probabilities in modern warfare

317

by the Committee for the Study of Hydrology inGreat Britain. The committee call attention to thefact that there is in England little or no provisionmade in medical education, under graduate or post-graduate, for the study of this form of treatment.For more than ten years they have endeavoured tofill this gap by periodical illustrated lectures and byconducting parties of medical men and studentsto the spas. This attempt to make the subject betterunderstood by the medical profession has been madefinancially possible by the British Spas Federation.

This handbook contains a variety of information,geological, historical, topographical, and-more im-

portant-medical indications. The latter are ofchief interest to the practitioner, and might perhapshave taken a more prominent place in the text. The

judicious comparison of a group of spas may be ofvalue. The biological properties of waters and mudsare now much discussed on the continent. Certainobservations are here recorded on the action ofthe Buxton waters on vegetable growth, and on thebactericidal action of the old sulphur water at

Harrogate. It would be interesting to learn whetherthe waters of Bath, which, coming from a depth ofsome 5000 feet, shows signs of any biological propertiesof this nature. From Cheltenham comes a discussionon the general actions of baths ; the aeration and

whirlpool baths, devised in England during the war,are regarded as stimulant remedies in atonic nervousdisorders. No mention is made here or elsewhereof sedative baths in the treatment of cardiovascularand nervous cases. Very little information seems to beavailable about the composition and mode of actionof peats and muds, which are more and more employedin bath establishments in England, especially forrheumatism.

It is regrettable that some British spa authoritiesstill think it necessary to attach foreign names tomost of the baths in common use; it would appearto the uninitiated reader that the Scotch douche isthe only one which belongs to these islands ! Themedical committees have presented a varied and

interesting collection of information. The resourcesof civilisation are evidently by no means exhaustedat the health resorts, and there is still scope for Britishenergy and enterprise. ____

PROBABILITIES IN MODERN WARFARE

SINCE the responsibility for the care of casualtiesin any war falls upon doctors, the medical professionhas a special interest, apart from that of the thinkingcitizen, in the forms which warfare would now take.Last year the Inter-Parliamentary Union publishedthe views of 19 experts belonging to nine differentcountries on the probable characteristics of thenext great war ; this book has just been republishedin a popular edition and deserves far more attentionthan it received on its first publication. To say thatit is a terrible book might give a wrong impression,since it is only by exercise of imagination that thepresentation of the facts, figures, and opinions canbe translated into human terms. The impressionis left that a future war would not merely be anintensified repetition of the last one, but that itwill be of quite a different character. Just as theold wars between barbarian tribes were wars ofextermination so, after passing through the stageof professional armies and of the " nation in arms "as exemplified by the late war, the advent of air and">np.mi..l UT_-r-fça_T’a nçaQ -nla Q+Y’ÇB+.Dít""’t7’ -rD.U"AT’f: 1-:n. fhn

1 What would be the Character of a New War ? London :Gollancz. 1933. Pp. 412. 5s.

primitive idea of extermination ; the nation in armswill be the nation under fire-a very different matter.The results of the use of modern air power wouldbe, in effect, to bring a whole country within range ;chemical agents would be of immense use againstan unprotected civilian population; the destructionof the " nerve centres " of government and industryare almost certain to be the immediate objective.The question remains whether their destruction is

possible. " In the course of manoeuvres 250 aero-

planes took part in a night attack on London.

According to military estimates only 16 of those werediscovered by searchlights, and even under the mostfavourable circumstances it is not certain that eventhese would have been all shot down." As to theresults, Prof. Langerin stated that 100 aeroplanes,each carrying a ton of gas, could cover Paris with agas cloud 20 metres thick in one hour. Besidesgas, thermite bombs weighing only 1 kilogramme eachcan develop a temperature of 3000° C. and burn

through steel, while no extinguishing appliance hasyet been invented. With such weapons used underthe new strategic conception that " to attack thecivilian population is now a basic principle of modernwarfare" (Major Endres) a further war might wellbecome mass murder of the civilian populationrather than a conflict between the fighting forces.The possibility of "

bacteriological warfare " hasbeen studied by a commission of the League ofNations on Chemical Warfare,2 and the conclusionis that while there is a possibility of the destructionof crops by parasites distributed by air over a largearea there is no immediate likelihood of any use beingmade of the bacteriological weapon against enemypersonnel. Certainly on a priori grounds it is difficultto imagine conditions which could fulfil the fourobvious postulates for its use : (1) the effects mustbe disabling, at any rate, temporarily; (2) it mustbe communicable in the first instance to the enemy;(3) it must spread rapidly ; (4) the side employingit must be protected either by complete isolationor by some form of preventive or curative agentunknown to the enemy.

THE MEDICO-LEGAL SOCIETY

THE Medico-Legal Society has signalised the

thirty-first year of its existence by issuing a newjournal.3 In future the transactions of the societywill be issued quarterly instead of yearly and willbe combined with book reviews and hithertoinaccessible material such as abstracts of foreignliterature of medico-legal interest. Dr. Gerald Slotand Mr. Everard Dickson are the honorary editors.Lord Riddell, the president of the society, in a fore-word, expresses the hope that the journal will intime provide a complete survey of medico-legaland criminological subjects. The first numberpromises well. The opening paper by Sir JohnCollie on medico-legal practice is in light and anecdotalvein, but Dr. F. J. McCann provides more solidfare in his exhaustive survey of impotence in themale and female, a paper which contains much ofvalue to the practitioner as well as to legal andmedical specialists in the courts dealing with matri-monial causes. In a retrospect of the history ofthe society its founder, Mr. Henslowe Wellington,recalls with justifiable pride the many eminent menwho have filled its offices, including Lord JusticeAtkin, the late Lord Russell, Dr. Stanley Atkinson,

Document A.16 (1924), ix., of the League of Nations.3 The Medico-Legal and Criminological Review. Published

for the Medico-Legal Society by Baillière, Tindall and Cox,London. Vol. i., Part I, January, 1933.