, since it issure to be followed, as Mr. Hills hopes it will, by otherboards. It now becomes our duty to decide whether weshall continue to keep in the background and watch oursupply diminishing year by year, as it is doing, or whetherwe should not rather ask every thinking man to considerwhether it is right to sacrifice lives and relief from sufferingto a kindly sentimentalism.

Is the benefit gained by allowing unclaimed dead bodies todecompose naturally instead of being permanently embalmedand reverently dissected before being buried with due religiousrites enough to set against the loss of the surgeon’s skillwhen an instant operation is necessary in order to save somevaluable life ? 7 I submit that we have no moral right toallow a single breadwinner to die or a single child to sufferunrelieved even if the alternative is the examination afterdeath of every man who dies in the kingdom, be he duke,anatomist, Poor-law guardian, or pauper.

I can already feel that, while we are trying to educatethose who have the charge of the poor in these elementaryfacts of medical knowledge, anatomists will have a very badtime of it, but we must face all that and hope for the help ofthose who are alive to the great responsibility which a

guardianship of the poor entails. I have said nothing aboutthe scientific side of the question. Of course we want toknow not only where all the parts of the body are, but whythey are as they are. It is quite arguable that a sentimentalobjection to dissection might be fairly set against this, but Ihave never yet heard any attempt to justify a refusal to allowthe surgeon, who willingly gives his best skill to the poor intheir need, to use the only means on earth to gain that skill.

I am. Sir. vours faithfullv.F. G. PARSONS, F.R.C.S. Eng.,

Lecturer on Anatomy at St. Thomas’s Hospital and at theSchool of Medicine for Women.

St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, S.E., Feb. 2nd, 1912.

* ** The paragraph to which Mr. Parsons refers will befound on p. 408 of this issue of THE LANCET. We drew Mr.

Parsons’s attention to it.-ED. L.

THE EXTRACTION OF CATARACT.To the Editor of THE LANCET.

SIR,—In THE LANCET of July 29th, 1911, appears anarticle by Mr. H. L. Eason on the Extraction of Cataract.What directly concerns me in that article I here explain. Onthe basis of the rest of his article I hope to contributematter of interest to the profession at a later date.

In Mr. Eason’s article he, like a number of others inthe British medical press, reviews 23 cataract operations

performed by me in February, 1909, in Major Kilkelly’shospital, Bombay, as published in the Indian Medical Gazette,May, 1910, as if I had never questioned those results. By somepeculiar accident ophthalmic writers in the British medicalpress seem only to have read the above-quoted number of theIndian Mediaal Gazette and the number of the OphthalmiaRecord in which the same paper by Major Kilkelly appeared,and seem not to have read the remainder of the controversyin both journals. In fairness to your readers I ask you to

publish the following résumé of that controversy. (The wholeof the controversy can be seen in full by anyone who consultsthe Indian Medical Gazettes of 1910 and 1911, or the Aprilnumber of the Ophtjccclmao Record of Chicago, 1911).While at the Bombay Medical Congress in February, 1909,

at the urgent request of Major P. P. Kilkelly, 1. M.S., I per-formed 23 intracapsular extractions in his hospital and left bythe next train. At the time of operation I entered the detailsof the operation on the bed-head tickets of these patients. Iheard no more of the cases until I saw them reported bvMajor Kilkelly in the May number of the Indian Medica.lGazette of 1910. My permission was not asked before thepublication of these cases, nor was any information given meconcerning them before the publication of the results. I wasnot invited down to Bombay to see and report on themmyself. About the same time Dr. Pontius published notes ofthese same cases in North- West Medicine, U.S.A. In a

succeeding number of the Indian Medical Gazette as a part ofthis controversy Major Kilkelly reported one side of a purelyprivate case of mine done at Amritsar, Punjab, without con-sulting me and reported it incorrectly. The case was a failure,and he reported it as of " general interest," implying that itwas in harmony with the Bombay cases-that such was theusual result of my cases, and that I knew nothing of theafter-result of my cases. However, I was able to publishthe whole of the case, putting a very different construc.tion on the result. Dr. Pontius, with Major Kilkelly’spermission (not having asked mine), examined the famousBombay cases. When I put Dr. Pontius’s facts as regardsgross lesions alongside with Major Kilkelly’s fact,; as

regards the same lesions they very much disagreed in

nearly every detail, even to the number of cases purportingto be mine (Dr. Pontius reported on 24 cases ; I had

operated on 23). I asked Major Kilkelly for the loan ofthe bed-head tickets to see my own entries on them, as

both these surgeons had recorded more capsules left behindthan were entered on the bed-head tickets. He declined tolend them to me, stating that he did not see what usefulpurpose it would serve."The results in themselves were utterly unintelligible to

me, and when I put the facts of Dr. Pontius and of

Major Kilkelly alongside of one another the only con-

clusion I could draw from the discrepancies was thatthese two surgeons could not have examined the samecases, but that the failures of Major Kilkelly’s hospitalhad been paraded for him and for Dr. Pontius and been

put to my charge. This charge I made in the con-

troversy and no attempt has been made to meet it,and no attempt can be made to meet it while MajorKilkelly’s facts and Dr. Pontius’s facts stand. I con-

sequently cannot understand how any fair-minded man canquote the results published by Major Kilkelly as having anybearing on intracapsular extraction.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,HENRY SMITH, M.D., M.Ch.,

Lieutenant-Colonel, I.M.S.

THE COMBINED WHOLE-TIME MEDICALOFFICER.

To the Editor of THE LANCET.SiR,—Recently the TVestern Daily Me’l’mtry reported the

proceedings of a joint meeting of the St. Austell board ofguardians and the rural district council to consider the

appointment of a medical gentleman to carry out the com-bined duties of medical officer of health, medical officer tothe union workhouse, and also No. 7 District. A sug-gestion was also made that the office of public vaccinatorshould be included as well. After a discussion the matter wasadjourned for a month, a committee being appointed todiscuss the various suggested schemes.

It is proposed to pay a salary of Z400 per annum to amedical gentleman, who presumably will have to devote th