DECEMBER 14, 1916| 
NATURE 
293 
~MEDICAL TREATMENT FOR DISABLED 
ail SOLDIERS. 
UR medical service is faced with a task which 
will try its skill and endurance to the 
utmost. “There are already,” says a writer in 
the Lancet (November 8, p. 867), “at the lowest 
estimate 50,000 disabled soldiers discharged from 
the military hospitals as unfitted for further ser- 
vice.’”’ Every week will add to the number. It 
is true that these discharged men have been cured 
of their -immediate wounds, but we must also 
realise that they are still convalescent. A large 
proportion stand in urgent need of a continued 
medical supervision. There are those whose lung's 
have been permanently damaged by poisonous 
gases or by the adhesions which follow healed 
wounds of the chest. In others the heart is 
injured and needs careful treatment; more fre- 
quently still, the nervous system has been thrown 
into a state of disorder which only nursing and 
skill will restore. There are thousands with 
damaged joints and muscles who can yet be 
brought back to take a full part in civil life if 
they receive the requisite attention. 
No one will question that it is the nation’s duty 
to attend to the immediate plight of these men. 
We have two national organisations which could 
take the problem in hand: the Army Medical 
Service and the National Health Insurance Com- 
mission. The Army has already enrolled most 
of the medical men who are specially qualified to 
deal with such cases; medical practitioners work- 
ing under the National Health Insurance Com- 
mission are already overtaxed. 
The Government of France, we learn from the 
Times (Novembex 14), has had to face this problem 
—a much greater one than falls to us. The dis- 
abled French soldier, when he is discharged from 
a hospital in Paris, still remains a soldier, a soldier 
still under discipline, and passes at once 
under the care of an _ organisation housed 
in the Grand Palais des Beaux Arts, splendidly 
situated, as every visitor to Paris knows, on 
the north bank of the Seine. Paintings and statuary 
have made room for all the modern appliances 
needed to restore stiffened joints and wasted 
muscles. The Grand Palais has become a portal 
through which disabled soldiers emerge as men 
again fit to take up a useful place in civil life. 
If necessary, they are trained for a trade or office, 
‘such as their physical limitations will allow them 
to undertake. The treatment has often to be 
prolonged, and discipline secures a continuity of 
application and a completion of cure. So well 
has this system worked in Paris that steps are 
being taken to have similar organisations set up 
in provincial military centres of France. 
The French are solving a difficult problem, and 
leading in a way we shall do well.to follow. In 
this country we have established at Roehampton 
and at Erskine the means by which officers and 
men are fitted with artificial limbs. There can be 
no question that these two institutions are ful- 
filling a national service, but the limbless form 
only a portion of our disabled men. Massage, 
NO. 2459, VOL. 98] 
electrical treatment, graduated exercises under 
skilled men and women are the chief means of 
treatment we can place at their service. We have, 
too, says the writer in the Lancet, “in Sir Alfred 
Keogh an extraordinarily sympathetic as well as 
able Director of the Army Medical Service, so that 
we can feel assured that the cause of the disabled 
soldier will be treated as a matter of the gravest 
national importance.” 
PROF. A. M. WORTHINGTON, C.B., F.R.S. 
HE death of Prof. A. M. Worthington at 
Oxford on December 5, after a short ill- 
ness, will be deplored by many men of science 
and a large circle of students who came under his 
educational influence. Born in Manchester in 
1852, Prof. Worthington was educated at Rugby 
and at Trinity College, Oxford, afterwards work- 
ing at Owens College, Manchester, and at Berlin, 
in the laboratory of Prof. Helmholtz. From 1877 to 
1879 he was headmaster of the Salt Schools, Ship- 
ley, and from 1880 to 1885 he was an assistant- 
master at Clifton. In 1887 he was appointed 
headmaster of H.M. Dockyard School at Ports- 
mouth, where he first took a hand in the training 
of the students of naval engineering, then quar- 
tered on H.M.S. Marlborough. In 1887 he was 
transferred to Keyham, Devonport, as_head- 
master and professor of physics at the new Naval 
Engineering College, and in that post he remained 
for the next twenty years. In 1909, owing to the 
reduction in staff that became necessary at Key- 
ham, which was then being gradually closed down 
under the new scheme of naval education, Worth- 
ington was transferred to the Royal Naval Col- 
lege, Greenwich, as professor of physics, but 
owing to ill-health he retired in 1911. The main 
part of Worthington’s life was thus spent at Key- 
ham, where he made a great success of the educa- 
tional side, of which he had charge. 
As a lecturer, Worthington was very fine. His 
favourite subjects were dynamics, hydraulics, 
optics, and statical electricity. These he presented 
to his students logically and clearly, illustrating 
them by many well-thought-out experiments per- 
formed with the simplest possible apparatus. He 
always laid out his lecture table with great care, 
so that each experiment could be seen by all. 
In the laboratory he was equally good, and was 
a most painstaking and energetic instructor, 
always endeavouring to make the student think 
for. himself. He was a pioneer in the’ introduc- 
tion of practical physics into schools, and his work 
in this direction, carried on at Clifton College, is 
embodied in his excellent little text-book, ‘‘ Physi- 
cal Laboratory Practice.” 
In his dealings with the naval officer in charge 
of the college at Keyham, Worthington always 
strove to maintain the dignity of his position and 
that of his civilian staff, whom he backed loyally 
in all matters of discipline. Here his ability to 
write a good letter stood him in good stead and 
won many. a battle with a new commander who 
failed to gauge his strength. 
As a popular lecturer on scientific subjects, 
