NOTES 135 



Moderate feud in the London County Council twenty years ago 

 — interest creates enthusiasm, and there is no difficulty in 

 getting the voter to the poll. 



The conclusion seems inevitable. All government rests 

 on the consent of the governed ; but autocratic rule depends 

 on the passive consent, parhamentary rule on the active consent, 

 of the governed. The latter system therefore assumes that 

 every elector is not only able, but wilhng to, exercise his 

 function of choice. When the bulk of the electors do so, the 

 Government may be good or bad, but it approximates to the 

 ideal of parliamentary rule ; when only a minority trouble to 

 vote, as in local elections, Local Government tends to approxi- 

 mate in fact, although not in theory, more nearly to the auto- 

 cratic ideal, and the few rule the many. 



The proportion of voters who go to the poll is a roughly 

 accurate index to the amount of interest in the issues raised. 

 But this in turn involves consideration of the difficult and com- 

 plex question of the factors that make and alter public opinion 

 — which exists and functions under both autocratic and parlia- 

 mentary government — the examination of which must be 

 deferred to a subsequent issue. 



Sir Patrick Manson. 



Sir Patrick Manson was the son of IMr. John Manson, of Aberdeenshire ; 

 was born on October 3, 1844 .' "^^^ educated at Edinburgh and at Aber- 

 deen ; and graduated in 1865 and took his M.D. in the following year. He 

 appears to have commenced medical practice in the island of Formosa, from 

 which he went to Amoy in China and then to Hong-Kong. He returned 

 finally to England in 1890 and took up consulting practice in tropical 

 medicine in Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square. He was appointed 

 one of the phj'sicians to the Branch Seamen's Hospital at the Royal Albert 

 Dock in 1894, ^^^d Medical Adviser to the Colonial Of&ce in 1897 ; was 

 made K.C.M.G. in 1903 and G.C.M.G. in 1912, when he retired from active 

 practice. His death occurred on April g, 1922, and a funeral service in 

 his honour was held on April 12 at St. Paul's Cathedral. 



When he was in Amoy Manson began to take great interest in tropical 

 parasitology, and it was his work in this line which gave him his high posi- 

 tion in the medical world, probably second only in Britain to Lord Lister 

 and Sir David Bruce, if that, in modern times. The diseases with which 

 his name was first associated were the group of maladies due to the nematode 

 worm called Filaria bancrofti. This little creature, about the thickness of 

 a thread of cotton but several inches long, lives in the lymphatic ducts, 

 where it emits numbers of embryos which find their way into the circu- 

 lating blood, in which they can easily be detected by the microscope. Owing 

 to the plugging of the lymphatics by the parent worm numerous lesions 

 are or may be set up, some of which are known as that hideous deformity 

 called elephantiasis, while others are famihar to medical men under various 

 names. Manson's work upon the pathogenesis of these diseases probably 

 constitutes his greatest achievement, though he seems to have been par- 

 tially preceded by other observers in this hne (I have not studied the matter 

 historically to a sufficient degree to give my opinion on matters of priority 



