347

whose offices are in the central area. Apart from hisusual responsibilities, he has under his direction : (a)a supply depot with approximately ten days’ workingstock and seven days’ reserve ; (b) a butchery with cattlesheds, and sheep and goat pens ; (c) a bakery capable ofproducing 12,000 loaves a day, which is staffed by anItalian bakery unit ; (d) an ice factory with a producingcapacity of ten tons of ice daily ; (e) a mineral-waterfactory with a daily output of 18,000 bottles ; (f) anOrdnance officers’ shop ; (g) a pig farm and a dairy farm;(h) vegetable gardens and a flower nursery.

AMENITIES ’

Amenities for patients have been planned to make thearea so far as possible self-supporting, and thus not tothrow additional strain on the services which alreadyexist in Bangalore. Each hospital has its own playing-fields consisting of at least one hockey and one footballground, and there are simliar grounds in the staff areas.Within each hospital the patients have recreation, quiet,and information rooms, bright and tastefully decorated,and with pleasant tearooms. There are institutes in allthe staff accommodation areas. Cinemas holding 600have been built in both the east and west areas and willbe run by the Army Kinematograph organisation. Boththe east and west areas also have an officers’ club, andtennis-courts are being laid down by messes. A civilbus service operates between the hospital lines andBangalore.Both the British and Indian Red Cross Societies have

stores in Hospital Town. The former has undertakenresponsibility for the west area and the latter is cateringfor the hospitals in the east area. A Red Cross welfareworkers’ course lasting six weeks is held in the east area.

ROYAL MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL

ASSOCIATION

MB. BEVAN ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

AT the Association’s dinner in London on Sept. 5,Lieut.-Colonel A. A. W. PETRIE, the president, proposedthe toast of The National Health Service. Speakingof the mental aspect of ill health, he said that psychia-trists have a contribution to offer to the communitywider than is generally recognised. They were aimingto offer the nation a state of positive mental health, andhe thought this could only be done by the devotion ofmore time and study to the early signs of ill health.Psychiatry dealt not only with the end-results of mentaldisorder, in the mental hospitals, but also with theneuroses, child guidance, the adjustment of environ-mental situations in the home and in industry, and ques-tions of vocational guidance and rehabilitation. He

hoped that in establishing a National Health Service allthe wider aspects of mental health would be considered.Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN, Minister of Health, in reply, said

he did not take a depressive attitude towards the problemsof housing or health : a nation which had so successfullysurmounted the trials of six years of war could not failwith the problems of peace. But it was the duty of theGovernment to impress upon the people the same senseof dedication to a united purpose as had been forcedupon them by the war, and he hoped there would bean end to the eternal crying of woe, woe, woe. Asregards the National Health Service his mind was notfully made up, but he did not think that when the matterwas examined very much would be found separatinghim from the medical profession. Doctors seemed tofear that they would have superimposed upon thema national machine to obliterate their individuality, buthe thought that the business of, his Ministry was toprovide the doctors with the apparatus of medicineand allow them to use it without interference from asecular authority. He looked upon the general practi-tioner as the most important member of the profession,and he hoped that group associations would be organisedand the isolation of so many GPs would be broken down.He was meaning to have many discussions in the futurewith the medical profession, and in these discussions hehoped that the body of the profession would work tosee that their points of view were properly represented.There would be doctors who felt that a State medicalservice would put them too much under a democratic

machine. For his part, he wanted the miners, therailwaymen, and all the other workers to have a fargreater share in future in the running of their affairs,and in the same way he wanted the doctors to have arecognised status in their own affairs. He wantedthe doctors to meet him, not, as an antagonist but ina spirit of cooperation. The Government were

- going to do some unorthodox things and to attempt anumber of experiments. We were working underconditions of great physical difficulty, and if we wereto have free hospital services for all, the dangerousdepletion of nursing and domestic staffs in hospitalswould have to be rectified. He believed, however, thatbefore a year was over a structure on which a soundfuture for the medical services could be built would belaid before the people of Great Britain, and that in timewe should have a medical service that would make GreatBritain the envy of all other nations. He hoped thatthose who heard him would, when speaking with theirfriends, try to dissipate the atmosphere of suspicionthat had recently been created by the suggestion thatthe Ministry and the doctors were going to come to ahead-on collision.

In response to the toast of The Guests, proposed byDr. C. W. BOWER, Dr. CHARLES HILL, secretary of theBritish Medical Association, said that when the Ministermet the doctors he would find them ready and willingto cooperate and to extend the services to be renderedto the community, while at the same time seeking tomaintain the freedom and integrity of their profession.Unfortunately iu certain quarters of late the professionhad been misunderstood and bitterly misrepresented.As an example of this, he wished to give the lie to thereport that at the recent representative meeting of theBMA the delegates had cheered the announcement thatSir William Beveridge had been defeated at the polls.It had not been a cheer at all, but a murmur or gasp ofastonishment. Dr. G. KRAUS and DR. NOEL PERONalso responded to the toast, on behalf of the Dutch andFrench delegates.

Sir ALFRED WEBB-JOHNSON, PRCS, in proposing TheRoyal Medico-Psychological Association, spoke of theneed for the extension of psychiatry into wider fieldsand the importance of having psychiatric beds in generalhospitals. Dr. W. GORDON MASEFIELD, in reply, madea plea for the fuller recognition of the status of themental nurse. He trusted that the Minister wouldbring pressure to bear on the General Nursing Councilso that the mental nurse might have adequate repre-sentation on that body.

MEDICAL RESEARCH IN IRELAND

DURING the past year there has been no lack of material forinvestigation in Eire, and the work is described in the annualreport of the Medical Research Council of Ireland for 1944.Goitre is still found in County Tipperary, and more has beenlearned about the iodine intake of the people, while iodinesupplements are being given to the children and pregnantwomen of Clonmel and Kilsheelan. Rickets lurks in the

alleys of Dublin ; the number of cases was about the sameas last year but the maximum incidence fell among babiesunder a year whereas in 1943 those of ll-2 years old sufferedmost. Search continues for a chemotherapeutic agent in

tuberculosis, and in-vitro experiments have been carried outwith a number of synthetic branch-chained fatty acids.

Typhoid fever is still a menace, and some of the factorscausing irregular results with the Vi-agglutination test havebeen studied. Three typhoid carriers were unsuccessfullytreated with pheniodol. Better antigens are being soughtfor the production of diphtheria antitoxin and the diphyllo-bothrium-infested trout in Poulaphouca dam have not beenforgotten.

If more evidence is needed to show that medical researchin Eire is very much alive there are investigations on eclampsiaon the treatment of prostatic cancer with cestrogena, on theaction of acetylcholine on the heart, and on gastric secretions.

ON Wednesday, Oct. 17, at 8.30 rM at the Jewish GeneralHospital, Montreal, Dr. Paul Dudley White, chief of thecardiac clinics of the Massachusetts General Hospjtal, Boston,will deliver the eighth Louis Gross lecture. He is to speak onthe Heart of Hypertension since the Days of Richard Bright.