Malaya, or at least the part of it with which I am well acquainted— the coast districts of Selangor— was free from measles until 1910. In that year infection was probably imported from India by immigrnat coolies, and the disease spread rapidly through the rubber estates on which there was a considerable non-immune population of locally born Indians.

A study was made of the available statistical data bearing on the epidemiology of typhoid in Palestine. It apears from this analysis that:

1. The typhiod epidemicity is not due to a single source such as contaminated water or food. The seasonal prevalence of the disease corresponds with the normal seasonal incidence of typhiod, and is, therefore, in the nature of a contact infection.

2. There is no striking difference in age, sex or race susceptibility. In Tel Aviv the age group 5–14 shows a lower incidence than the corresponding age group in Jerusalem or the higher age group 15–29 in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. There is, however, no difference in susceptibility between the age group 15–29 in Jerusalem and that in Tel Aviv.

3. From a graphic comparisos, the calculation of the coefficient of correlation of the limited experience (six years), and a comparison of the prevalence of the disease in the immigrant and indigenous population, there appears to be a significant correlation between the net population increment and epidemicity. These results, if confirmed by a longer experience, are in accord with those obtained in the remarkable mice experiments conducted by the English and American investigators.

4. Although, at the beginning, the morbidity and mortality is higher in the immigrant group, there is an evident tendency at equalisation, and in the second year the incidence in the indigenous population is the same as that among the immigrants.

5. The above results indicate the path of control: (a) every immigrant, particularly those between the ages 5–29, should be properly vaccinated against typhoid. By raising the resistance of the new population, the possibility of epidemics among them, and consequently later among the resident population, will be averted; (b) the reduction of endemic typhoid can be brought about by reducing the dosage of the infectious microbes. This can only be brought about by concentration of effort on the early detection and isolation of cases and the vaccination of all contacts. These two measures would seem to offer a prompt and relatively simple solution to the typhoid problem in Palestine.

1. Cultures were obtained from 69 cases of ringworm of children in London County Council Schools.

2. Three of them were cases of favus, the parasite in each case being Achoroion Schōnleinii.

3. Microsporums are responsible for most of the ringworm, and were isolated from 54 of the 69 cases, or 78 per cent. Microsporum audouini was found in 70 per cent, of the Microsporum infections; M. lanosum and M. felineum each in one case; and 4 other cultures were obtained, comprising 3 species which have not yet been identified.

4.Endothrix Trichophytons were found in 17 per cent, of the cases and include the species Trichophyton crateriforme, T. sulfureum, T. acuminatum and T. violaceum.

5.A list of the species isolated arranged, according to the new classification of Ota and Langeron, is given.

6.The results are compared with those previously obtained in London by Fox and Blaxall, and Adamson, with which they broadly agree.

(1) Samples of faeces of 391 cows in apparently good health have been examined and it has been demonstrated that 6 (1.53 per cent.) of the cows were excreting tubercle bacilli.

(2) When the faeces of almost all the cows on founrteen farms were examined it was found that five cows on four farms were excreting tubercle bacilli.

Our thanks are due to the Medical Research Council for the grant which enabled us to carry out this investigation.

In the year 1577 King Philip II of Spain issued a decree to all Spanish officials in the New World ordering them to obtain and send him answers to a questionnaire consisting of fifty searching inquiries, intended to elicit information which would “facilitate the good government and ennoblement” of “the Indies.”

The production of soluble toxic substances in broth cultures of these bacteria is well known. Berkefeld nitrates of such cultures are usually toxic for the rabbit upon intravenous injection. A review of the literature has been given by Ecker (1917, 1925) and by Branham (1925). Subsequent studies of these workers have shown that Berkefeld filtrates of synthetic medium (Braun and Cahn-Bonner, 1921) cultures yielded toxic substances inducing a similar reaction in the rabbit. Little is known concerning the nature of these substances beyond that they are relatively thermostabile; on dialysis of the broth culture nitrate the toxin is withheld within the collodium sac.

There could be no more suitable preface to emphasise the need for Diphtheria prevention than the following quotation from so high an authority as the metropolitan Asylums Board's Report of 1924–25: “Notwithstanding the great improvement in diagnosis, standard of living, education in matters of hygiene and other public health measures, the fact remains that, for reason not altogether clear, diphtheria appears to be stregthening its forces and gathering power unchecked by science.”

(1)Statistical evidence cannot be deduced from such a small series of cases, but it would seem that the extent to which agglutinins for B. proteus X. 19 (Weil-Felix) were formed in the blood varied directly as the severity of the illness, since with the older and more ill patients a much higher dilution of serum agglutinated the organism at or near crisis than was the case with the younger patients, who were less acutely ill. An exception to this rule was met with in one case (Mrs E. R.), whose serum did not agglutinate the organism in a dilution beyond 1: 250, although she was the most severely ill of all the patients. It is possible that failure of agglutinin-formation resembles the absence of leucocytosis in the severely ill case of pneumonia and may be regarded as a bad prognostic feature.

(2)A positive Weil-Felix reaction was not obtained before the fifth day of illness, nor in any case before the characteristic rash appeared, so that the reaction is of little value as a factor in the early diagnosis of typhus. Later, a reaction in which a dilution of the serum of 1: 50 agglutinates the organism may be regarded as diagnostic of typhus.

(3)The Weil-Felix reaction remained positive for the longest period in those cases whose serum agglutinated in highest dilution, and in these patients a positive reaction (1: 25–1: 50) was still present nine to twelve weeks after infection, whereas in the milder cases, and in Mrs E. R., the reaction became negative in six to eight weeks from the onset of illness.

(4)In view of this heterologous reaction in typhus, it is interesting to record that the Wassermann reaction obtained before crisis was positive in four out of six cases. It was still positive in two of the most severely ill patients a week after crisis, but was negative in all cases a week later.

1. When refected rats are fed on adequate diet, containing vitamin B in the form of yeast, the defect in their starch-digestion disappears, and their faeces become normal.

2. Attempts to cause refection in rats receiving an adequate diet by feeding white faeces from refected rats do not influence the starch digestion of the former.

3. When refected rats, growing normally, are fed upon a diet devoid of starch (as well as of vitamin B) their body weight decreases rapidly, but in spite of this decrease they live for a considerable time.

4. Refection cannot be induced in young rats fed upon a diet devoid of starch and of vitamin B.

5. Rats may become or may remain refected when the starch of their 1. diet is replaced by dextrin containing a small amount of starch. The faeces of these rats do not seem able to refect other rats.

6. Rats may be refected without producing white faeces, but starch grains have always been present in the faeces of such rats.

7. The results of special experiments and the clinical observation of refected rats suggest an essential connection between the ability to grow and thrive without vitamin B and the defective digestion of starch.

8. Attempts at refection have no beneficial influence upon rats suffering from a deficiency of vitamin A.

9. Refection has been transmitted to albino mice receiving a diet devoid of vitamin B, but the refection lasted only for a short time. Attempts at refection of rice-fed pigeons have not succeeded.

10.The bearing of studies in refection upon several problems connected with vitamin B is discussed.

The Preceding paper by Fridericia and his co-workers on “A Transmissible Change in the Instestinal Content, enabling Rats to Grow and Thrive without vitamin B in the Food” deals with results so novel and unexpected that a brief statement from another laboratory confirming them, is not redundant.

This paper deals with a micro-organism recovered from human blood in a case of a typhoid-like infection. No evidence could be produced of either typhoid or paratyphoid bacilli being the cause. Only one germ was recovered from blood cultures on two occasions, it was strongly agglutinated by the patient's serum, suggesting that it probably produced a true infection in man. This study was undertaken because certain features of the organism may lead to a faulty diagnosis of paratyphoid. The author deems it a new species in the light of the tests he applied and refers it to the genus Proteus Hauser (emend. Amer. Comm.) under the name Pr. pseudovaleriae.