Several causes have contributed to bring the problems of infantile mortality into greater prominence during recent years. The increased interest in child-study, the growth of humanitarian feeling, and the rapid decline of the English birth-rate during a period of Imperialist expansion have combined to set a higher value upon infant life. In this connection less is heard of the “survival of the fittest” and the “devastating torrent of babies”; the fear of over-population which induced many to regard a high rate of infantile mortality with complacency has faded before the danger of depopulation, and the so-called doctrines of Malthus have given place to the gospel of Fecundity. To those engaged in the work of preventive medicine the continuance of a high rate of infantile mortality in spite of the great improvements in public health administration of the last thirty years is a problem of special interest. The following table shows that although the general death-rate has steadily declined since the early seventies there has been no corresponding decline in infantile mortality, which in fact has increased during 1886–1901. The comparatively low rates in 1902–3 are explained by the exceptional meteorological conditions prevailing during the summer months:—

Hay Fever is a disease which on account of its peculiar interest has attracted the attention of the medical world ever since it was first accurately described by Bostock of London in 1819. To what extent the disease occurred before his time is difficult to determine; but from the fact that his observations were at once confirmed by a number of contemporary medical men it is probable that at the time of his writing it was not very uncommon. We have no exact knowledge of the existence of the disease in England prior to the nineteenth century, and indeed many authors hold that the chief etiological factors were not present in earlier times. It is my purpose in this paper to discuss the researches recently carried out by Prof. Dunbar at the State Institute of Public Health in Hamburg, which have very considerably increased our knowledge of the interesting malady, and have also narrowed the field for its future investigation.

For a considerable number of years, Belfast has suffered from a high typhoid fever death-rate, and the investigations embodied in the following pages were undertaken at the request of the Corporation, with the purpose of determining the sanitary measures required to prevent, as far as possible, the occurence of typhoid fever in the city.

In a recent Report (1) upon the new parasitic bodies associated with tropical splenomegaly, Lieut. S. R. Christophers, I.M.S., published a method of producing chromatin staining in sections. This method, however, labours under the disadvantage that, after staining, the section must be dried in the air before it is cleared and mounted, since the chromatin reaction is lost if dehydration by absolute alcohol is attempted. The consequent shrinkage of the tissue, even in very thin sections, renders the method of little service for delicate work.