62 



NATURE 



[March i8, 1920 



to be hoped that this branch of the Medical Corps 

 will be given the opportunities it deserves. The 

 proposal to form a dental corps is indeed excel- 

 lent, and it might be advantageous to unite with 

 this the plastic surgery which was so intimately 

 associated with dental work in the late war. 



In our opinion one of the best changes in the 

 Army medical administration is the establishment 

 of the new directorates of pathology and hygiene ; 

 an important consequence of this is that promo- 

 tion to the highest rank is now -open to the 

 specialists who take up such work in the Army. 

 Efficient collaboration with the civil profession and 

 with other branches of State medical work will 

 be ensured by the aid of an advisory committee 

 of experts, both civil and military. It may be 

 assumed that the work hitherto carried on by 

 the vaccine department of the Royal Army Medical 

 College will henceforth be taken under the direc- 

 torates of pathologv and hygiene. The figures 

 given in the memorandum show how largely the 

 work of the vaccine department aided in main- 

 taining the health of the troops in the field, and 

 with a very much smaller expenditure than would 

 have been entailed in private purchase. More 

 than 33,000,000 doses of vaccines of various types 

 were prepared during the last five years ; the 

 value of the vaccines is well illustrated by the 

 case of the protection afforded against the typhoid 

 group of diseases. In the French Army, before 

 full protection against typhoid, there were from 

 the outbreak of the war until the end of October, 

 191 5> 95>8o9 cases, with 11,690 deaths; after the 

 adoption of treatment the French figures were 

 comparable with our own — during the entire war 

 we had 7423 cases, with 266 deaths, in our 

 Expeditionary Force in France. 



The future of gas warfare is briefly dealt with 

 in the memorandum. This form of offensive has 

 evidently come to stay, and it is stated that, owing 

 to the fact that preparations for the use of gas- 

 can be made in peace time with great secrecy, it 

 is necessary continually to study defensive 

 measures capable of meeting such a form of 

 attack. Defence against gas involves physio- 

 logical, quite as much as chemical, measures, as 

 is shown by the important part played by physio- 

 logists in the elaboration of the British box 

 respirator, which is the most perfeqt and 

 wearable defence against all gases hitherto 

 employed in war. It is to be hoped that the War 

 Office will continue to consult both physiological 

 a nd^^chemical, experts in problems connected with 

 the constfijictioii qf respirators, and also in the 

 arrangements for training troops in such devices. 

 NO 9fic>n vni ^r\c'\ 



The Roast Beef of Old England. 



Cattle and the Future of Beef-Production in 

 England. By K. J. J. Mackenzie. With a 

 preface and chapter by Dr. F. H. A. Marshall. 

 Pp. xi+i68. (Cambridge: At the University 

 Press, 1919.) Price 75. 6d. net. 



WITH the advent of peace, British agriculture, 

 still harassed and bewildered by the 

 vagaries of a "control," painful, like a tooth, in 

 its going as in its coming, has entered upon a 

 transition stage towards the establishment of a 

 new equilibrium, the character of which must be 

 a subject of anxious concern to all who believe 

 that a prosperous and contented agriculture is the 

 soundest basis upon which the national welfare 

 can rest. At this juncture wise counsel is needed 

 from those best qualified to give it, and it will find 

 a more sympathetic hearing than was wont to be 

 the case in the bygone days when farming was 

 so generally looked upon more as a mode of life 

 than as a complex industry of vital importance to 

 the nation, and requiring the sympathetic and 

 active support of the community. 



The change in the direction of an increase of 

 plough-land at the expense of grass-land, which 

 was forced upon the industry by the necessities of 

 war, is already in process of reversal, and this 

 return to grass is likely to proceed at an increasing- 

 rate unless clear evidence is forthcoming that 

 arable farming for some years to come is likely 

 to give such enhanced profits as compared with 

 grass farming as will compensate adequately for 

 the greater worries and outlay it entails. The 

 gain to national security which the increased 

 supply of home-grown breadstuff's obtainable 

 from an enlarged arable acreage can confer is 

 obvious,^ and that this is at the same time con- 

 sistent with a profitable system of agriculture is 

 amply demonstrated in the practice of Germany, 

 Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries, where 

 systems designed essentially for the production of 

 corn, vegetables, and milk prevail. 



It must not be too readily assumed, however, 

 that these systems are directly applicable to 

 British conditions, which differ in many respects, 

 and, Mr. Mackenzie would warn us, in none more 

 vitally than in the more refined taste in meat, par 

 excellence beef, which marks us out as a race 

 apart. The German and the Dutchman are appar- 

 ently condemned by their systems of agriculture 

 to a beef mainly derived from the carcasses of 

 worn-out milch cows and draught oxen, but who 

 could forecast the consequences of a change in our 

 agriculture which would restrict the British work- 

 rnan — and the British cook — to such fare ! Mr. 

 Mackenzie has no doubt that, it would lead to " a 



