MEDICAL CONGRESS

Otago Witness, Issue 3101, 20 August 1913, Page 25

MEDICAL CONGRESS

I LONDON, August 12. ! At the Medical Congress Dr M‘Halter (Ireland) advocated that the State should institute necroscopy in the case of every death, as this was the only possible means of ascertaining the cause. Recently in Dublin a doctor, to whom the information was imparted, gave a certificate of death and heavy insurance was drawn, but during the wake the corpse rose and complained bitterly that he had not received a proper share of the proceeds.

Professor Bateson, in a paper cn heredity, said it was impossible to avoid the conviction that no matter what influences were brought to bear by hygiene or education the ultimate decision rested with the germ cells. The whole course of modern science and legislation had been exercised to preserve defective strains in our midst, yet genetic science did not justify the present violent measures in America with a view to controlling marriage on the basis of eugenics, because genetic physiology was still empirical. The conference resolved to conduct experiments on animals in order to discover the relation between alcohol and degeneracy. VALUE OF SALVARSAN. LONDON, August 12. The majority of the speakers at the Medical Congress testified to the efficacy of salvarsan in the treatment of disease, Colonel Gibbard mentioning that the introduction of the drug into the British army liad annually saved the State the cost of hospital treatment of a whole battalion of infantry.

INTERESTING STATISTICS. LONDON, August 12

The Right Hon. John Burns, M.P. (president of the Local Government Board), delivered an address on the relationship of medicine to the public health. He pointed out that there were 772,811 fewer deaths in England and Wales from 1909 to 1911 than there would have been if the 1877 to 1880 death rate had been maintained. The saving of life from special diseases during the same period amounted to 367,003, and the saving of life during the last 32 years was nearly four millions. Mr Burns was subjected to much suffragette interruption. TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS. LONDON, August 13. Dr Weygaudt urged that the idea of punishing criminals as retribution was no longer held by thinking people. The best remedy was the proper education of the

young, and the control of mentally doficients in industrial reformative institutions. The duration of detention was dependent on the success or otherwise of the treatment. It was absurd to arbitrarily fix it beforehand. The hygiene section condemned hom« work, and the night-teaching of needlework for girls before the age of six.-

WOOL TEST CONDEMNED

LONDON, August 13,

At the Medical Congress Dr Edridgw Green insisted that the wool test wai hopelessly defective for colour blindness. Many normal-sighted men were rejected, while 30 per cent, of defectivea escapes detection. The coloured lantern was tho most efficient method for use on railways and steamers.

The Medical Congress has closed. Ifc will meet at Munich in 1917.