125

irritant, so that it is specially useful where repeateddoses of an anthelmintic are indicated. 7 Its toxicityis small compared with its therapeutic power, althoughthe personal idiosyncrasy seems to vary a good deal,as it also does in the case of chenopodium oil. From

experiments on worm musculature, the anthelminticaction of santonin is attributed by LA-UTENSCHLXGElt8and by TRENDELENBURG9 to the lactone ring in 1conjunction with the aromatic nucleus, open chain ilactones being inactive. They found that simple ]

cyclic lactones such as phthalide and meconin were as 7active as the more complex santonin, but there is no 1

evidence that these simpler lactones are of any thera- (

peutic value, and experiments on the muscles of E

non-parasitic worms are not a very safe guide toanthelmintic value. Very careful and elaborateexperiments of this kind were made on earthworms by i.SOLLMAN,10 but these and the experiments of LAUNTEN- 1sCxLAGEx and TRENDELENBURG do not indicate the Jspecific action of anthelmintics over certain worms, Jand therefore cannot explain, for example, why lsantonin is active against round worms and not againsttape-worms, while male fern is active against tape- Jworms and not against round worms. Recently, apreparation called santoperonin was introduced, which lclaimed to be chemically analogous to santonin and Ito male ferii, and to possess the therapeutic properties <of both, but actually it has not the least chemical Jresemblance to either of them, and its anthelmintic s

and therapeutic properties are extremely doubtful.ll I

As a remedy against tape-worms the so-called

pelletierine tannate seems to be the best. It is not 1a definite chemical compound but is the precipitateobtained by the action of tannin on the extract ofpomegranate bark, and is therefore a mixture of the,tannates of the various alkaloids present inthe bark. :The pharmacology of these anthelmintics is still in a i

very undeveloped state. Most phenolic substances,for example, have some anthelmintic action, and thisis not surprising in view of their irritant and toxiccharacter. Any irritant or toxic substance probablyhas some anthelmintic action, and if unabsorbed bythe gastro-intestinal tract might have some thera-peutic value, but it would not be a specific anthel-mintic and would be therapeutically inferior to drugssuch as santonin, male fern, and pelletierine. Carbontetrachloride probably acts as a general poison in thisway. With regard to santonin, two conflicting viewsare often quoted without comment in text-books ofpharmacology. According to SCHROEDER, santoninexpels round worms without killing them, and accord-ing to KucHENMEiSTER it kills them more rapidlythan any other drug. This apparent discrepancy isprobably due to the insolubility of santonin. In

conjunction with oil, such as castor-oil, as in the

experiments of KUCHEN:M:EISTER, sufficient is appa-rently dissolved to kill the worms, whereas the minutetrace dissolved in the absence of oil (SCHROEDER) issufficient to expel the worms without killing them.From this it appears evident that santonin is a trueanthelmintic with a specific action on the roundworms. The same may be said of male fern andpelletierine, in respect of tape-worms, a concentrationof 1 in 10,000 of pelletierine killing tape-worms in tenminutes. When it is realised how resistant theseparasites are to most anthelmintics, this specific actionis the more remarkable, and further investigation asto its mode of action would be of the greatest interest.

7 M. C. Hall : Studies on Anthelminties, ix.8 Ber. Dents. Pharm. Ges., 1921, xxxi., 279-291.

9 Arch. Exp. Path. und Pharm., 1915, lxxix., 190.10 Jour. Pharm. and Exp. Therap., 1918, xii., 129-171.11 Report State Inst. Pharm. and Therap., Leyden, vi.

Annotations.

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE B.M.A.

" Ne quid nimis."

THE annual representative meeting of the BritishMedical Association opens to-day, Friday, July 18th,in the Examination Hall of the Technical College ofBradford, under the chairmanship of Dr. R. WallaceHenry. The printed agenda, which runs to nearly150 items, includes such matters as indirect methodsof advertising, legal liability in medical certification,and contributory schemes for private insured persons,which give promise of vigorous and profitable discus-sion. This meeting is expected to remain in sessionuntil Tuesday, July 22nd, when it is followed by theannual general meeting, at which the outgoingPresident, Mr. C. P. Childe, will induct his successor,Mr. J. Basil Hall, consulting surgeon to the RoyalInfirmary, Bradford, who will then deliver thepresidential address. The scientific sections will thenmeet concurrently on Wednesday, Thursday, andFriday, July 23rd-25th, and interesting subjects areset out on the provisional programme. The Sectionof Medicine, for instance, will take up cardiac irregu-larities, jaundice, and small-pox ; the Section ofSurgery will discuss acute osteomyelitis, pulmonaryembolism, and auricular fibrillation ; the Section ofPathology will have before it tissue culture, non-specific immunity, and protozoal intestinal affections.The annual dinner of the Association will take placeat the Midland Hotel, at 7 P.M., on July 24th. Apopular lecture on the Sun Cure will be delivered inthe Mechanics’ Institute by Sir Henry Gauvainon the evening of Friday, July 25th. The exhibitionof surgical appliances, foods, drugs, and books, to beopened on July 22nd in the Windsor Halls, will giveopportunity to members of the medical profession tosee for the first time a number of new and ingeniousinventions. The closing day of the meeting, Saturday,July 26th, has been set apart as usual for a variety ofattractive excursions. The hon. local general secretaryof the meeting is Dr. W. N. West Watson, VictorLodge, Manningham, Bradford.

THE MEDICAL LESSONS OF A WAR.

THE last volume 1 of the Medical History of theGreat War, which has just reached us, brings to aclose a well-planned and quickly executed piece ofvaluable medical historical research. This volumemerits the praise we gave to its predecessor2 ; it isa wonderfully clear statement of events as theyoccurred, compiled from a multitude of often con-flicting reports from units involved in complicated andconfused operations. It deals with many expeditions,each with its own trials : Gallipoli with its flies, thelack of water, and few hospital ships ; Macedoniawith malaria, mountains, and no roads ; Meso-potamia with want of plan, and shortage of personneland equipment; East Africa with its rain, tropicaldisease, and no natural main line of communications ;Persia with its distance, its strange diseases, andthousands of refugees to feed, treat, and keep fromspreading epidemics ; Russia, a problem of swamps,snow, and uncertain allies. One outstanding lessonof this volume is that when an expedition is under-taken without careful consideration the first personto suffer is not the neglectful staff officer, though hemay be brought to book later on, but the fightingman himself, who, because the medical corps has notbeen invited, nor given time, to do the best for him,gets unsatisfactory water or food when he is well,and not enough bearers or hospitals when he is sickor wounded. Were the staff, on active service, to take

1 History of the Great War. Medical Services, GeneralHistory. Vol. IV. By Major-General Sir W. G. Macpherson,K.C.M.G., C.B., LL.D. London: H.M. Stationery Office.1924. Pp. 711 + xvi. 25s.

2 THE LANCET, May 24th, 1924, p. 1060.

126

medical officers more into their confidence, tellingthem where and when the battle was to be, thewounded might be more quickly, more comfortablyhandled.

All the Regular officers of the R.A.M.C. as theyread this book will realise how great is their responsi-bility, for on them hinges the evacuation of thewounded, and it is they who must firmly claim, fromthose above them, the personnel and material, thetransport, sanitary sections, or what not, withoutwhich they cannot do their best for the soldierstrusted to them. Sanitary sections should accompanythe very first troops of any expedition ; they preventdiseases. Civil practitioners will find (at p. 601) thatarmy doctors are not doing surgical operations allthe time, but that the most useful service a medicalofficer may have within his power to do for the sickmay be to see how many of 300 camels he can getto a particular place and where each camel will beable to take two wounded to hospital, for everycamel lost means two wounded delayed. The lastchapter on transport by stretcher and ambulance isa record of wonderful ingenuity, evoked by the vastlydifferent conditions of the various theatres of thewar. In France the wounded were removed in trenchstretchers, in the mountains of Macedonia in travois,camels carried them in Palestine, sand carts in Sinai,country boats and river steamers in Mesopotamia,hammocks in East Africa, sledges in Russia. Trainsand motor ambulances were always the most desired,but horse-drawn ambulances, with teams of fourhorses, still proved of value, for they can travel overfields and rough ground cut up by shells, where nomotor ambulance can move. Air transport of woundedis not mentioned, although we are told of a medicalofficer who was carried some hundred miles in a

seaplane in Russia to see a patient. An unexpecteddiscovery of the war was the particular suitabilityof the educated native of Uganda for work in themedical corps. Enlisted mainly from the missionschools, and subsequently given the status of soldiers,a thousand of them were employed in small partiesfrom Abyssinia to Durban ; their non-commissionedofficers were found fit to be put in charge of largegroups of porters in a native hospital. Praise is alsogiven to the undaunted conduct of an Indian fieldambulance at Gallipoli, of the Egyptian camels andtheir drivers on the Sinai desert, and to the travoismules in Macedonia, all unperturbed by shell fire.The maps and pictures in the volume are mosthelpful ; the statistics of illness would be moreenlightening if in every case the numbers were givenof the troops to which they refer.The volumes, indispensable as they are, are too

many for any officer to carry in his kit. A short butpregnant resume of the series, a sort of Medical IOfficers’ Pocket Book, would serve to make the -lessons of the last war, often so hardly learnt, available

&deg; to those who will have to struggle with the difficultiesof the next. Details may then be different butprinciples must still count.

AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING OPHTHALMOLOGICAL

CONVENTION.

IT has been decided by the OphthalmologicalSociety of the United Kingdom and its affiliatedsocieties to hold in London next year a Convention of

- English-speaking ophthalmological societies and asso-ciations, and invitations have been issued to thepresidents of all such bodies in the different parts ofthe British Empire and the United States of Americaasking them to appoint official delegates or repre-sentatives on the occasion. The date suggested isfrom July 14th to July 17th, inclusive, and theConvention will be inaugurated by a reception givenby the President and Council of the Royal College ofSurgeons of England at the College on the eveningof July 13th. The programme for the four days’ workhas been already arranged. Each morning, two

afternoons, and one evening will be occupied in the

scientific work of the Convention. The BowmanLecture will be delivered by Sir John Parsons, thechairman of the committee for scientific business andpublication, there will be a discussion on the micro-scopy of the living eye, and selected speakers will alsotake part in a debate on the evolution of binocularvision. The rest of the time will be taken up byvisits to various institutions of ophthalmologicalinterest, while receptions have been arranged, a

banquet and a garden party. Those taking part inthe Convention who are not members of the Ophthal-mological Society will pay a fee of .62, while for ladiesaccompanying members of the Convention, who wishto become associate members, the fee will be 10s.The President of the Convention is Mr. E. TreacherCollins, who can be addressed at 17, Queen Anne-street, London, W. 1. ____

THE STANDARDISATION OF DYSENTERY

SERUM.

THE therapeutic value of aritidysenteric serum isnot a subject upon which anyone who had experienceof epidemic dysentery during the war will have anydoubts. Where serum was freely used excellentresults generally followed. In most cases a polyvalentpreparation was employed, and it is more than prob-able that had any monovalent serum been availableeven better results might have been obtained, sincethere is no definite evidence that the different typesof dysentery bacilli produce a common and uniquetoxin. The standardisation of dysentery serum is amatter of some difficulty, and at the present time weare far from the realisation of the same accuracyof titration which is possible for diphtheria and tetanusantitoxins. The difficulties are both that of techniqueand that of inadequate information. We are unable toproduce the same sharply marked animal results as withthe two last-mentioned infections, and knowledge ishazy as to the undoubted toxicity of the dysenterybacillus. A recent work from the Kitasato Institute ofJapan, published under the auspices of the Leagueof Nations, has made an attempt to narrow downthe issues in this field, and to clarify the principlesof the standardisation of dysentery serum. Theauthors of this paper concern themselves solely withthe Shiga variety of bacillary dysentery, and as afirst step towards the end in view have endeavouredto find out the best way of preparing a potent andstable dysentery toxin. They find that in brothcultures the toxicity rises pretty sharply for a coupleof weeks and thereafter falls off again, the develop-ment of maximum toxicity corresponding to thedevelopment of a late alkalinity of the medium whichreaches its maximum at about the same time as thetoxin content. The toxin thus prepared is fairlystable, but by no means absolutely so. Its toxicity iswell marked, 0-05-0-1 c.cm. being generally fatal torabbits. It does not, however, appear to be as toxicas is an autolysed extract of the bacterial bodies.Having obtained adequately toxic preparations forthe estimation of the protective powers of anti-toxins, the authors proceeded to compare antiseraprepared by the injection of a number of pre-parations. The experiments are not sufficientlynumerous to give convincing results, but, with thisproviso, it appears that serum obtained by injectinghorses with fresh cultures of dysentery bacilli, sus-

pended in saline, is likely to be more potent thanthat prepared by the injections of sterile toxins andbroth cultures, both of which are more lethal to theanimals than is the first-named preparation.The actual standardisation of antitoxin was found

to be fraught with great difficulties, not the leastbeing the wide variation in individual susceptibilitymet with in the rabbits upon which the experimentswere made. For example, one animal may becapable of withstanding several times the dose which

1 The Standardisation of Dysentery Serum. League ofNations, Health Organisation. First report by Kiyoshi Shiga,M. Kawamura, and K. Tsuchiya. The Kitasato Institute forInfectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan. Geneva. 1924.