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and we commend his example as one most worthy ofimitation in their turn by younger men.

THE MEDICAL ACTS OF PARLIAMENT AND THE GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL.

THE views held by Mr. Victor Horsley with regard to the IMedical Acts of Parliament are not endorsed by Mr.Brudenell Carter who, on Wednesday last, delivered an

address before the South-West London Medical Society inreply to Mr. Horsley’s address on "The Medical Acts ofParliament: as They Are and as They Ought to Be." The

matter is one of such paramount importance to the profes-sion that we published Mr. Horsley’s address and it will befound in THE LANCET of Jan. lst. We hope to publishMr. Brudenell Carter’s address next week.

THE OFFICIAL INQUIRY INTO THE MAIDSTONEEPIDEMIC.

WE understand that the official inquiry by the Local

Government Board into the causes of the recent epidemicof typhoid fever at Maidstone will be opened on Jan. 31st.The inspectors to hold the investigation will be Mr. J. S.Davy, general inspector, Dr. Theodore Thomson, medicalinspector, and Mr. G. W. Willcocks, engineer inspector.It appears that Dr. Thomson’s inspection into the causes ofthis epidemic had to be suspended because of the demandfor a formal inquiry; but it is much to be hoped that thisdoes not mean that the results of the etiological researchesusually made into such occurrences will therefore be lost inthis exceptionally interesting and obscure case.

NURSING IN COUNTRY WORKHOUSES.

IN an excellent letter to the Times, full of common-sense,Lady Lothian calls attention to the course which events arelikely to take under the present aspect of affairs in the ques-tion of workhouse nursing. A new Nursing Order has justbeen issued by the Local Government Board which createsa necessity for trained nurses-or, as the Local GovernmentBoard unfortunately calls them, nurses who have had therequisite ’,experience "-in workhouses and infirmaries

throughout the kingdom. The question is, with the presentunattractive nature of the service, where are they to comefrom ? Lady Lothian gives an extract from a local (presumablyprovincial) paper which is worthy of reproduction :-"Women, from eighteen to twenty-five, required as

assistant nurses in the workhouse infirmary. Increasedattention being given; to the nursing of the pauper inmates,the workhouse committee have adopted a new policy likelyto have useful results. The infirmary staff is to be increasedon economical lines, not only making adequate provision forthe care of patients but giving an opportunity of usefultraining in an important branch of nursing work. It is anew departure and deserves success."This, in point of fact, is what we feared and indicated ina recent article on the subject. The provincial guardiansunable to obtain trained women, and no longer havingthe Workhouse Infirmary Nursing Association to assist them,will go out into the highways and bye-ways and gatherin all sorts and conditions of young women with the promiseof giving them training. To the evils of such a system, andthe inadvisability of bringing inexperienced girls of eighteetinto contact with paupers of this class Lady Lothian ver3properly refers. And what kind of training, or even I experience " is likely to be obtained among the chronic cases-thesemi- able-bodied paupers of a country workhouse-evei

though there may perhaps be one trained, though over

worked, nurse to superintend the whole ? Is it not time thathe matter was submitted to the searching inquiry ofdepartmental committee ?

[ WITH reference to an article in the C7aemiist and Druggistof Jan. 8th, 1898, purporting to publish the first part of acritical review of the forthcoming British Pharmacopoeia,we are asked to state that the publication of the article isentirely unauthorised by the General Medical Council andthat criticism of the work is at present not possible becauseit is still incomplete. We are also officially informed thatthe article contains numerous inaccuracies and that it bearsinternal evidence of having been based upon an unrevisedproof.

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ON Wednesday next, Jan. 19th, Mr. Hutchinson willdeliver at the Clinical Museum, Park-crescent, Regent’s-park, a New Year’s address which will form a summary ofthe year’s work at the Museum. All members of themedical profession are invited to attend. There will be ademonstration of cases at 4 P.M., and the address will be,

given afterwards. -

THE following resolution was unanimously passed at ameeting of the Medical and Surgical Staff of the London

: Hospital Medical College on Jan. 7the :-" That the Medical and Surgical Staff of the London Hospital is is..

favour of the scheme embodied in the Bill of 1897 for a new University, of London, to be amended if possible according to the representations

of the delegates of the Metropolitan Medical Schools."

THE Lord Mayor, President of the Metropolitan Hospital,has consented to take the chair at the festival dinner to b&

s held on Monday, April 18th, at the Whitehall Room of the.Hôtel Métropole.

i ’

OCCUPATIONAL MORTALITY.1

FIRST NOTICE.

As intimated in THE LANCET of Dec. 25th, 1897, th&second and concluding volume of Dr. Tatham’s decennial

supplement to the Fifty-fifth Report of the Registrar-Generalhas recently been published by the Queen’s printers. Part Lof this work, which was published last year, deals with thesubject of general mortality in regard to age and cause inEngland and Wales and in its several registration sub-divisions ; whilst Part 2, which is now before us, treats of £

the mortality incidental to males above the age of fifteen

years engaged in the more important of the British industries.during the three years 1890-92. The subject-matter of thepresent is similar to that of previous supplements, but thegreater importance which Dr. Tatham now attaches to the.subject of occupational mortality and the addition of a newHealthy District Life Table have necessitated the division ofthe work into two volumes.

Although in the present volume the matter relating tooccupational mortality occupies, in addition to the tables,more than a hundred closely printed pages, it is a relief tofind in a formal statistical treatise like this that the author

has summarised within the first score of pages the resultsof his investigations and has contrived to arrange thesepages, with the addition perhaps of pages 93 to 102 as an

: introduction to the more detailed remarks and tables in the-, remainder of the volume. In his preliminary remarks

Dr. Tatham has taken pains to explain the various methodsand processes by which his results have been obtained and he

has done this in language at once forcible and clear. Hisreaders, including ourselves, will be thankful to him forhaving employed technical terms but sparingly throughout

the work-a departure from the ordinary practice which we- would gladly see more frequently adopted.e At the last census the male population above fifteen yearsn

of age in England and Wales numbered in round numbers’-

nearly 9,000,000, of which about 8,500,000 were returned

1 Letter to the Registrar-General on the Mortality of Males engagedin Certain Occupations in the Three Years 1890-92. Supplement to theFifty-fifth Annual Report of the Registrar-General. By John Tatham,M.A., M.D. Dub. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 1897.