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Yet the scientific mind blandly ignores these constantexposures of its own limitations. Like Theseus, it " nevermay believe these antique fables, nor these fairy toys."Random proof, however startling, of the practical wisdomhidden in simple hearts seems only to serve as the originof fresh distortions. With indecent haste the thoughtis separated, fatally, from the feeling that was its partner,and from the human context in which they quietlycoexisted.For the essence of this earthy wisdom lies precisely

in its slow, centuried synthesis of thinking with feeling,of remembering with forgetting. It cannot be inventedor new-minted from any single mind, but forms itself

mysteriously, with the imperceptible accretions of a

stalactite, in the ombrous caverns of the collective mind.And we do wrong if we dismiss this process as merelypassive. Such silent, patient waiting for truth, as

Simone Weil has said, is an activity more intense thanany searching.The products of this activity are unlike the clear

concepts of the classroom and the laboratory. It isneither difficult nor clever to prove them logically absurd.In any case, being a human process, it is as fallible as allthings human. But empty of value as many of thesecountry tales undoubtedly are, childishly ridiculous asthey all appear, they deserve gentle and’ perceptivehandling, in virtue of the mystery of their origin. Theybelong not to the everyday world, but to the timelessparadoxical world of myth and fairy-tale, of fantasy anddream ; a world where startling absurdities and glaringinconsistencies are but secret signals to the instructedmind, bidding it note the crossing of an invisible frontier.

It would be well if man could recapture this richer,older mode of response to existence, wholly lost to usthese last three hundred years, which recognised that thefinal secrets of life may often be reached less by what welearn than by what we half-remember. What is needed isan extension of contemporary consciousness to includewhat can perhaps be defined as the translucent quality inall things-the quality by which an object or an eventis seen not only as a thing-in-itself, but also as a membranethrough which can dimly be discerned the stirring of adifferent order of experience.This once caught, even for a moment, transforms the

sensible universe, investing all objects with a sharpintensity of being. The seeming-solid world growspermeable, beginning to transmit, not merely to reflect,the light. The quality of translucence is the key ; a goldenkey that is the careless plaything of all children, andthe conscious instrument of a few geniuses. In excep-tional moments of their lives ordinary men and womenmay fleetingly hold it : in the first days of overwhelminglove, in moments of overwhelming peril, in the presenceof new life, and sometimes on the unheralded news ofdeath.At such moments a man stands on tiptoe, and may

catch a startled glimpse of another level of being, whereall values are changed, and everything is understood

differently ; the level of which Chekhov dreamed where"

everything is forgiven, and it would be strange not toforgive " ; that Goethe experienced when he murmuredto his friend " That fig-tree, this little snake, the cocoonon my window-sill quietly awaiting its future-all theseare momentous signatures " ; the level touched in theParables, in the sixth book of the Aeneid, in the Ode to aNightingale, and anonymously, and perhaps incompar-ably, in the mysterious golden light that shines throughmyth and fairy tale; the level of the kingdom ofheaven that is within. It is a quality often missing inworks of loftiest genius. Milton, for all the splendour ofItis planned achievement, and all the wealth of his well-chosen mythological themes, had not a trace of it ; nor

Shelley, despite his earnest preoccupation with eternity.

To become aware of this translucent quality in all

things is no vague romantic goal. It is a sharply defined,delicately poised effort of mental vision, a state ofharmonious balance of forces in the Pythagorean sense,born of the union of many opposites : of rememberingwith forgetting, of thinking with feeling, of the temporalwith the eternal, of personal conscious perceptions withfaint echoes from the remotest regions of the archaic

psyche. It is the basis of all true science, the essence ofritual, the constant attribute of wisdom. It may be thenearest that human minds can reach to the meaning ofmeaning.

Parliament

Heroin Ban PostponedIN the House of Lords on Dec. 13 EARL JOWITT moved :

That in the opinion of this House, in view of the apparentconflict of expert medical opinion on the banning of themanufacture of heroin in this country, the period of the presentlicences to manufacture should be extended pending theinstitution of further inquiries.He fully realised that the Government had propoundedthe ban on the manufacture of heroin from the highestmotives, but he thought that a pronouncement by theHouse of Lords might help to retrieve what he believedto be a grievous mistake. After summarising thecircumstances which had led to the ban, and the medicaladvice which had, and had not, been sought he thankfullyleft what he described as " the sea of medicine " for anisland of the firm ground of the law. There was, hesuggested (and did not think the Lord Chancellor woulddisagree), serious reason to doubt whether the Ministerhad any right to use his powers under the DangerousDrugs Act to ban the manufacture of heroin.

CONTROL OR PROHIBITION

The granting of licences for the manufacture of heroinwas, he thought, an incident to the general power ofcontrolling manufacture ; and the power to controlmanufacture was for the purpose of preventing theimproper use of heroin. The Home Secretary had ineffect said : " No particular individual can manufactureheroin unless he is licensed to do so. Therefore, if Iannounce in advance that I shall license nobody, I canindirectly ban the manufacture of heroin." The controlof manufacture as a means of preventing improper usecould be compared, Lord Jowitt suggested, to the controlof a horse or a dog, or a child, by shooting it throughthe heart.He maintained that the Home Secretary’s action was

outside his powers, and he begged the Government toconsider the position. If they intended, for the firsttime, to ban a drug which many doctors thought to beof the first importance, this ought to have been doneby a Bill and not by the indirect method of trying to usethe Dangerous Drugs Act. The Minister should bescrupulously careful not to take a step which the courtsmight declare to be outside the law. If there could beno restraint through the courts this would be a goodmatter to refer to the Committee on Ministerial Powerswhich was now sitting.

A CONTROLLED INQUIRY ’

Lord Jowitt then left his " little rock " and plungedagain into the ocean of medical details. Having spokenof the weight of opinion against the ban he said that ifthe Government were going to incur the responsibilityof banning heroin they must, in his view, show who wasgoing to gain. They must, for instance, explain how itwould avoid the problem in the United States. In thesix years 1946-51 the total of illicit heroin seized inBritain was 11 grammes. In the rest of Europe in 195162,711 grammes were seized, and in North America28,870 grammes. He asked the Government to postponethe ban and constitute an ad-hoc committee of eminentdoctors to see whether the conflict could be resolved.Lord MANCROFT, under-secretary of State for the Home

Department. said that the Government would have to

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look carefully at the legal point Earl Jowitt had raised.He agreed that there was no serious addiction problemin this. country, but there was such a problem in othercountries. Most addicts got heroin through the blackmarket which was international. A few months agothree large seizures of heroin, amounting to over 80 lb.of the drug (enough for 2,250,000 doses), were made inAmerican and Canadian ports. It was the consideredview of all these countries that the difficulty of controllingthe illicit traffic was increased by the existence of lawfulmanufacture and trade such as our own. If the manu-facture of heroin were made illegal the task of suppressingthe illicit traffic would be made much easier. Only 4countries now opposed the ban. More than 50 countrieshad banned the use of heroin and in all of them thedoctors had found satisfactory substitutes for use inmedical practice. Without the assurance that the sub-stitutes were reliable the Government would never havetaken the decision to impose a ban. We were the largestmanufacturer of heroin and were we not to agree withthe United Nations’ request to ban heroin we should layourselves open to the charge that we disregarded thefine example we had set in the past and had obstructedinternational measures to stamp out the traffic.The restriction, he added, would not mean that supplies

would cease as soon as the ban became effective. Stockswere sufficient almost for two or three years at thepresent rate of consumption and the interim periodwould give doctors an opportunity to gain experience inthe use of alternative drugs. The Government wouldkeep the restriction under searching review.

Lord MORAN believed that the Minister of Health hadbeen unfairly criticised. He had consulted the onlybody which was set up by statute to advise him, and hecould not have done anything else. If the Minister’sprofessional advisers who earlier supported the ban nowled a crusade against it, surely there must be an end ofall confidence between the Minister and his advisers.It was upon the smooth working between the two thatso much of the efficiency of the National Health Servicedepended.From the division of medical opinion it was obvious

how difficult it was to say whether there was an adequatesubstitute for heroin. There were almost insuperabledifficulties in the way of a controlled ’inquiry. Indeedthe measurement of pain almost defied an inquiry ofthis kind. What was the scientific value of the lettersin the TÍ1nes? ? They said, what we already knew, thatheroin is an effective drug, but they did not compareit with other combinations of drugs and in that sensetheir observations were uncontrolled. Again some of theletters seemed to Lord Moran emotional rather thanscientific. The doctor who was deprived of a drug wasnaturally aggrieved : he was even more aggrieved whenhe attributed this deprivation to the Minister of Healthwho, he thought, should not come between him and hispatient. To this attitude of mind Lord Moran addedthe influence of habit. If a drug was effective, thedoctor was inclined to go on using it to the exclusionof others.But if a controlled inquiry was difficult, and if expres-

sions of opinion were not real comparisons, was therenothing else to help us ? Lord Moran suggested thatthere was a great deal of circumstantial evidence atour disposal. In the 54 countries where heroin wasbanned the doctors seemed to get on quite well withoutit, and to a certain extent it appeared that substituteshad been found satisfactory. A former president of theAmerican Medical Association had cabled him

" American experience-nobody objects to ban on heroinexcept the addicts. Medical substitutes entirely satisfactory."

Again there were many hospitals in this country whereheroin was used sparingly. The average consumptionof heroin in ten teaching hospitals in 1953 was 432 grains.In a debate at the Royal Society of Medicine on thetreatment of inoperable cancer, heroin was not mentioned.There were important textbooks, in common use bystudents, in which heroin was not mentioned. Weshould not ignore this body of evidence from those whodid not use heroin.Turning to another point, Lord Moran said that nobody

would interfere between a patient and his doctor without

good reason, but surely this freedom of the doctor couldnever be absolute. Surely we must not push a principlebeyond the point of common sense. Surely the freedomof a doctor carried with it also responsibilities and somerecognition of what was due to the community. Forcenturies we in this country had lived an isolated, happylife, enjoying the benefits of national sovereignty. Thehydrogen bomb had put an end to that. We were facedin the future with grim alternatives. Anybody couldsee that there was no hope in the world unless therecould be a measure of understanding among the nations-some degree of common action. Lord Moran askedthe House to take a step towards that goal, and to makea contribution, however small, to the far-off ideal of thebrotherhood of nations.

ENGLISH METHODS

Lord WEBB-JoHNSON maintained that the Governmenthad not yet had expert advice on the value of heroinas a therapeutic agent. He took the opportunity topoint out that provision was included in the NationalHealth Service Act to prevent the Central Council andthe Advisory Committee from being used as supremebodies for giving advice on medical matters. It wasforeseen that the representative bodies of the professionmight be short-circuited and ultimately superseded. Ifthe British Medical Association and the Royal Collegeswere to be supplanted, and if advice on medicine ingeneral was to be sought from the Ministry’s standingmedical advisory committee, serious notice must be takenby the profession of the improper use of that committee.Meantime, he suggested that such advice as had beengiven and received might be withdrawn until consulta-tions had been held with those who had the necessaryexperience to qualify them to advise. In future theadvisory committee would be wise to refuse to adviseon matters which ought to be referred to representativebodies of the profession, while in matters which requiredexpert investigation they should appoint a subcommitteeto report. We in this country had been wonderfullysuccessful in preventing addiction to habit-forming drugs.Let other countries follow our methods. Should notother countries sometimes follow Britain ? But do notlet us follow along the path of prohibition-a bad anddangerous way, the tragedy of which he saw with horror.Lord WAVERLEY had always regarded medical practice

as a highly individual activity, and for a Governmentto deprive an able, responsible, and conscientious medicalman of the opportunity of prescribing what he genuinelybelieved was necessary in the best interests of his patientwas, in his view, indefensible in the absence of the mostcogent and compelling reasons. He wondered whatpossible good the prohibition of the manufacture ofheroin in this country was going to do to any othercountry. The proper course, he suggested, would be toprohibit the export of heroin and accompany that pro-hibition by the most complete control of manufacture.

Lord HADEN-GUEST, on the other hand, held that anarrow view must not be taken just because heroinaddiction was not a problem in this country. For manyyears, fed by widespread international illicit traffic, ithad been a grave social danger in the United States andCanada. It was the United States which was asking usnow to join her in making this a universal ban. Thestruggle against narcotic drugs was an internationalproblem and could not be solved at the national level.Lord AMULREE regretted that the Minister had not goneback to the Standing Medical Advisory Committee afterhe had received the deputation from the B.M.A. in Julyso that the committee could consider the objections.

THE GOVERNMENT’S REPLYViscount WooLTON, Chancellor of the Duchy of

Lancaster, replying to the debate, pointed out that themedical committee which advised the Government con-sisted of people of extraordinary diversity. In it therewas a great central body of opinion of the Royal Colleges,the General Medical Council, the British Medical Asso-ciation, and from these people they had received a clearanswer. He doubted whether clinical experiments onthe use of heroin would be useful. It was difficult toprove a negative. They would be trying to prove thatthey could do without heroin, and surely the real

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difficulty was that pain was not a measureable thing.But if the House thought that it would be a good thing,the Government were prepared to take early advice fromthe Medical Research Council as to whether it would bepracticable to arrange a special series of scientific trials.But surely there was some clinical evidence on whichthey could form some judgment. There were manydoctors in the country who did not use heroin, whichsuggested that other drugs could be effective.He thought that in medicine during the past few years

there had grown up a body of people who thought itnecessary in the interest of their profession, to seek toprotect themselves against incursion by the Stateinto their affairs. But when an individual found himselfopposed to the scientific thought of his profession LordWoolton could not admit that he should be left as alaw to himself. Prescription was obviously the duty ofthe doctor ; but permission to trade in dangerous goodswas the duty of the Government. The two factors mustbe balanced.On the legal issue raised by Lord Jowitt, Lord Woolton

suggested that the House would be well advised to

suspend judgment until the publication of theGovernment’s white-paper. Meanwhile he could say thatthe ban on heroin would not be imposed by the Govern-ment unless and until it was clearly established that suchaction could be legally taken. In order to give ampletime for full and careful consideration on this matter theGovernment would not impose the ban on Dec. 31.Of course it would be for the Government to considerwhat the next step should be if the legal issue put forwardby Lord Jowitt proved to be well founded.After some discussion the MARQUESS of SALISBURY

gave Lord Jowitt an assurance that licences for manu-facture would be granted for the year 1956.In announcing the postponement of the ban in the

House of Commons on Dec. 16, Major GWILYM LLOYD-GEORGE, the Home Secretary, said that the only doubtthat had arisen was on the legality of prohibiting manu-facture of the drug. There was no doubt about the powerto prohibit its import or export and no licences to importor export would be issued after Dec. 31.

Sir ROBERT BOOTHBY: Will the Home Secretary give anassurance that before any final decision is taken he will havefurther consultation with the B.M.A. and the M.R.C., and thatthe House will be given an opportunity of debating thesubject ?-Major LLOYD-GEORGE : It is not going to be easyto find something better than a representative committee togive advice to Ministers. We cannot consult the wholemedical profession, and it is not a profession from which youget complete unanimity. But the point is surely that it isaccepted on all sides that the proper bodies to confer ontechnical matters with the Minister are those representativeof the particular profession or industry with which they haveto deal. Otherwise consultation is utterly impossible. Thiscommittee has given two Ministers of Health advice on thismatter, and I still cannot see what better representativecommittee one could get.Dr. REGINALD BENNETT : - Under his powers can the Home

Secretary restrict the amount produced in the coming yearto that needed here by the profession, taking account ofexisting stocks ?-Major LLOYD-GEORGE : Yes.

QUESTION TIME

Single-handed PracticesIn answer to a question Miss PATRICIA HORNSBY-SMITH,

parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Health, said that230 single practices fell vacant during 1954, and 134 of thesewere filled on the same basis.

Deaths from Pulmonary TuberculosisIn answer to questions Mr. lAIN MACLEOD said that the

number of deaths from respiratory tuberculosis in Englandand Wales fell from 19,088 in 1948 to 7069 in 1954.

Student Mental NursesIn answer to a question Mr. MACLEOD said that the rate

of wastage of student mental nurses was estimated, in aninvestigation covering the years 1948 to 1953, to be about 60%.

Drunkenness among Young PeopleReplying to a question, Major LLOYD-GEORGE said that

in 1954 there were 124 convictions for drunkenness among865,000 males, and 12 offences among 839,000 females, underseventeen ; and 3157 offences among 1,041,000 males aged

seventeen and under twenty-one, and 209 offences among1,107,000 females aged seventeen and under twenty-one. Thepolice, he was informed, had no reason to think that the figuresindicated any tendency for juvenile drunkenness to assumeserious proportions.

Medicine and the Law

Attempted Suicide not a Serious CrimeA 36-year-old labourer was seen by a police constable

to steal a spare wheel and tyre from a motor van. Hewas arrested, and that night in his cell he broke thewindow, cut his neck on both sides with the glass, andcalled the gaoler. He - was convicted of larceny andattempted suicide and, as he had a large number ofprevious convictions for various offences, including manyfor drunkenness, the magistrate who convicted him senthim to Stoke-on-Trent borough quarter sessions forsentence. At quarter sessions, while a probation officerwas giving evidence, the recorder intervened and said :" May I be allowed to put the problem as it presentsitself to met z? Self-murder is one of the most seriouscrimes in our calendar. An attempt thereat, therefore,is a very serious crime indeed." He went on to say thathe was minded to treat the attempt as a frivolous onebut that the evidence had proved that it was a serious,sane attempt on the part of this labourer to take his life ;how could he take that lightly ? The recorder imposedsentences of two years’ imprisonment for the larcenyand two years’ imprisonment for the attempted suicide,to run consecutively. The labourer appealed against thelatter sentence.The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, giving the judgment of the

court, said that never in his life had he heard of a sentenceof two years’ imprisonment for attempted suicide. Thelabourer was obviously of a somewhat unstable disposi-tion ; there seemed to have been some doubt whetherhis attempt was serious or not, though the doctor thoughtthat it might have been a genuine attempt at suicideand not a piece of exhibitionism. It would not be

right to say that attempted suicide was a trivial thing,but’these attempts were made by unbalanced people.It was the first time that his Lordship had heard thatsuicide was one of the most serious offences known, andthat attempted suicide was a very serious crime indeed.Suicide had been regarded by the spiritual courts as acrime and had been made a crime at common law toenable the Crown in the old days to obtain forfeiture ofthe suicide’s goods, since anyone who committed suicidewas supposed to have committed murder. Therefore itwas a source of revenue to the Crown but it was not a

very serious crime and to say that it was showed a lackof proportion. A short sentence was often imposed bythe courts to protect a man against himself. Nowadaysprosecutions for attempted suicide were rare and it wasabsurd to say that a sentence of two years’ imprisonmentought to be passed. The court could not possibly allowsuch a sentence to stand and would substitute a nominalone of one month’s imprisonment to run concurrentlywith the other sentence, against which no appeal hadbeen made, of two years’ imprisonment for larceny.

Regina v. French-Court of Criminal AppeaZ Lord GoddardC.J., Hallett and Pearson JJ. : Dec. 12, 1955.

Barrister-at-Law.

Hospital-authority DocumentsThere has been an unexpected sequel to a case in

which the St. Albans coroner wrote to the Mid HertsGroup Hospital Management Committee recommendingan inquiry into the medical treatment of a woman whowas admitted to hospital with aspirin poisoning andwho subsequently died.1The management committee adopted a report of the

medical advisory committee 1 ; and the gist of the

1. See Lancet, Nov. 26, 1955, p. 1132.