238 Biochemical News, Notes, and Comment 



and deliberately set themselves to do it. And, curiously enough, 

 the " hyphenated " Amer. has not been the slowest to move. Nature, 

 1916, cxvii, p. 60. 



Med. and scientific commit. of economic Expansion, A 

 med. and scientific commit. for the econ. expan. of France and her 

 alHes has just been founded at Paris. The first meeting was held 

 at the Fac. de med. under the chairmanship of the dean, Prof. 

 Landouzy. . . . Similar commit. are being formed in Gr. Br. and 

 in Italy. Russia and Japan have been invited to take part in the 

 organiz. The purpose of all these commit. is to oppose Ger. indus. 

 in all the allied countries. Before the outbreak of war, physicians 

 and scientists paid a heavy tribute to Ger. indus. Not only ehem. 

 and pharmaceut. products, but also all instruments used by the med. 

 profession, almost all optical and lab. instr., and lenses of almost 

 every kind, came from Ger. The attempt now being made is to 

 encourage the allies to produce at home, or, at any rate, to obtain 

 from one another, such supplies as they need in med. and scient. 

 work. The action of the med. and scient. commit. of the allied 

 countries will be threefold: (i) They will endeavor to induce the 

 purchaser (the practitioner or lab. man) to ask the origin of the 

 objects that he buys. (2) They will carry on an assiduous Propa- 

 ganda among manufac. to persuade them to produce all the articles 

 necessary for the use of lab's and in the prac. of med. (3) The 

 commit. will keep in communication with each other so that all 

 necessary data, especially catalogs printed in several languages, may 

 be exchanged to keep purchasers in formed with regard to produc- 

 tion and the finns which are able to supply articles which hitherto 

 have come from Ger. Paris letter : Joiir. Amer. Med. Assoc, 

 1916, Ixvi, p. 1125. 



Sanitation, disinfection. Sanitation of battlefields. The 

 Solution of this problem is occupying the attention of many men. 

 Cremation, which has been suggested, is distasteful to many persons 

 in France. Dr. F. Bordas advises, instead, accel. decomp. of corpses, 

 which will permit the ultimate removal of the bones without danger 

 to the living. In the " Study of Putrefaction," which Dr. Bordas 

 pub. in 1892, he noted the extreme variability of the time required 

 for decomp. Almost every cemetery has its own peculiarities due 



