NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17846, 29 July 1921, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE.

In his first public speech in London, Mr. George Harvey, the American Ambassador, declared in explicit terms that the United States would not enter the League of Nations. " There still seems to linger in the minds of many here," said Mr. .Harvey, "as, indeed, of a few at Home, an impression that in some way or other, by hook or by crook, unwittingly, .and, surely, unwillingly, the United States may yet be beguiled into fihe League of Nations. The question of America's participation in the League came before the people, and the people decided against it by a majority of 7,000,000 out of a total vote of 25,000,000. Prior to that election there had been much discussion of the real meaning of the word 'mandate.' There has been little since- A aingle example provided the definition. A'majority of 7,000,000 clearly conveyed a mandate that could be neither misunderstood nor disregarded. Anybody could see that. It follows inevitably and irresistibly that our present Government could not, without betrayal of its creators and masters—and will not I can assure you—have anything whatsoever to do with the League or with any commission or committee appointed by it or responsible to it, directly or indirectly openly? or furtively. My Government would not dream of criticising, much less of objecting to the League, as now constituted, of other nations. I wish only to dispose, definitely and finally, of the strangely prevalent and ntterly baseless suppositions respecting the attitude of the United States."

NATURE OF SHELL-SHOCK.

Last August a departmental committee of the War Office -was appointed, witn Lord Southborough as chairman, to inquire into the nature and treatment of shell-shock and associated matters. It has taken a large volume of evidence, and expects to report in the autumn. Generally the results of the inquiry so far are understood to justify the view that the term shell-shock is unfortunate, because in many instances the bursting of a shell has nothing to do with the shock the man receives. The evidence shows feat the affections of men said to be suffering from shell-shock are nervous diseases in all respects similar to those known to the medical profession in civil life. There is really no distinction to be drawn between the two. There are, however, two classes of cases. There is the class of case where a man is knocked down, perhaps buried, by a. bursting shell. There are records of men being killed outright by the firing of a shell close by, although on examination they show no outward sign of a wound. Those may, in a sense, be described as shell-shock cases, but the majority of cases are those of people who suffer either from neurosis or hysteria produced without the intervention of any particular explosion. These men are either men of character and bravery, who went on until human nature refused to do any more, when the nervous system collapsed, or they are men who, from the beginning, had no heart for such an existence as war, were bound to break down, and should never have been recruited for service at the -front. The question has been raised whether methods could be devised by which men who were thought or known, either from personal observation or from their medical history, to be of nervous and sensitive disposition, should be really trained to face the ordeals of great shells and "high explosives It would" seem, from "the course the evidence has so far taken that the recruiting officer and the medical officers of the future will have not only to ascertain that a man has good muscles, but also that hg has good nerves and that he has no hereditary taint.

ADVANCE IN MICROSCOPY. During the last thirty years microscopy has appeared to be at a standstill. " For some time, however, Mr. J. E. Barnard, who is in charge of the optical department of. the National Institute for Medical Research, and has been described as the leading optical physicist in the world, has been engaged in some wonderful research work. The best of the old microscopes gave a useful magnification of 1000 diameters (or magnified an - object a million times) and beyond that it started to break up light itself. It looked as if natural laws had called a halt. The idea which resulted in the new microscope used by Mr. Barnard was that " white light is no use to us in the higher magnifications. We will use light with a finer texture (shorter wave-lengths)." Mr. Barnard used violet light first, then the ultra-violet rays which gave him better detail still and is now experimenting with "soft A-rays. The texture (wave-lengths) of these ib ten times more delicate (or shorter) than those of the ultra-violet rays. He has succeeded in getting a useful, magnification of 3500 diameters, which is equal to multiplying an object 12i million tunes. Ee shows the bacillus, not as a dyed and shrivelled corpse, but as a living object 12 times larger than in the best ot the old microscopes, and reveals its structure. He can obtain a photograph m9O seconds. «In connection with the study of bacteria, Mr. Barnard's work should produce important results," said £ r ' T'm. W - . Te » President of the Royal Microscopical Society, & the course of an interview. "His photographs appear to show the structure of bacteria. It is too soon to state definitely that the lines which appear actually correspond to internal structure; they may be due to wrinkles in the outer casing of the bacteria; but I am inclined to think that they do actually show us how the bacteria are constructed. In that event we may be able to make considerable progress toward the preparation of more efficient vaccine and serums."

THE THYROID GLAND. The fantastic ideas regarding the possibilties of rejuvenation by the transplantation of the thyroid gland from animals to humans were discussed recently by a surgeon in the Daily Mail. "No thyroid gland of a monkey or any other animal has ever been transplanted into man or ever will be," he says. "The gland niay be removed from the monkey and placed in the tissues of the man, but it is no longer a thyroid gland, but an inert mass which is attacked and removed by the cells of the living body. One reason why such things cannot be is what is known as the specificity of tissues. The, cells of one animal cannot be grafted on to those of another species. So exacting is this specificity that in man the blood of one individual may not be given to another without the most careful biological tests. It this be not done, in many instances the red corpuscles of blood so given are attacked and killed by the blood of the receiver, and in their dead masses prove fatal to the patient they are meant to save. Still less, then, can the cells of one animal live in the blood of another animal. It would v therefore be more human and just as scientific to transplant a collar-stud or a piece of chocolate into the neck of our twentieth century Faust and to leave the ape his thyroid. Youth would return in both cases—so far as the power of suggestion can make it. Another reason is that the thyroid gland has, and requires, a blood supply five times that of the kidney, twenty times that of the limbs, and greater in proportion to size than that of any other organ in the «x*J- Without it the thyroid cells will die. This supply can only be assured by suturing the arteries and vein s of the transplanted thyroid to those of the receiver, and could this be don© successfuilv a transplanted thyroid gland of the same spemes might live. Much careful work has been done on this problem in the experimental laboratories of the Mavo clinic at Rochester Minnesota, hut it has so far ended in failure. It is, however on these hues that legitimate surgery hopes to advance in the fuinzsL ftougL A