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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1112 



present-day methods, not only of cure, but of 

 preyention. The efficacy of improved water- 

 supply and sewerage systems, of the campaign 

 against the fly, and of other sanitary precau- 

 tions is strikingly shown by the reduction of 

 the typhoid mortality rate to the extent of 

 more than five ninths in 14 years. 



The principal epidemic maladies of child- 

 hood — whooping-cough, measles and scarlet 

 fever — were together responsible for no fewer 

 than 15,617 deaths of both adults and chil- 

 dren, or 23.7 per 100,000, in the registration 

 area in 1914, the rates for the three diseases 

 separately being 10.3, 6.8 and 6.6, respectively. 

 In 1913 measles caused a greater mortality 

 than either of the other diseases, but in 1914 

 whooping-cough had first place. In every 

 year since and including 1910, as well as in 

 several preceding years, measles has caused a 

 greater nujnber of deaths than the much more 

 dreaded scarlet fever. The mortality rates for 

 all three of these diseases fluctuate greatly 

 from year to year. The rates for measles and 

 scarlet fever in 1914 were the lowest in 15 

 years, while that for whooping-cough was con- 

 siderably above the lowest recorded rate for 

 this disease, 6.5 in 1904, although far below the 

 highest, 15.8 in 1903. 



Deaths due to railway accidents and in- 

 juries totaled 7,062, or 10.7 per 100,000. This 

 number includes fatalities resulting from colli- 

 sions between railway trains and vehicles at 

 grade crossings. The death rate from railway 

 accidents and injuries is the lowest on record 

 and shows a most marked and gratifying de- 

 cline as compared with the rate for 1913, 

 which was 13 per 100,000, and a still more 

 pronoimced drop from the average for the five- 

 year period 1906-10, which was 15 per 100,000. 



Deaths resulting from street-car accidents 

 and injuries numbered 1,673, or 2.5 per 100,- 

 000. This rate, like that for railway fatalities, 

 is the lowest on record and shows a material 

 falling off as compared with 1913, when it was 

 3.2, and as compared with the average for 

 the five-year period 1906-10, which was 3.7. 



The number of suicides reported in 1914 

 was 10,933, or 16.6 per 100,000 population. Of 

 this number, 3,286 accomplished self-destruc- 



tion by the use of firearms, 3,000 by poison, 

 1,552 by hanging or strangulation, 1,419 by 

 asphyxia, 658 by the use of knives or other 

 cutting or piercing instruments, 619 by drown- 

 ing, 225 by jumping from high places, 89 by 

 crushing, and 85 by other methods. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



A SUPPER will be given by the Harvey So- 

 ciety in honor of Dr. William H. Welch fol- 

 lowing his lecture upon Medical Education 

 before the society on April 29. The supper 

 will be given in Sherry's ballroom. 



OsCAE T. ScHULTZ, M.D., professor of bac- 

 teriology and pathology in the University of 

 ISTebraska College of Medicine, Omaha, has 

 been made director of the Nelson Morris 

 Memorial Institute for Medical Eesearch, Chi- 

 cago. Max Morse, Ph.D., assistant professor 

 of biochemistry in the college, has been ap- 

 pointed associate in chemistry in the institute. 



E. E. CoKER, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins, '06), 

 for several years director of the United States 

 Fisheries Station for pearl-mussel investiga- 

 tion at Fairport, Iowa, has been promoted to 

 be head of the division of scientific inquiry in 

 the Bureau of Fisheries at Washington. 



Dr. D. H. Scott, F.E.S., professor of botany 

 in the London Eoyal College of Science, has 

 been elected a foreign member of the Eoyal 

 Swedish Academy of Sciences, in succession 

 to the late Count Solms-Laubach. 



The Founder's medal of the Eoyal Geo- 

 graphical Society has been awarded to Lieu- 

 tenant-Colonel P. H. Fawcett, for his explora- 

 tions and sm-veys on the upper waters of the 

 Am azon; and the Patron's medal to Captain 

 F. M. Bailey, Indian Army, for his explora- 

 tion of the Tsangpo-Dihang Eiver in the 

 hitherto almost unexplored country where it 

 breaks through the Himalayas. The Murchi- 

 son award has been made to Lieutenant- 

 Colonel Whitlock, E.E., for his work in con- 

 nection with the delimitation of the Yola-Chad 

 boundary in 1903-5, and the Tola Cross Eiver 

 boundary in 1907-9; the Back award to Mr. 

 Frank Wild, second in command of Sir Ernest 

 Shackleton's transcontinental Antarctic Expe- 



