6l2 



NA TURE 



October i8, 1906 



seems to be a survival of a rite of actual fire sacrifice. 

 In some cases the juice of the A\oe indica is said to 

 be used as a protective, but iVIr. Thurston seems to 

 believe that the indurated skin on the soles of men 

 who habitually walk barefoot over the roughest 

 ground accounts for many cases of immunit}'. A 

 recent description by Mr. D'Penha of the rite as it is 

 performed at Travancore indicates that the length of 

 time whicli is allowed to expire between the lighting of 

 the fire and the actual walking makes it an operation 

 of little danger. Mr. Partridge, who witnessed the 

 ceremony at Ganjam, describes the priest as going to 

 the fire-pits, "which were a mass of red-hot ashes; 

 he sprinkled not more than a handful of incense on 

 to them ; dipped his feet in a mixture of rice-water 

 and milk; and walked across one pit, leading another 

 man. He then dipped his feet again in the fluid 

 mixture, and returned by the other pit. The time he 

 toolc in walking across one pit was not more than 

 four seconds, and he took about four steps on the 

 ashes, .^t least fifty persons in the crowd walked over 

 the pits afterwards, but they went a little faster than 

 the priest, and some of them only took two steps on 

 the ashes. Their feet were not hurt, and they did 

 not wash them in any mixture before or after they 

 went over the ashes. I infer from the way in which 

 the performance was conducted that anyone can 

 easily walk over the ashes, but that, if he goes like 

 the priest, he must dip his feet in the mixture both 

 before and after walking across them." Mr. Risley, 

 on the evidence from Bengal, came to the conclusion 

 that_ when a narrow trench is used in the rite, it is 

 possible for an active man to place his feet so rapidly 

 on the edges of the trench that he does not actually 

 touch the burning cinders, and escapes injury. Prob- 

 ably many performances of the rite may be explained 

 in this wav. 



The chief ethnological curiosity of the museum is 

 the Meriah sacrificial post from Ganjam, used in the 

 blood sacrifices of the Khonds, of which the illustra- 

 tion is here reproduced (Fig. 2). It has suffered much 

 darnage from white ants, and its original form is not 

 easily recognisable. It seems to represent the pro- 

 boscis of an elephant to which the victim was bound. 

 This, according to General Campbell, was one of the 

 most common forms. 



Mr. Thurston's book is arranged without any 

 method, but it contains a mass of curious information 

 which will make it welcome to European ethnologists. 



MEDICAL SCIENCE AND ARMY 

 EFFICIENCY. 



TN spite of the natural interest which the nation 

 *■ takes in the .'\rmy, few people realise completely 

 what is the work that the Royal .\rmy Medical Corps 

 hasto do, how vast are the responsibilities committed 

 to it, and how dependent army efficiency is upon 

 medical science. It is diflicult to' explain this want of 

 interest and knowledge, but it arises probablv from 

 the fact that much of the work which the medical 

 service does in the .^rmy, both in peace and war, is 

 of an unostentatious nature, and lacks the pomp and 

 glamour which appeal so strongly to a public when 

 associating itself with the militarv organisation of 

 the country. .^Vpart from this, tlie medical service 

 suffered for many years under grave official disabilities, 

 being systematically snubbed, "and its professional and 

 military pride injured. Such an attitude on the part 

 of highly-placed persons in the military bureaucracy 

 could not fail to dishearten its personnel and lessen 

 any general enthusiasm or Interest in its work by the 

 general public. To a large extent these mistakes of 

 NO. 1929, VOL. 74] 



the past have been rectified, and the army medical 

 service desires now, as it ever has done, to do its 

 duty and to deserve well of the country; but it 

 recognises that to do this it must advance and utilise 

 fully the progress of science and the increasing know- 

 ledge of the profession of medicine which it represents 

 in the military machine. Before attempting to ex- 

 plain these aspirations, it may not be uninteresting to 

 readers of Nature to sketch briefly the evolution of 

 the army medical service from less enlightened times 

 to the present day. 



The need of medical attendance with an army in the 

 field seems to have been always more or less recog- 

 nised. In the days of the early Edwards, physicians 

 and surgeons are recorded as having formed part of 

 the levies which were taken into the field ; but until 

 the sixteenth century the proportion of such men to 

 the whole force was very small, and even in the time 

 of James I. we find no allowance or provision in the 

 estimates for medicines or hospital appliances ; these 

 details were supposed to be found by the surgeons 

 themselves, for the cost of which a weekly stoppage 

 of 2d. was made from the pay of the private soldier. 

 It is not until the time of Marlborough that we find 

 any sign of prominence being given to the medical 

 service of the .Army, but it was nearly fifty years later 

 that the first reforms in military medicine and sanita- 

 tion were introduced by Sir John Pringle, when 

 physician-general to the forces in Flanders. The long 

 series of wars in which England was engaged at the 

 end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth centuries produced many able men who left 

 their mark on the organisation of the .'\rmy ; not the 

 least remarkable among them was Sir James 

 M'Grigor, who, beginning his career as a military 

 surgeon in 1793, became principal medical officer in 

 Portugal and the Peninsula under Wellington, and 

 finished his official career as medical director-general 

 after the time of the great war. To him it was due 

 that, in the service of which he was head, order was 

 evolved out of chaos, and that the army medical 

 service became an organised body, uniting in itself 

 the best traditions of two professions. 



In the long peace that followed Waterloo, our military 

 machinery rusted from disuse or decay, notably the 

 supplementary services which are necessary to form an 

 army. The arrangements which had been made and 

 the materials which had been collected in the old war- 

 time for the care of the sick and wounded disappeared 

 with nothing to replace them, and, when the Crimean 

 War came, the best endeavours of the best men were 

 powerless to grapple with the problems which were to 

 be faced. The lessons of old experience had been for- 

 gotten, and the army medical service found itself 

 helpless, without means to carry out even an anti- 

 quated svstem of professional duty. .\t that time the 

 army medical service consisted onlv of officers, divided 

 into two classes, staff surgeons and regimental 

 surgeons, though the whole were borne on one list, 

 and, up to a certain rank, were interchangeable. 

 .After a regimental surgeon had attained a certain 

 senior! tv he was promoted to be a staff surgeon of the 

 first class, and was employed thenceforth in super- 

 intendence and administration rather than in regi- 

 mental or personal professional practice. Practically 

 all the officers of the medical stafi' had at one time or 

 another been regimental surgeons, and presented in 

 varying degree the merits or demerits of that train- 

 ing. The system of gazetting medical officers to 

 individual corps had many advantages, both socially 

 and professionally, but it had undoubted drawbacks. 

 The first and most important of these was that there 

 was a constant difficultv in utilising them elsewhere 

 than with their own corps, hence, if the public service 



