November 23, 191 1] 



NATURE 



115 



some honest, disinterested source for information; 

 naturally he goes to the college. In England matters 

 have sometimes been made worse by the appointment 

 of rather poor agricultural instructors and by the 

 fact that education is associated in the farmer's mind 

 with heavy county rates. 



Thus the success of the Canadian and American 

 colleges, as compared with that of the English 

 colleges, is partly to be attributed to differences in 

 local conditions, and the deputation failed to discover 

 a system that they could transplant here with any 

 hope of success. They learnt much, however, and they 

 applied the experience gained to their own problem 

 at Reading and drew up a scheme for a com- 

 plete agricultural department. Into the details of the 

 scheme we need not enter ; the principles on which it 

 is based, however, seem to us to be very sound. First 

 and foremost they consider that the staff must be com- 

 petent. " In making any new appointment of major 

 rank it is impossible to exaggerate the importance 

 of securing a first-class man. . . . No proposition re- 

 ceives more lip-homage in educational circles, and 

 perhaps none is more frequently flouted in practice." 

 That a university agricultural department staffed in 

 this way would be eminently successful is beyond dis- 

 pute, and all interested in agricultural education will 

 hope that Reading will have the means and the 

 courage to go ahead. For as the deputation found 

 out, specialisation is very necessary in agricultural 

 work ; indeed, they might have quoted the precisely 

 parallel case of medicine. No college would think of 

 setting up a professor of medical knowledge and one 

 or two assistants as a medical school. Yet most 

 colleges think the arrangement does sufficiently well 

 for agriculture; only one agricultural department has 

 more than one professorship ; indeed, at one of our 

 oldest universities even the examinerships are not 

 specialised, one and the same person being required 

 to examine both in agricultural botany and agricul- 

 tural chemistry ! 



Pas«;ing now to the memorandum on the principles 

 and methods of rural education issued by the Board 

 of Education, it is quite evident that a serious effort 

 is being made to bring the education of the country 

 school into some sort of relationship to the conditions 

 of country life. But in reading through it we are 

 not convinced that the Board has grasped the funda- 

 mental difference between the conditions of life, and 

 even the outlook upon life, in the country and in the 

 town. The reader instinctively feels that no new 

 method is being evolved, but the old system (which 

 has not been a conspicuous success in the rural dis- 

 trict) is simply making a second appearance in a dress 

 with some agricultural trimmings. The organiser 

 who is responsible for giving rural significance to the 

 schools is at present " primarily an expert in agricul- 

 ture in the narrower sense, and it will probably always 

 be desirable that this should be the case." But why? 

 Why not men who primarily possess insight and 

 imagination, who can get to the essentials of the 

 problem, and devise methods of dealing with it? 

 However, teachers and country authorities alike 

 realise its importance, and we may be closer than we 

 think to the new rural education. 



lllE NOTIFICATION OF TUBERCULOSIS. 



FOR some time past public opinion has slowly but 

 gradually been educated on the question of the 

 infectivitv of pulmonary and certain other forms of 

 tuberculosis. When notification of phthisis as an in- 

 fective disease was first mooted, a loud outcry was 

 raised, not only by the public, but even by medical men. 

 Certain enlightened communities, however, recognis- 



NO. 2195, VOL. 88] 



ing the importance of such notification, early obtained 

 povvers to put into operation a system of voluntary 

 notification. It was argued, and very wisely, that 

 until the medical officer of health anci his committee 

 could be put in possession of information concerning 

 centres of infection, little could be done to prevent 

 the dissemination of infective material from these 

 centres. It was maintained, further, that notification, 

 voluntary on the part of the patient and his 

 medical attendant, was preferable to no notifi- 

 cation at all, in so far that in the first place some 

 information as to the presence of tuberculous patients 

 would be provided, and, in the second, some experi- 

 ence as to the working of the system would be 

 obtained. 



The present chief medical officer of the Local 

 Government Board, even when he was medical officer 

 of health for Brighton, has always been in favour 

 of voluntary notification of tuberculosis, whilst so far 

 back as September, 1908, the present President of the 

 Local Government Board announced during the sit- 

 tings of the International Congress on Tuberculosis at 

 Washington that he had promoted an order that in 

 workhouses and similar institutions the notification 

 of pulmonary phthisis should be compulsory. Mr. 

 Burns has made the study of tuberculosis peculiarly 

 his own, and the further development of notification 

 and the extension of the compulsory clauses of the 

 Infectious Diseases Notification Act to this disease is 

 but the natural outcome of this systematic study by 

 men keenly interested in the preservation of the public 

 health. Moreover, there is a general feeling that even 

 this is not the last of the measures of preventive 

 legislation to be taken. 



It is now recognised that tuberculosis is to be 

 stamped out or cured by no single method or system. 

 The centres of infection are so varied, the phases and 

 types of the disease so numerous, and the condition 

 of the patients so diverse that siege must be laid tO' 

 tuberculosis in very different fashions, as occasion 

 may require. Only after obtaining a knowledge of 

 the individual cases can those in authority set to work 

 to classify them in such manner that appropriate 

 measures may be taken to meet the requirements of 

 these cases, as they are searched out and examined. 



The advanced cases of consumption — patients who 

 are left to linger on, badly fed, wretchedly housed and 

 clothed, weak, distressed, and disheartened — are most 

 dangerous centres of infection, and the only satisfac- 

 tory way to deal with them is to place them in hos- 

 pitals where, in comparative comfort, relieved from 

 anxiety as to their shelter and daily bread, segregated 

 as regards infection, but visited by their friends from 

 time to time, they may pass the remaining months or 

 years of their life. Remove these, the most danger- 

 ous, cases to hospitals — for they are dangerous so 

 long as they remain amongst their fellows — and they 

 become harmless. For other patients dispensary treat- 

 ment may be all that is necessary ; but as experience 

 is gained many of these will no doubt be sent to 

 sanatoria, partly for initial treatment and rest in order 

 that the cure may begin under the most favourable 

 conditions, and the patient may make a " good start," 

 but also in order that he may be educated in the care 

 of himself, and that he may render himself less 

 dangerous to others with whom he may have to live 

 and work. 



During the last fifty years the death-rate from tuber- 

 culosis has fallen more than 30 per cent. With proper 

 application of compulsory notification and stern tack- 

 ling of the problems that it will disclose, at least as 

 great, and probably a still greater, fall of this death- 

 rate mav be prophesied at the end of the coming 

 couple of decades. 



