864 
NATURE 
[JUNE 23, 1923 

Passing on to the work in progress in the labora- 
tories, Sir John discussed it under its three main 
headings,—the cultivation of the soil, the feeding of 
the crops, and the maintenance of healthy conditions 
of plant work. In connexion with the work on soil 
cultivation and the physical properties of the soil, he 
stated that the Empire Cotton-growing Corporation 
has given a substantial sum for the development of 
this work, as it is convinced that questions of soil 
physics are of great importance in those parts of the 
Empire where cotton is grown. Among other recent 
developments are apicultural investigations and work 
on the control of insect pests by means of parasites. 
The New Zealand Government has been supplied 
with parasites of certain pests,—the earwig, pear slug 
larve, and pear leaf midge,—which cause extensive 
damage in that country. 
Sir Matthew Wallace also spoke of the value of 
the work at Rothamsted to the practical farmer. He 
compared the present wave of agricultural depression 
with that of 1880 when he started farming, and said 
that the comparison made him optimistic for the future. 
The close relations that must exist between research 
centres and agricultural colleges if both are to keep 
ahead of the times were alluded to by Principal M. J. 
R. Dunstan, of the Royal Agricultural College, 
Cirencester. Mr. George Dallas, of the Workers’ 
Union, said he was very greatly encouraged by the 
attention now being devoted by the Ministry of 
Agriculture and Stations like Rothamsted to the 
improvement of the lot of the farm labourer. He 
expressed the opinion that the recent increase of 
educational facilities will be of great benefit to the 
whole industry, and further it will help to prevent 
the departure of the best and keenest men from the 
land. 
In the afternoon the visitors made a brief inspection 
of the work in progress in the laboratories. 

New Principle of Therapeutic Inoculation. 
‘fo collaboration with L. Colebrook and E. J. Storer, 
Sir Almroth Wright published in the Lancet 
(February 24, March 3 and 10) an elaborate com- 
munication which is an expansion of a_ special 
lecture delivered before the Royal Society of Medicine 
in November 30, 1922. It is entitled ““ New Principles 
of Therapeutic Inoculation.” 
The new principles may be best understood by a 
brief reference to the older principles which they are 
intended to augment or replace. In the therapeutic 
inoculation for infective disease, it has hitherto been 
the custom, following Sir Almroth Wright’s earlier 
work, to inoculate the infected individual with a 
vaccine prepared with the virus with which the 
individual is infected. While the results in chronic 
infections have been on the whole excellent, there 
has been disappointment in the cases in which a 
heavy infection of a septicemic type occurred. This 
was due to a certain extent to the fact that the 
elaboration of specific protective substances was a 
matter of time, and the state of the individual might 
be such that he was incapable of elaborating protective 
substances at all. 
For a long time, however, it was known that non- 
specific bacteria, or indeed substances not bacterial 
in origin at all, might be employed to augment quickly 
the patient’s resistance by a process, it was thought, 
of leucocytosis and phagocytosis. While not agree- 
ing with this suggested action, Sir Almroth Wright, 
by many new and ingenious technical methods, 
shows that what he calls an “‘ epiphylactic ’’ response 
may be evoked by bacteria which are not identical 
NO. 2799, VOL. 111] 



with those with which the patient is infected. This” 
epiphylactic response occurs when inoculation is made 
into the blood in vivo or even in vityo, and takes place 
immediately by an extrusion of opsonic and bacteri- 
cidal elements from the leucocytes—an ectocytic 
rather than a phagocytic process. These ectocytic 
substances are polytropic in eharacter, i.e. they act 
not only on the homologous but also on heterologous 
bacteria. 
There is, in fact, a non-specific immunity, and it is 
this which Wright and his collaborators aim at 
producing to tide the patient over the critical days 
of his severe infection. The process adopted is named 
“immuno-transfusion,’’ and consists of the incorpora- 
tion of healthy human blood which im vivo or in vitro 
has been made, by inoculation, to develop an adequate 
epiphylactic response and is laden with protective 
substances. In this process it is clearly pointed out 
that quantitative determinations are of the utmost 
importance, as a dose of antigen optimal for one 
patient may be highly detrimental for another. The 
methods recommended are complicated, and treatment 
of severe cases of generalised sepsis, if it is to be 
successful, must lie in the hands of highly trained 
serologists. 2 

University and Educational Intelligence. 
ABERDEEN.—The Blackwell prize for 1923 has been 
awarded to Mr. F. C. Diack, the subject of the essay 
being ‘“‘ The Sculptured and Inscribed Stones of the 
North-east and North of Scotland.” 
The University Court has appointed the following 
lecturers to the newly instituted grade of reader in- 
their respective subjects: Geography, Mr. J. M‘Far- 
lane; bacteriology, Dr. J. Cruickshank; public 
health, Dr. J. P. Kinloch; embryology, Dr. A. Low. 
Prof. C. R. Marshall has been appointed John 
Farquhar Thomson lecturer on “* The Human Body ” 
for the year 1923-4. 
CAMBRIDGE.—Mr. J. Barcroft, King’s College, Dr. 
Adrian, Trinity College, and Dr. Hartridge, King’s 
College, have been reappointed reader in physiology, 
University lecturer in physiology, and University 
lecturer in the physiology of the senses respectively ; 
Mr. A. H. Peake, St. John’s College, and Mr. T. 
Peel, Magdalene College, have been reappointed as 
demonstrators of mechanism and applied mechanics. 
Senior studentships have been awarded by the 
Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 to 
D. Stockdale, King’s College, and J. H. Quastel, 
Trinity College. 
SHEFFIELD.—An anonymous gift of 20,000/, has 
been accepted by the University for the purpose of 
founding an undergraduate scholarship Be a number 
of post-graduate scholarships. The undergraduate 
scholarship is to be in the faculty of pure science, 
and is restricted to boys from King Edward VII. 
School, Sheffield. The post-graduate scholarships 
are to enable graduates to pursue research in ferrous 
or non-ferrous metallurgy. 

At a meeting of the trustees of the Albert Kahn 
Travelling Fellowships Foundation on June 14, Mr. 
W. Randerson was elected to the fellowship for 1923. 
Mr. Randerson was educated at the Imperial College 
of Science, South Kensington, and during this year 
has been a research fellow of the Salters’ Institute of 
Industrial Chemistry; recently he obtained the 
degree of M.Sc. (London) for a thesis on the chemistry 
ee eee 
