January 5, 1922] 



NATURE 



21 



guts of bed-bugs, and certain forms believed to be 

 a post-flagellate stage have since been described by 

 Cornwall, Knowles, and others, but the ultimate 

 development and exact mode of infection have hitherto 

 .eluded all workers, Mrs. Aidie has worked for a long 

 time at the Pasteur Institute in Shillong with Major 

 Knowles^ I. M.S., so there is every reason to hope that 

 the recent announcement will soon be confirmed. 

 Whether it will help much in dealing with the disease 

 is open to doubt, for long ago Dr. Dodds Price carried 

 out Rogers's suggestion to try to destroy bed-bugs 

 in infected coolie huts in Assam, but without much 

 success, while such very good results in dealing with 

 kala-azar by the tartar emetic J.reatment are now 

 being obtained in Assam that a vigorous campaign 

 on those lines may be expected practically to stamp 

 out the disease within a few years. 



The following have been elected officers of the third 

 International Congress of the History of Medicine to 

 be held in London on July 17-22 next : — President of 

 Honour: Sir Norman Moore, Bart. President: Dr. 

 Charles Singer. Vice-Presidents: Sir D'Arcy Power 

 and the presidents of the first two congresses. Dr. 

 Tricot-Royer, of Antwerp, and Drs. Jeanselme and 

 Menetrier, of Pans. Treasurer: Mr. W. G. Spencer. 

 General Secretary: Dr. J, D. Rolleston. 



H.S.H. Prinxe Albert of Monaco and Prof. G. O. 

 Sars, of Christiania, were elected foreign members of 

 the Zoological Society of London at its monthly meet- 

 ing on December 21. The secretary reported that 

 there had been 221 additions to the society's menagerie 

 during November, 104 by presentation, 66 deposited, 

 5 received in exchange, 44 by purchase, and 2 by birth. 

 The gifts included four lions born in India, presented 

 by the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar. The number of 

 visitors to the gardens during November was nearly 

 seven thousand fewer than during the corresponding 

 month of 1920. 



The annual meeting of the British Medical Associa- 

 tion will be held in the University buildings at Glas- 

 gow on July 21-28 next. The first three days of the 

 meeting will be taken up by the annual representative 

 meeting, and in the evening of July 25 the new presi- 

 dent. Sir William Macewen, will deliver his presi- 

 dential address. The remaining three days of the 

 meeting will be devoted to scientific and clinical work. 

 Papers and discussions are being arranged for the 

 morning sessions and clinical and laboratory demon- 

 strations for the afternoons. The scientific proceed- 

 ings of the meeting will be distributed among nineteen 

 sections, each dealing with a particular branch of 

 medicine. In the evening of July 28 a popular lecture 

 will be delivered by Prof. J. Graham Kerr. 



At the next ordinary scientific meeting of the 

 Chemical Society, to be held on January iq, at 8 p.m., 

 Prof. Arthur Smithells will give an account of Lang- 

 muir's theory of atomic structure, and will exhibit 

 models. In connection with Sir Ernest Rutherford's 

 lecture on "Artificial Disintegration of Elements," to 

 be given before the Chemical Society on Thursday, 

 February g, at 8 p.m., it has been decided that 

 NO. 2723, VOL. 109] 



visitors will be admitted by ticket only. Fellows of 

 the society will not need tickets for themselves, but 

 those desiring to bring visitors should apply for tickets 

 to the Assistant Secretary, Chemical Society, Burling- 

 ton House, W.I, not later than January 28. No 

 fellow will be allowed more than two tickets. The 

 lecture will be delivered in the lecture hall of the 

 Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Storey's Gate. 

 S.W.I. 



An exhibition of industrial heating apparatus, to 

 be held in April of this year, is being organised by 

 the Office Central de Chauffe Rationnelle, Paris, under 

 the patronage of the Society d'Encouragement in I'ln- 

 dustrie Nationale and the Soci^te des Ing^nicurs Civils 

 de France. The exhibition will comprise apparatus and 

 material connected with "la conservation et la re- 

 cuperation " of heat, and it will be divided into two 

 sections, one including refractory materials, in- 

 sulators, etc., and the other apparatus and plant, 

 such as economisers, heat-recovery plants, etc. Every 

 facility will be given for experimental demonstrations 

 of exhibits. Further information may be obtained 

 from M. L'Ingenieur Directeur de I'Office Central de 

 Chauffe Rationnelle, 5 Rue Michel-Ange, Paris, XVI. 

 We are informed that the director will be glad to 

 receive applications to exhibit from British manu- 

 facturers. 



At a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society on 

 December 20, Mr. E. A. Rusher read a paper deal- 

 ing with the statistics of industrial morbidity In Great 

 Britain. From a review of investigations on this sub- 

 ject for the past one hundred years, he concludes that 

 (i) age has the greatest influence upon the rate of 

 sickness, and next to this, occupation ; (2) occupation 

 has more influence than has either locality or density 

 of population, but the influence of the latter cannot 

 generally be statistically dissociated from that due to 

 occupation ; (3) there are no trustworthy statistics in 

 this country of morbidity among female lives ; (4) no 

 statistics exist of the sickness experienced by the com- 

 munity at large corresponding to those for mortality 

 published bv the Registrar-General. Mr. Rusher 

 advocated a systematic attempt to investigate the data 

 now available through the operations of approved 

 societies under the National Insurance Acts in order 

 to obtain some measure of occupational incidence of 

 sickness analysed into classes of disease. 



CoL. T. C. HoDSON writes in amplification of our 

 condensed report of his remarks in the discussion which 

 took place at the Royal Anthropological Institute on 

 Prof. Elliot Smith's paper on "The Mound-Builders 

 of Dunstable" (see Nature of December 15 last, 

 p. 512) to point out in reference to the distinct forms 

 of disposal of the dead associated with the mounds, 

 viz. (i) burial of a woman and child in a flexed posi- 

 tion and (2) cremation, that in India many living races 

 have two— in one case four— different modes of dis- 

 posing of the dead, varying according to (a) cause of 

 death and {h) social status of the dead. Col. Hodson 

 also points out that one of the elemental features of 

 Jhum cultivation in Assam is the use of logs of burnt 



