The report investigates the variation in results noticed when testing iodophor disinfectants in the presence of a 5% (w/v) yeast suspension.

It was found that these variations were not related to individual iodophor formulations but bore a direct relationship with the storage time of the prepared yeast suspension.

The residential home was investigated to study the endemic virus population. During this study, oral poliovirus vaccine was given to the children and the effect of vaccination on endemic enteroviruses and adenoviruses was investigated. In the light of these findings, the problem of virus interference is discussed. The health of the children is related to their virus infections.

We are indebted to Prof. S. D. M. Court and Prof. C. A. Green for the active interest they have taken in this investigation; to Miss J. McQuillin, B.Sc., F.I.M.L.T., for her technical assistance; also to the matron of the home and her staff for their co-operation in supplying the specimens, and to Mr L. J. Whitlock of the Royal Victoria Infirmary and his staff for arranging their transport to the laboratory.

The purpose of the study was to describe the results of follow up of human contacts of bovine tuberculosis. The bovine tuberculosis cases occurred on farms in North Staffordshire between 1993 and 1997. A total of 162 people were identified as having close contact with cattle diagnosed as having bovine tuberculosis, or who had drunk unpasteurized milk from a herd with bovine tuberculosis. A retrospective review of chest clinic notes was performed. One hundred and thirty-eight people attended for follow up, and Heaf test results, necessity for chest X-ray and further clinical follow-up are described. No case of human Mycobacterium bovis infection was identified. It is suggested that follow-up of human contacts is limited to those with close contact with herds who have bovine tuberculosis and cattle with visible pulmonary lesions or evidence of udder infection. Children on the farms with affected cattle should also be offered BCG in advance of the routine school's programme.

The outbreak of food infection which we are about to describe is of interest from more than one point of view. Not only was it possible to determine the organism which caused the outbreak and to trace its source to a paratyphoid carrier, but the bacteriological results yielded an important contribution to the difficult question of the differentiation of Bacillus paratyphosus B. and B. enteritidis, which for some years has been much discussed among bacteriologists.

In the first report (vol. vi. p. 450) we described several series of experiments which had as their object the determination of the relative importance of the Indian rat flea, Palex cheopis, and of actual close contact in the absence of fleas in the dissemination of plague from animal to animal. These observations were carried out in a series of small godowns or cabins, which were built especially for the purpose. The experiments which we have now to put on record are a continuation of those already published. They were carried out during the non-plague season of 1906 and the plague season of 1907.

(1) These experiments prove that the fumigator is safer to use than the dumping fixture, because high concentrations of the poison gas are avoided, so that dangerous pockets are not developed.

(2) The poison gas is more evenly distributed over the different parts of the section of the ship under treatment.

(3) High concentrations, however, can be developed^ at will in any part which requires special attention.

(4) The maximum concentrations of the poison gas were obtained in every part of the section in a shorter time, when the fumigator was used, than when the dumping fixture was employed.

(5) The artificial ventilation caused by the fan, which is capable of blowing into the section 500 to 1000 cubic feet of fresh air per minute, according to the speed of the motor, materially assists the rapid clearing of the poison gas from the ship, after it has accomplished its work. It is thus possible to complete the fumigation and ventilation of a ship in 3 hours using the cyanide fumigator, while more than 4 hours are required for the dumping fixture.

(6) Even more important is the fact that smaller quantities of cyanide can be used with greater efficiency in the fumigator, than larger quantities, with less efficiency in the dumping fixture.

(7) The general conclusion is arrived at, that, from the point of view of efficiency, safety and economy, the fumigator is superior to the dumping fixture. Creel has shown that, in respect to the time required for completing the fumigation, and in respect to the thoroughness of the process, both in killing rats and insects, the dumping fixture is superior to the Clayton gas machine. It follows, therefore, that the cyanide fumigator is very much superior in these respects to the Clayton gas machine.

A subclinical infection of Salmonella typhimurium in a broiler flock was investigated and attempts were made to eradicate the infection by treatment with furazolidone. One-quarter of the chickens were still infected after they had been through the processing plant. Washing in heavily chlorinated water reduced the number of contaminated carcasses. Infected chickens were also found in four other companion flocks on the same farm.

An analysis of the medical condition of 223 entrants to the nursing profession is attempted, with particular reference to 161 such nurses examined in accord with the recommendations of the King Edward's Hospital Fund for London (1943). This is followed by a short-term medical follow-up on these nurses by clinical examination, weight records, and ancillary tests. Of the total number of entrants eight (3·6 %) were rejected on medical grounds, and four (2·5 %) of the 161 were rejected on the findings of the initial examination.

An analysis of the sixty-five (29 %) nurses lost to the profession in their first year of service shows that 70 % had attempted an uncongenial vocation. It is suggested that vocation selection tests should be tried in attempting to lessen this costly drain of recruits. This figure of 29 % is no higher than the peacetime figure found by the Lancet Commission (Athlone Report, 1938).

An analysis of the illnesses of the nursing staff at Westminster Hospital during 3 years from 1 July 1943 to 30 June 1946 is presented, nearly 60 % of the illnesses being accounted for by respiratory tract infection and cutaneous sepsis. It has been shown that illness of more than 50 days in duration accounts for only 5 % of attacks of illness, but practically 30 % of the time lost through illness. It is suggested that such illness should be differentiated in analyses, from illnesses of shorter duration. A comparison of illnesses in staff nurses and student nurses follows; the figures suggest a lower morbidity rate in staff nurses, but the number of staff nurses is so small that the author cannot state that this has been demonstrated.

A comparison table between previous illness surveys and the present figures is presented which demonstrates a decreasing number of attacks of illness per nurse over the last 20 years in this country, probably due to better basic conditions of life.

A similar but international comparison applied to respiratory tract infection and cutaneous sepsis demonstrates that the former accounts for about 40 % of all the attacks of illness in this country and internationally. The previous figures for Great Britain, however, are exceptional in showing a much higher incidence of sepsis than elsewhere; this has not been substantiated by the present survey.

Figures for the amount of time lost per year through sepsis, tonsillitis and catarrhal disease are compared with those of Branson (1933) of 20 years ago, and perhaps illustrate the beneficial effect of surgery in cutaneous sepsis, and of sulphonamides in tonsillitis, as against the negligible therapeutic advances in catarrhal disease. The amount of tonsillitis sustained by nurses in the children's ward is shown as being out of proportion to the number of nurses employed.

Finally suggestions are made for promoting the health of nurses, which include: (i) the provision of a ‘welfare officer’ in the nurses' home; (ii) illness allowance proposals; (iii) remarks on the technique of ‘reporting sick’; (iv) staffing children's ward with senior nurses only.

The following paper gives some results of a series of experiments on the bactericidal power of various sources of ultra-violet radiation. The “power” of the source was in each case measured by the quartz-cadmium photo-electric cell described by the authors (1925), and it is shown that very definite and practically useful correlations exist between the cell reading and this typical abiotic action.

1. The protection afforded by glycine and other amino-acids to guinea-pig complement against heat-inactivation is increased in the presence of sugars, although the latter are not themselves protective.

2. No significant increase in protective activity occurs in the presence of the alcohols derived from some of the sugars tested.

3. A marked exception amongst the alcohols is inositol, which reinforces the protective power of glycine at least as much as do the sugars.

4. The fourth component of complement is destroyed by heating at 63° C. for 30 min. It is, however, protected against heat-inactivation by glycine, and this protective effect is intensified in the presence of glucose and inositol.

5. The protection afforded to serum by the presence of glycine or glycine dissolved in glucose is removed when the system is dialysed, indicating that if a complex is formed it is readily dissociable.

This paper deals with the result obtained after testing, by the “Dick” method, the susceptibility of a series of adults to scarlet fever toxin. The toxin used was produced by the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratory. While various strengths of solutions were tried to begin with from 1:2500 to 1:250, no advantage was found to result from the use of a solution stronger or weaker than 1:1000. The tests were, therefore, carried out with the standard “Dick” toxin as supplied by this firm.

Pus from a lumbar abscess in a boy, aged 10 years, produced severe general tuberculosis in a guinea-pig. A culture from this guinea-pig resembled a bovine strain in primary culture on egg and a eugonic human strain in subculture on glycerine egg and glycerinated potato. The virulence of the strain was high for the guinea-pig and irregular for the rabbit. For some rabbits the pathogenic effects of the strain were much more severe than those of typical human bacilli and approached, but did not equal, those of bovine bacilli. The results in other rabbits were similar to those of eugonic human bacilli. Cultures recovered from the rabbits resembled in characters the original strain, which was therefore not a mixture of the human and bovine types of tubercle bacilli. The strain cannot be described as ‘human’ or ‘bovine’ according to the usually accepted distinction between these types in the rabbit, but according to the results in the vole could be classified as belonging to the human type.

The results are presented of testing untreated producer–retailer herd milk samples for the presence of Brucella abortus during the period 1965–1972 in the North Lancashire region.

There was a steady decline in the incidence of infected herds from 22 % in 1965 to 12% in 1971. A sharp fall to 5% in 1972 suggests that the introduction of the Brucellosis Incentives Scheme and the eradication programme has helped to reduce the practice of selling brucella-infected cattle in the open market which was prevalent in the period 1965 to 1970.

This practice of selling brucella-infected cattle may also be a prime factor in the changing pattern of distribution of the biotypes of B. abortus which was observed during the period 1965 to 1970.

A comparison of the two areas in the region show that the incidence of herd infection was always greater in the area containing flying herds than in the area in which self-contained herds predominated.

This study aims to locate the knots of cumulative coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case number during the first-level response to public health emergency in the provinces of China except Hubei. The provinces were grouped into three regions, namely eastern, central and western provinces, and the trends between adjacent knots were compared among the three regions. COVID-19 case number, migration scale index, Baidu index, demographic, economic and public health resource data were collected from 22 Chinese provinces from 19 January 2020 to 12 March 2020. Spline regression was applied to the data of all included, eastern, central and western provinces. The research period was divided into three stages by two knots. The first stage (from 19 January to around 25 January) was similar among three regions. However, in the second stage, growth of COVID-19 case number was flatter and lasted longer in western provinces (from 25 January to 18 February) than in eastern and central provinces (from 26 February to around 11 February). In the third stage, the growth of COVID-19 case number slowed down in all the three regions. Included covariates were different among the three regions. Overall, spline regression with covariates showed the different change patterns in eastern, central and western provinces, which provided a better insight into regional characteristics of COVID-19 pandemic.

We carried out a retrospective study of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) outbreaks reported between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2021 in Catalonia (Spain) to compare the incidence from 2015 to 2019 with that observed from 2020 to 2021. We observed a higher incidence rate of outbreaks during the prepandemic period (16.89 outbreaks/1,000,000 person-years) than during the pandemic period (6.96 outbreaks/1,000,000 person-years) (rate ratio (RR) 0.41; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.34 to 0.51). According to the aetiology of the outbreak, those of viral aetiology decreased from 7.82 to 3.38 outbreaks/1,000,000 person-years (RR 2.31; 95% CI 1.72 to 3.12), and those of bacterial aetiology decreased from 5.01 to 2.78 outbreaks/1,000,000 person-years (RR 1.80; 95% CI 1.29 to 2.52). There was a great reduction in AGE outbreaks in Catalonia. This reduction may have been due to the effect of the nonpharmaceutical measures applied to reduce the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), but the collapse of the healthcare system and epidemiological surveillance services may also have had a strong influence.

A modification of Sharpe's microdroplet counting technique is presented which permits viable counting of Bacteroides fragilis. Lysed horse blood was added to 0·1 ml soy digest agar droplets and 2% was found to be the optimal concentration which combined adequate intradroplet colony size with acceptable visibility on the counting screen of the Colworth Droplette machine.