DOCTORS’ CONGRESS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 35, 9 August 1913, Page 5

DOCTORS’ CONGRESS

INCREASE 0E LUNACY SIR THOMAS CRICHTON-BROWNE TALKS SERIOUSLY. CHILDREN AND TUBERCULOSIS. By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright. Times—Sydney Sun Special Cables. (Received August 9, 8.30 a.m.) LONDON, Bth August. At the International Medical Congress, Sir James Crichton-Browne, Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, spoke of the increase in lunacy, which was out of proportion to the increase of population in all settled countries. In Britain in 1859 the insane numbered 36,762; in January, 1913, the number was 138,377, an increase of 276 per cent, compared with 87 per cent, increase in population in the same period. Dr. Harold Stiles, surgeon to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children, said there was a great prevalence of tuberculosis among Scottish children, due to dairy cows, also to milk not being sterilised. (Press Association). (Received August 9, 8.5 a.m.) LONDON, Bth August. At the Medical Congress Sir James Crichton-Browne said there was no good reason in a vigorous expanding race for the present increase in lunacy. “Notwithstanding the successful treatment of diseases hitherto contributing to lunacy, the. accumulation of chronic lunacy rolls on, and the rate of recovery has fallen during the last half-century.’’ IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. ""described. LONDON, Bth August. Mr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., editor of the British Journal of Psychology, in a paper read before the members of the Congress, described the system of massage carried out by native practitioners in the Solomon Islands. The operations, he said, coincided with our own system, but, the underlying ideas of the process had a magic and religious basis.

' PAPER ON SURGERY. experimentaiHtherapeutics. Times—Sydney Sun Special Cables. LONDON, Bth August. At the Medical Congress, Dr. Harvey Cushing, of Harvard University, read a paper on “Surgery.” Experimental therapeutics, he said, would in future doubtless provide an ideal anaesthetic in the form of a drug. Possibly such a drug would be allied with chloretone or scopalomin, a single injection of which would induce prolonged, insensitive sleep, purchase of sufficient duration to allow of the primary healing of a wound. [Dr. Cushing-is the author of various papers on neurol surgery.]