453THE APOTHECARY’S SYMBOLS.-THE COST OF VACCINATION.

Saigon in Cochin China. Its most important property con.sists in the power of producing acetone in a solution of

peptone. It is a facultative aerobic organism, developing attemperatures between 30° and 37° C. and producing sporeson about the sixth day. It liquefies gelatin, reduces nitratesto nitrites without disengagement of gas, and coagulatesmilk. It has received the name bacillus violarius acetonicus.

THE APOTHECARY’S SYMBOLS.

OF thousands of medical men who daily write pre-scriptions probably very few know the origin of the signsof the apothecaries’ table as they are written. The

ignorance is excusable, for these signs can only be tracedin the tangle of the abbreviations and contractions ofmediaeval MSS. There were more than 5000 contractionsof Latin words in use in France between the seventh andsixteenth centuries, and more than 1000 are found in officialdocuments in England during the Tudor period alone; incomparison, Chinese is almost simple. On account of the

costliness of writing materials and the labour of transcrip-tion abbreviations and contractions were a necessity. The

Romans, with the direct boldness which was a characteristicof their race, simply left out whole syllables of words in

inscriptions and writings, but the mediaeval clerk had

not this courage. He essayed a conventional code of

expression for the most frequent syllables. The commonest

syllable in mediaeval Latin was the termination "us."

This was abbreviated in early cursive MSS. into whichis the long f with a flat U written over it. In the rapid writingof the commoner volumes this sign degenerated into the twodots representing the top and bottom of the f which left asign similar to our colon (:) ; thus m: came to represent"mus" and b : to represent " bus."

" This kind of expressionfor a contracted syllable is known by palseographists as a"ligature" and other ligatures were in frequent use. For

a long period the contraction symbol ; (our semicolon) wasone of those standing for " et," the dot representing e andthe comma standing for the slurred remains of the cursive t.This semicolon came gradually to be written 5, which wecan readily see is only a hasty, careless method of writing asemicolon without raising the pen. And we must remember

that to raise a reed pen in rapid writing risked a blot, andblots were not favourably received in mediaeval scriptoriaFor a long period again this ligature (5 or ;) was confinedto words ending in que or et, as in qn 5 for M/MK<<9,qu 5 for quoque, a 5 for appare t, 05 for oportet, 1; for lieet,t 5 for tenet, and s; for seilieet. Afterwards the symbol wasgeneralised to signify the omission of any final syllable, sothat og came to mean ounce or uncia. When printedtext arose the 5 at once became a z to suit the convenienceof a limited fount of type, but before this change becamegeneral the symbol o 3 had been slurred by hasty writinginto 3 and the lower weight of the drachma was derivedfrom this as 5. The sign for the scruple j is a" ligature " for sr, the long f being crossed by a cursive r.

THE COST OF VACCINATION.

OUR readers may remember that in the House ofCommons on May 23rd Mr. John Johnson asked the Pre-sident of the Local Government Board whether he had

power by himself to reduce the fees paid to public vac-cinators without having to appeal to Parliament or any otherauthority, and, if so, whether he would arrange for suchreduction. Mr. Burns said in reply: "The Local Govern-ment Board is empowered in its own discretion to make

rules and regulations with respect to the remunerationof public vaccinators. I am giving consideration to

the regulations on this subject." We now understand

that Mr. Burns has intimated that the regulations for

the charges ofvac cination will be dealt with by an order

of the Local Government Board at some time in theautumn. This statement may foreshadow a reduction in

the fees paid to public vaccinators, and those to

whom such a reduction seems just should rememberthat the Vaccination Act of 1898 laid a large amountof extra work on the shoulders of these officials. The

public vaccinator now has to visit the child’s house andto perform the operation with special precautions. Hehas more clerical work to do than before and two or more

statutory visits are required. Naturally, even under theminimum scale of fees, the cost of vaccination increased,and ever since the Act of 1898 came into force boards of

guardians have been complaining all over the country of thegreat cost of vaccination. It may be that the system ofvaccination in general will be transferred from the guardiansof the poor to the public health authorities, but althoughsome public vaccinators may earn their fees easily, others,especially in country districts, have to do an enormous

amount of work for a very small fee, and may even beout of pocket through their vaccination work.

ELECTROLYTIC DISINFECTANT.

I ATTENTION was first drawn to the peculiar nature of thepowerful antiseptic action of partially electrolysed sea

water in a series of bacteriological experiments made byTHE LANCET Special Analytical Sanitary Commission in con-nexion with the Hermite process of sewage treatment by elec-tricity which was tried on a small scale at Worthing in 1893.1It was shown that in the case of the bacillus typhosus theaction of the electrolysed saline fluid was reduced to one halfor less of its previous disinfecting power up to the first fiveor ten minutes of its operation, but, on the other hand, itsefficiency seemed after this time to be not merely recovered inthe stronger but even in the weaker solutions. It is probable,therefore, that the chlorine bodies formed some passing com-bination with the medium by which these substances

acted as a carrier, so that the antiseptic was handed

on again in an even more efficient form to the micro-

organisms. A similar action takes place on adding the

antiseptic to urine-that is to say, the antiseptic value testedin five minutes is reduced to about one-half on the additionof urine; but the antiseptic power which seems to have beenlost, if it is given sufficient time to operate, is still available,as in 24 hours the solution with urine exerts the sameinfluence as that without. It, in fact, seems more active.Samples of broth which had received comparatively smallquantities of electrolysed saline solution even after severalweeks contained a sufficient amount of available chlorineto be titrated in the form of iodine with arsenious acid or

thiosulphate of soda. These experiments seem to us to

account for the extraordinary disinfecting and deodorisingpower of electrolysed salt water. Putrid meat or fish offal,for example, is most effectually deodorised when immersedin the electrolysed fluid. There can be little doubt, however,that it is of the utmost importance that the electrolysedsaline fluid should be permanent as regards its strength, asrepresented in terms of available chlorine. Unless attentionis paid to certain details during the production of electro-

lytic fluid in the electrolysers, and to its treatment

immediately after its output, the fluid will gradually loseits strength. Since describing the interesting installationat Poplar in THE LANCET of March 24th, 1906, p. 852,many improvements in a practical direction have been

made, so that not only is an active antiseptic fluid turnedout continuously and needing little attention, but one whichkeeps at a standard strength and is permanent. The solu-

tion used contains magnesium chloride and sodium chloride.Magnesium chloride used alone does not give satisfactory

1 THE LANCET, May 26th, 1894, p. 1321.