82

and tear is confined to traders and manufacturers, sothat whilst a business man is allowed a deduction fordepreciation of the car employed in his business adoctor, whose practice equally necessitates the use ofa car, cannot claim the same deduction. The RoyalCommission recommended that the allowance shouldnot be restricted to traders, and in this case also therewould seem to be scope for pressure by the professionalassociations to induce the Government to amend thelaw on the subject. A renewal of a car may, of course,be claimed, but only to the extent of the value replacedless the amount received on sale or exchange.

Deductions, Allowances, and Reliefs.The amount of the assessment in respect of the

business having been arrived at, it becomes necessaryto make a complete return on the well-known buff form.The amount liable to assessment should be inserted onpage 2, together with any other amounts arising underthe other heads shown on that page. On page 3 of theform a complete return of all sources of income andof charges thereon should be furnished to enable thedeductions and allowances to be claimed. Page 4should also be carefully completed so that any allow-ances may be given against the assessment to be made.The notice of assessment issued later will follow thereturn made, provided, of course, the latter is correctlycompleted. On receipt of such notice the assessmentamount should be carefully verified together with theappropriate deductions and allowances includingearned income relief one-tenth, personal allowance of£135 single, £225 married, and wife to £45 if earningincome, child allowance of £36 and each additional £27,housekeeper £45, widowed mother £45, dependentrelative £25, first £225 of taxable income at 2s. 3d., andlife assurance premiums from 2s. 3d. to 4s. 6d. per £.The period within which to appeal against the assess-ment is 21 days, and any necessary notice should begiven before that period expires.

There are certain circumstances in which adjust-ments may be made in the tax payable within or afterthe end of the year of assessment. The followingconstitute the principal grounds, and any adjustmentcan be made to take effect by way of repayment orof reduction in the outstanding tax :-

1. Where a change in ownership has occurred withinthe year, the current year’s assessment is apportionedbetween the person ceasing and his successor.

2. Where owing to the person ceasing to carry onthe profession or dying or becoming bankrupt or fromany other specific cause (where ownership has changed)the profit falls short of the assessed amount, a reduc-tion may be claimed to the actual profit of the year.

3. A person succeeding to the practice or a newpartnership may apply for adjustment to the actualprofit in the year of assessment if such profit is lessthrough some specific cause arising since or by reasonof the succession or partnership change. " Specificcause " as referred to here relates to such occurrencesas removal to other premises, or loss of personalinfluence.

4. If the profession has commenced within the lastfour years a claim may be made for reduction tothe actual profit of each year. It is not necessary,therefore, in this period to abide by the average figureand the option of claim is entirely with the taxpayer.

5. If the profession is discontinued, a claim may bemade to have the assessment of the current year reducedto the actual profit and a further claim to have thetotal profit of the three previous years substituted forthe total assessments of those years may be entered.

6. Where a loss is sustained in the profession, taxon the amount of such loss is recoverable against anytax paid for that year. This relief is usually claimedonly in the absence of any other equivalent relief andthen with discrimination, as the loss on which repay-ment is made is not allowed in reduction of futureaverages. It is, however, distinctly advantageous toclaim when the rate of tax is falling as it can readilybe seen that a repayment in, for example, a 5s. year,will result in a saving of 6d. per £ if the loss is setagainst a 4s. 6d. year.

7. In the event of it being found that an error ormistake in the return or statement has been made,repayment may be claimed for three years back onaccount thereof.The foregoing points constitute salient features in

the taxation of professions, but it will be appreciatedthat the many phases of assessment and allowancesare subject to varying conditions and stipulationsimpossible of compression into a short article. Themany Acts and various text-books on the subject ofIncome-tax readily demonstrate the complexity ofmodern taxation, and probably no field in the fabric ofsocial life is so encumbered with legislative enactmentsand judicial decisions, not to mention the numerousmodifications introduced in practice. The ramifica-tions of taxation are so wide and so deep that even inan extensive practice it is an almost unique occurrenceto deal with two cases containing precisely similarcircumstances and conditions. It is true that membersof any one profession may derive help in conforminggenerally to an approximately standard type ofbusiness assessment-as shown above-but it isequally true that in the computation of other income,in the statement of charges, and in the claiming ofadjustments and allowances they must join the generalcommunity of confused and exasperated persons knownas

" taxpayers."

THE DISCOVERY OF RADIUM.CELEBRATION IN PARIS OF THE TWENTY-

FIFTH ANNIVERSARY.

IT is now just over 25 years ago that (on Dec. 26th,1898) the discovery of radium was made known to thescientific world in a communication addressed to theAcadémie des Sciences de Paris. On Jan. 2nd twoceremonies took place, one at the Fondation Curie,the other at the Sorbonne, in celebration of thisanniversary. The first of these was the inauguration,in the presence of Mr. Paul Strauss, Minister of

Hygiene, of the Dispensary of the Fondation Curie ;at this ceremony many leading scientific and medicalmen took part. Mr. P. Appell, Rector of theUniversity of Paris and president of the Council ofAdministration of the Fondation, opened the proceed-ings ; orations were then delivered by Mr. Régaud,professor at the Institut Pasteur and secretary-generalof the Fondation, by Mr. Bergonie, and by Mr.Strauss, who expressed to all those associated with theFondation, and particularly to Madame Curie, therecognition by the Government and the public of thegreat results obtained in the incessant work carriedon by the institution.At the second ceremony, in the great amphitheatre

of the Sorbonne, the chair was taken by Mr. AlexandreMillerand, President of the French Republic, who hadon his right Mme. Curie. Mr. Appell, speaking in thename of the Fondation Curie, described the achieve-ments of science made possible by the great discoveryassociated with the names of Mr. and Mme. Curie,thanked the President and the representatives of GreatBritain, the United States, Belgium, Spain, andother countries for their presence and support, andpaid a tribute to Mr. Strauss for his organisation ofregional centres for the campaign against cancer.

He concluded his address by expressing the gratitudeof the Fondation to Mme. Curie for her gift of a

gramme of radium, to Mr. Henri de Rothschild forhis recent donation of 500 milligrammes of theelement, and to other benefactors of the institution.

Mr. Jean Perrin gave a brief survey of the importanceof radio-activity, and Mr. Baclere dealt with therelations of radium and medicine. Mr. Léon Bérard,Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, recalledthe circumstances in which was passed the Actrecording the discovery of radium, and expressingthe gratitude and admiration of the Republic uponthat occasion. Mme. Curie briefly replied, and thePresident associated her name with that of herhusband in a final tribute of praise.

83ORGANISED MEDICAL RESEARCH.-FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.

THE LANCET.

LONDON: SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 1924.

ORGANISED MEDICAL RESEARCH.THE report of the Medical Research Council for the Byear 1922-23, which is published to-day,1 records the I

retirement from the Council of Sir WILLIAM LErSHMArtand Prof. F. GOWLAND HOPKINS, the two last remain-ing members of those originally selected in 1913.

They have thus served the Council over a period often years, and this report is to some extent the recordof a decade of organised medical research, for a

number of the objects of present study were amongthe earliest schemes of work. Tuberculosis was one ofthese early objects, as was natural when the researchfund was obtained from National Insurance resourcesby a levy of one penny per insured person.The Council is no longer directly related to the

Ministry of Health, but tuberculosis work continues tobe directed by a group of subcommittees to which, bypermission of the Ministry, Dr. A. S. MACNALTY actsas secretary. One subcommittee deals with bacteriological questions, another with the uses of tuberculin,while statistical studies are supervised by a StatisticsCommittee which includes other aspects of industrialhealth. A special subcommittee is in charge of thetrials now being made with Prof. G. DREYER’S diaplytevaccine. Heliotherapy comes within the scope of theCommittee on the Biological Actions of Light. Thepersonnel of all these committees is set out in the docu-ment, and we call attention to them as one example outof many of how the work of the Council has broadenedand ramified during ten crowded years. The subjectof accessory food factors, one of a group which spranginto importance in the critical years of war, continuesto occupy the close attention of a committee appointed Ijointly by the Council and the Lister Institute. Thework of Dr. HARRIETTE CHICK and her colleagueshas modified the continental conception of ricketsas an infectious disease and popLLlarised the ideaof vitamin deficiency which, nebulous though it still is,may prove a boon not only to the starving Viennesechildren who were the first to benefit. This war-timework has carried on into the post-war period whichhas provided many new activities of its own. Mostdramatic of these was the overdue discovery of thefunction of the pancreatic islands by the Torontoschool, since enriched by the work of Dr. H. W.DUDLEY and Dr. J. H. BURN at the Central Research Institute-work which is justifying Dr. H. H. DALE’Sprophecy that insulin will prove to have an importancefor physiology and medical science far beyond that ofits use in the treatment of diabetes. These threeexamples, taken from different periods, will give anidea-it is impossible to do more-of the volume oforganised research which increases from year to year.A contribution of £130,000 is the sum-total allotted

to medical research by a country of business men, andit is almost incredible how this sum has gone so far.It includes the expenses of the Industrial FatigueResearch Board, for which the Council becamesponsor rather than allow its work to drop. TheNational Institute, the central forcing-house, absorbsabout one-third of the remainder, and yet nearly600 entries appear in the index of personal names of

1 Committee of the Privy Council for Medical Research.H.M. Stationery Office. 3s. 6d.

associate workers. Many of these are nursing seedlingswhich are still in cold frames, but there is more than achance that some of them will prove hardy enoughto survive, although no one can say which. One canonly hope that the scientific zeal of the individual isnot being unfairly exploited by the community, asuspicion raised rather than allayed by the LordPresident of the Council when he stated recentlythat many men of science would work for Governmentat less remuneration than similar private workwould receive. A closer study of the ResearchCouncil’s finance is reassuring, for the Council is

becoming increasingly a clearing-house for researchfunds. The Dental Board has allotted a large sumfor inquiry into the causes of dental disorder, theMiners’ Welfare Fund another for studies of miners’dietaries, the Carnegie Trust a third for investigationof environment on the growth of children. These andother grants from various sources, including relativesof grateful patients, are placed at the disposal of theCouncil. inioreover, the .KOCKe!eller Foundation has

made it possible to give a group of British workers theopportunity of scientific study in the United Statesbesides sending American students here. The properoutlook of research is dealt with in a few strikingparagraphs of the report. It is something other thanthat of the " man of science," so humorously ridiculedby Sir RONALD Ross, as the sort of person who pullsout his watch and exclaims : a " Ha ! half an hour to

spare before dinner a I will just step down to mylaboratory and make a discovery." The bearing ofmuch research work upon medicine and hygienenecessarily seems remote, but the history of insulin-even the name of which was suggested many yearsago by Sir E. SHARPEY SCHAFER—is a completejustification of the wide view. And it is the wide viewthat must be popularised, for many can appreciateresults who cannot follow the intensive studies which

have led up to them.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.HUMAN medicine is not greatly interested directly in

the epizo0tic stomatitis of animals, for it is a fact, asthe Minister of Health recently stated, that foot-and-mouth disease is rarely communicated from animalsto man, and, when so communicated, the illness hasbeen mild ; in this country there is no record ofdeath having resulted in a healthy person. Moreover,the use of milk from infected animals is prohibitedby law, and the enforcement of this regulation is notvery difficult. But the epidemic of this cattle plaguewhich is at present visiting the country presentsproblems very interesting indeed to the medical man ;for here is an epidemic against which the mosteffective methods can be used, whatever they may be.Endemic small-pox or plague cannot be stamped outby simply destroying the centres of infection, but theMinistry of Agriculture has public opinion solidlybehind it in attempting so to stamp out foot-and-mouth disease if the procedure can be justifiedeconomically. Up to the end of last week more

than two millions of money had been laid outin compensation for destroyed animals, somethingover a quarter of a million being returned in thesalvage of healthy carcasses. The total number ofI animals then condemned amounted roughly to

: 68,000 cattle, 25,000 sheep, 33,000 pigs, and a fewgoats. At the same time, hunting has practicallystopped, and hunting is an industry as well as a

sport, providing a weekly sum of £75,000 in wagesand £175,000 a week in forage. Further, the

risk of infection has led Australia to prohibit the