June 30, 192 1] 



NATURE 



567 



Royal Sanitary Institute: Folkestone Congress, June 20-25. 



THE Royal Sanitary Institute was founded in 1876. 

 For more than forty years it has been, as it were, 

 .a chorus to interpret to the official and general public 

 the methods of applying scientific ideas to the im- 

 provement of the environment and to the promotion 

 •of individual health. Among its earliest congress 

 presidents it included Edwin Chadwick, Ward 

 Richardson, Douglas Gal ton, and others well known 

 in the history of the modern public health movement. 

 The annual congress has always been a convenient 

 ■occasion either for the announcement of some fresh 

 application of hygienic ideas or for the discussion of 

 administrative difficulties in their realisation. This 

 year the congress was held at Folkestone. The Earl 

 of Radnor was president. In his address he pleaded 

 for the retention of the voluntary hospital system, 

 arguing that unpaid medical service is somehow 

 superior to paid service. There is, perhaps, a sense 

 in which the consultants of the great and small hos- 

 pitals are unpaid, but it is an abuse of words to 

 suggest that they are philanthropists. The hospital 

 problem, however, is rapidly coming to a point when 

 discussion will yield to action, and with their usual 

 •elastic adaptivity our institutions will emerge into 

 something better. The "science" of the transition 

 will not be traceable until after the event. His lord- 

 ship's plea was put with lucidity and dignity — a 

 typically good illustration of a voluntary administra- 

 tor's attitude. The later discussion on hospital ser- 

 vice and medical service generally took a much 

 wider sweep, and made manifest how far we have 

 already travelled along- the lines of official medical 

 ■organisation. But this is a practical rather than a 

 scientific question, and may safely be left to the 

 administrators. 



Not so the question of smoke prevention. Doubt- 

 less it is a practical question, and is probably as old 

 as the oldest British health congress. It is one of 

 the by-products of the industrial revolution. From 

 the merely commercial point of view the waste has 

 Tseen incredible, whether we think of the factories or 

 of the home fires ; but not until the last twenty or 

 thirty years have the evil effects of smoke-spoiled 

 light and air begun to be understood or studied 

 scientifically. More than twenty years ago, at Glas- 

 gow, Sir William Ramsay in a popular lecture put 

 forward the suggestion that the fog-clouds due to 

 smoke absorbed the sun's violet and ultra-violet rays, 

 and, therefore, prevented those rays from having 

 their proper germicidal effect on the bacterial life of 

 the streets ; hence the Increase of microbic epidemics. 

 The remedy, he said, was to use gas-fires. Sir William 

 Ramsay at a later stage bettered this when he sug- 

 gested the production of energy from coal without . 

 "bringing it to the surface. These suggestions deserve 

 exploiting. But Prof. Leonard Hill, of the Medical 

 Research Council's Department, put the whole 

 problem in a new setting. This is what we should 

 expect from a man whose experimental work has 

 given a richer meaning to the term "ventilation," 

 and shown that our cardinal practical concern should 

 ■be with the cooling-rate of the body in relation to 

 the air. On the present occasion he explained the 

 peculiar effects of light, particularly the visible rays. 

 ■" Men live long who work In the clean moving air 

 and sunshine of the fields. While the expectation of 

 life for females (1911-12) In Westmorland was 66-6 

 \ and In the rural districts of Norfolk and Suffolk 

 [ 61-03, It was in the county boroughs of the North 

 49-93, In Middlesbrough 46-65." ^ It need not be 

 assumed that the whole responsibility for this rests 

 on smoke, but the cumulative case against It is very 



NO. 2696, VOL. 107] 



strong. On the other hand, the positive value of 

 light in its effects on metabolism is extraordinarily 

 high. This is accepted in therapeutics. "The visible 

 (luminous) rays of sunlight are of immense import- 

 ance, because they penetrate the skin and locally 

 warm up the blood, which absorbs them in the sub- 

 cutaneous vessels, while the body as a whole is kept 

 cool by the cool moving air." (This refers to the 

 sun-treatment of tubercular bones and joints In Alpine 

 sanatoria.) "On the' other hand, the dark heat rays 

 are absorbed by the surface of the skin and make this 

 warm. The ultra-violet rays have also no power to 

 penetrate. They are absorbed by as little as one- 

 tenth of a millimetre of the outer horny layer of the 

 skin." It is, then, the luminous, not the ultra-violet, 

 rays that have "so powerful an effect on health." 

 rhe inference from this double fact is obvious. 

 "Sunlight warming the blood locally, cold moving 

 air keeping the body cool and stimulating meta- 

 bolism, open-air exercise — these are the great 

 factors for health next to good food and sufficient 

 sleep, and of these the people of the cities are largelv 

 deprived." There are many practical deductions, but 

 it will take the medical schools and the administra- 

 tive authorities a long time to exhaust the value of 

 this piece of science revealed by research. 



In supplement to Prof. Hill's paper, Dr. Owens, 

 of the Committee on Atmospheric Pollution, gave 

 actual figures as to the tons of matter per square 

 mile deposited from the air. The broad facts are 

 (a) that industrial smoke is a small fraction of the 

 whole and can be completely controlled by existing 

 methods, and (fe) that domestic smoke accounts for 

 a vastly greater quantity, and at present cannot be 

 controlled. That is the smoke problem. 



There were many other practical discussions, each 

 involving a good deal of nascent science. For 

 example, the discussion of Infant feeding is, in Sflte 

 of the innumerable army of skilled observers, still 

 losing itself among unresolved factors. Dr. Vynne 

 Borland showed that in certain cases the overfeeding 

 of Infants results In wasting. This conclusion was 

 based on carefully analysed cases. Dr. Jervis gave other 

 cases to show that In certain forms of malnutrition 

 no variation of food has any effect, and that here 

 we are face to face with unknown factors, such as 

 deficiency or excess of secretion In the endocrinal 

 glands. It seems clear that until the relatively rough 

 work of clinical treatment can be better illuminated 

 by the work of the laboratories we shall have to 

 continue our practice empirically. 



Science is taking a steady grip of Industrial fatigue. 

 Mr. Wilson, of the Industrial Fatigue Research 

 Board, gave a summary of results under the title 

 " Some Effects of Environment on Efficiency and 

 Safety." Temperature, humidity, ventilation, and 

 lighting, all have definite relations to output, but the 

 precise effects are not easy to estimate. Heavy work 

 in high temperatures produces more In winter than 

 in summer. Good ventilation is found to neutralise 

 t'lp reducing effects of humidity. In silk weaving 

 artificial light reduces production by 10 per cent, 

 compared with daylight. There is an obvious case 

 for continuing research Into these "raw materials" 

 of industry. If onlv to secure some scientific basis for 

 a system of "welfare work." 



The science of rat destruction was represented at 

 the congress. Research has not got much beyond 

 the "aniseed" of the older rat-catchers and certain 

 familiar poisons. Mr. Claremont, of the Ministry 

 of Agriculture, gave a careful summary of facts. 

 The rat, it appears, Is " peculiarly susceptible [to 



