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NATURE 



[May 24, 191 7 



-We are indebted to the Lancet for the following 

 extracts from an obituary notice of Prof. Landouzy, 

 whose death, on May 10, after a long illness, we 

 announced last \yeek. Louis T. J. Landouzy was 

 born at Rheims in 1845, the son and grandson of 

 nredical men. Beginning his studies in the place of 

 his birth, he went to Paris in 1867 to complete them, 

 becohiing hospital resident in 1870, and steadily 

 ascending the professional ladder until his appointment 

 as physician to the Hospital Laennec in iSgo. Three 

 years after this he accepted the chair of therapeutics 

 at the faculty of medicine in Paris, bringing with it 

 the membership of the Academy of Medicine. In 1907 

 he was chosen by the faculty to be its dean, and in 

 1912 he was elected a member of the Institute. His 

 most recent honour was the award of a gold medal 

 for his work on infectious diseases by the Ministry 

 of the Interior. Landouzy had long become one of 

 the familiar figures of contemporary medicine both in 

 France and abroad. Endowed with a great capacity 

 for work, associated with remarkable physical activity, 

 he accomplished a very large amount of scientific 

 work bearing on a variety of important questions. 

 But it is in connection with tuberculosis that his name 

 will be best remembered. In the struggle against 

 tuberculosis as a social disease Landouzy was ever to 

 the front. He was delegate to the several inter- 

 national congresses on tuberculosis, and at Washing- 

 ton in 1908 expressed the belief that the centenary of 

 Pasteur would witness the final extinction of tubercu- 

 losis. If he had lived to complete it, his last work 

 would have been devoted to the organisation of an 

 anti-tuberculosis campaign in the Army and to the 

 ir.validing of the tuberculous soldier. He was present 

 in London at the last International Medical Congress 

 of 1913, when he read a paper on thermal treatment 

 and spoke as the official delegate at the dinner given 

 bv Lord Beauchamp on behalf of the British Govern- 

 ment. 



During the winter months, as Mr. Miller Christy 

 has stated in a recent paper. (Quart. Journ. Roy. 

 Meteor. Soc, vol. xlii., 19 16, pp. 269, 275), the sound 

 of gun-firing in Flanders and France is rarely heard 

 in the south-east of England. The conditions are now- 

 becoming favourable to audibility. According to ■a 

 correspondent of the Times (May 14), the air-waves 

 resulting from the heavy bombardment of Zeebrugge 

 on the morning of May 12 were heard and felt to an 

 unusual degree at Dover, Deal, and other places on 

 the south-east coast. Dover lies eighty miles to the 

 west of Zeebrugge, and there was a light north- 

 easterly wind at the time. Yet "residents in villages 

 several miles inland were awakened by the noise, the 

 houses on the higher ground especially feeling the 

 vibration." We have also received an interesting 

 letter from Dr. H. C. L. Morris, of Bognor, in which 

 he states that the sound of distant gun-firing was 

 heard at that place, while he was out of doors, from 

 II to 11.30 p.m. on May 13. He describes the sound 

 as "a continuous rapid vibratory peixussion, coming 

 up from the south-east. . ; . The sounds varied in in- 

 tensity, and as near as I could judge a hundred 

 distinct reports were heard to the minute. There was 

 a very light land breeze from the north-west at the 

 time." The sound-waves evidently came fropi a very 

 distant source, possibly from the neighbourhood of 

 Arras, which is 160 miles from Bognor. 



On April 2, 1916, shortly after 2 p.m., a great 

 explosion occurred in a munition factory at Faver- 

 sham. Several references are made to this explosion 

 in the descriptions of the East London explosion of 

 January 19. ITie observations are all from places to 

 the north of Faversham. The sound of the explosion 



NO. 2482, VOL. 99] 



was heard at Maldon (30 miles), Dunmow (45 miles), 

 and Little Bardfield, near Braintree (49 miles) — all 

 places, in the silent zone of the East London explo- 

 sion; also at Diss (715 miles) and Norwich (92 miles). 

 The air-waves shook v.indows at Little Bardfield, 

 Felsham (60 miles) and Elmswell (64 milesj near 

 Bury St. Edmunds, and Newmarket (68 miles) — in the 

 silent zone of the East London explosion ; also at 

 Uliford, near Woodbridge (60 miles), Diss, Wrening- 

 ham (88 miles) and Haddiscoe (89 miles) near Nor- 

 wich, Norwich, and near Aylsham (104 miles). There 

 is no evidence of a silent zone in this explosion, but 

 the number of observations summarised above is, of 

 course, too small either to prove or to disprove its 

 existence. 



It appears from the annual report of the Decimal 

 Association for 1916, which has just been received, 

 that considerable progress was made during the year 

 in the movement for the decimalisation of the coinage 

 and weights and measures. Numerous representative 

 public bodies have passed resolutions in favour of the 

 proposals; as, for example, the executive council of 

 the County Councils Association, which has expressed 

 the view that it is desirable in the interests of educa- 

 tion, commerce, manufactures, and trade that the 

 decimal system of coinage and weights and measures 

 should be as speedily as possible brought into general 

 use in the United Kingdom, and that the system should 

 be introduced into the curricula of the various schools 

 as a necessary part of arithmetic. In this connection 

 it may be mentioned that the Incorporated Association 

 of Headmasters has also invited its members 'to sup- 

 port the proposals, and that the Lancashire and 

 Cheshire division of that body has formed a committee 

 for the purpose of suggesting ways of discovering and 

 overcoming existing objections to the introduction of 

 the metric system. British consuls abroad have con- 

 tinually directed attention to the necessity of adopting 

 the metric system, and to the loss of orders and con- 

 tracts involved in the retention of our present weights 

 and measures. The recommendations of the 

 Dominions Royal Commission were very sympathetic 

 as regards the metric system of weights "and measures 

 and decimal coinage. The Commission was of opinion 

 that the termination of the war would bring with it 

 an unequalled opportunity for securing this much- 

 needed reform, and that the Imperial and Colonial 

 Governments should then co-operate to establish 

 throughout the Empire a uniform coinage based on 

 the decimal system and uniform weigltts and measures 

 based on the metric system. 



The Philadelphia Museum has recently acquired a 

 collection of specimens of the arts and crafts of the 

 Bagobo, a people inhabiting the mountains of Man- 

 danao, between the crest of the range which cul- 

 minates in the volcanic Mount Apo, the highest peak 

 in the Philippines, and the waters at the western side 

 of the head of the Gulf of Davao. This is described 

 by Mr. R. W. Hair in the Museum Journal, vol. vii.. 

 No. 3, for September, 1916. In Decerhber, when 

 Orion appears in the sky, there is a magical ceremony 

 intended to promote the growth of rice, their staple 

 food. Though the fact has been questioned, there 

 seems little doubt that at this sowing rite a slave 

 victim was bound and his body hacked in pieces by 

 the celebrants. It does not appear that, as in the 

 Khond rite described by Sir J. Frazer, the flesh was 

 actually buried in the fields. But this was possibly 

 part of the rite in its primitive form. 



In the Indian Journal for Medical Research for 

 January (vol. iv.. No. 3) Capt. Knowles and Capt. 

 Cole publish a study of the entamoebic cysts of in- 



