The effects of posture and clothing on the effective radiating surface of the body are discussed. Some results obtained by Bohnenkamp and Pasquay by their electrical capacity method are criticised, and measurements made by the application of Simpson's rule are described.

The conclusion is reached that no serious error results from assuming that the effective radiating surface of the clothed subject, when in a normal standing posture, is of about the same area as that given by the Du Bois equation for skin area.

In two nude subjects, crouching in the most cramped position possible, the estimated radiating surface was reduced by 19 and 8 per cent, as compared with a standing posture.

The skin temperatures of industrial workers, mainly women and girls, engaged in very light occupations, have been correlated with environmental conditions. The temperatures of the forehead and of the palm of the hand were measured with a Moll radiation thermopile, and for the temperature of the foot a thermo-junction was used. Altogether 3085 sets of observations were made.

Various measures of environmental warmth (dry-bulb air temperature, equivalent temperature, effective temperature, and dry kata cooling power) were correlated with skin temperature. The dry-bulb air temperature is about as good an index of skin temperature as any of the other measures used, while it appears that skin temperature may be slightly less closely associated with dry kata cooling power than with the other measures of warmth conditions.

At an average air temperature of 18° C., the average skin temperatures observed were: on the forehead 34·25° C.; on the palm of the hand 29·2° C.; and on the foot 24·4° C. The average increases in skin temperature for a rise of 1° in air temperature were: on the forehead 0·139°; on the hand 0·465°; and on the foot 0·806° C.

There was much variation in the skin temperatures recorded at any particular air temperature. The root-mean-square errors of estimation of skin temperature from air temperature were 0·81, 2·51, and 2·80° C., for the forehead, hands and feet respectively.

Correlations between the temperatures of different areas of skin were rather lower than those between air and skin temperature.

About 25 years ago Dr J. S. Haldane, Dr A. E. Boycott and Capt. Damant, R.N., in the course of investigations for the British Admiralty, worked out a system of decompression for divers and compressed air workers. This system was adopted by the Admiralty, and by its use compressed air sickness has been practically eliminated entirely amongst naval divers. The system has become known as stage decompression, although in fact stages are not an essential feature of it, though a convenience in practical working. The system has been frequently and fully described. The latest explanation will be found in the last edition, 1935, revised by Haldane and Priestly, of Respiration, by J. S. Haldane (Clarendon Press). Its most essential feature is that the pressure is lowered quickly to approximately half the absolute pressure during decompression, and one of the most important assumptions for working out the decompression tables is that different parts of the body saturate and desaturate at different rates. Enquiries sent out by me during 1934 to the United States, the principal countries of Europe and to Japan indicate, so far as definite information has been received in reply, that stage decompression has been universally adopted for divers, but in no case has it been adopted for caisson and tunnel workers in countries where State regulations already existed, except in a modified form, and I conclude that the reason for this failure to adopt stage decompression is the existence of statutory regulations, either still in force, or only partly modified in accordance with new ideas.

1. A method is described for estimating subcutaneous tissue oxygen and carbon dioxide tensions in man.

2. Measurements were carried out before and at the end of carbon dioxide and oxygen saponin foam baths. These baths decrease the carbon dioxide and increase the oxygen subcutaneous tissue gas tensions. No appreciable differences were found between carbon dioxide and oxygen baths.

3. We conclude that gases do not diffuse through the skin in sufficient quantities to affect the subcutaneous tissue gas tensions.

We have heard much in recent times of the decrease of tuberculosis and of the increase in mortality from cancer. I propose on the basis of data from some great cities and other areas of the German-speaking world to ascertain whether, if attention is paid to age distribution, cancer really presents so striking a contrast with other causes of mortality. With a view to solving the problem let us enquire whether the undoubted absolute increase may not be a mere function of the ageing of the population, a feature common to all civilised countries. Most weight will be placed upon the statistical data derived from cities because of the greater reliability of the diagnoses in hospitals, and because, as a rule, the death certificate is filled up by the practitioner who actually attended the patient.

Louping-Ill as is now known from the work carried out at the Moredun Institute, Edinburgh, during the last 10 years can be transmitted by the tick Ixodes ricinus. Under natural conditions the disease is probably most commonly spread by this means. The possibility that infection might result, at any rate under experimental conditions, by other means than the intervention of an arthropod vector has been the starting point of the following investigation. The nasopharynx as a possible portal of entry was considered first because it is so often incriminated in many of the virus diseases of man. Furthermore, Webster and Fite (1933) and Elford and Galloway (1933) have shown that mice can be infected with the virus of louping-ill by the nasal instillation of potent filtrates or suspensions of infective brain. Fresh importance has been added to this alternative route of entry of the virus by the occurrence of a number of cases of laboratory infections amongst those who have studied the experimental disease. Rivers and Schwentker (1934), who have recorded these cases, give reasons for incriminating the nose as the portal of entry.

From the investigations of past workers, from those recently made with modern refinements by Gardner and Venkatraman (1935) and from my own studies, it is clear that in their serological diversity the vibrios rival the group of coliform bacilli.

1. The results of a study of 19 strains of the so-called Bacterium typhi flavum are given.

2. It is a Gram-negative rod, motile at 22° C., producing yellow colonies on agar and capable of fermenting a range of carbohydrates, but not lactose, with production of acid but no gas. It is not an antigenically homogeneous species.

3. The organism is widespread, especially in air, dust and plants, and thus may be isolated from various animal sources.

4. Prolonged subculture on agar failed to produce confirmation of the claims of certain workers to have observed the appearance of Bact, typhosum as variants of Bact. typhi flavum.

5. It is suggested that any relation of this organism to enteric infections is unproven and that its appropriate place is in the genus Chromobacterium.

It is well known that removal of the pituitary gland is followed by alterations in a number of metabolic processes. It was therefore thought of interest to determine whether these alterations involved any changes in certain immune processes, since very little is known at present of the factors controlling them. Our immunity experiments were made on rabbits and consisted in determining the complement content, the bactericidal power and the opsonic activity of the rabbits' serum.

The course of mortality has undergone some remarkable changes since the early part of the last century, the period for which official statistics are available. The variations in the death-rates are emphasised when the rates of various countries are compared, and the cause of the difference in the trend of mortality between various countries has been the source of much speculation. The most striking contrast between the course of mortality in two countries is, probably, that discussed by Prof. Greenwood (1924) in his paper, “The vital statistics of Sweden and England” (J. Roy. Stat. Soc. 87, Part 4). He made a comparison between the two countries for the ages 10–50 for two periods. The first period covered the years 1838–54 for England and Wales and 1841–50 for Sweden, the second period was 1901–10 for both countries. The probability of dying for males during the first period was greater in England and Wales between the ages 10–35 than in Sweden. The greatest difference occurred at age 19, when the value for England and Wales was 151·2 per cent, of the Swedish figure. From age 36 the male mortality in Sweden was in excess of that for England and Wales. The female mortality was greater in England and Wales for every age 10–50. In the second period the mortality at adolescence in England and Wales had made such an improvement that it was less than that of Sweden, the probability of dying for males in England and Wales being less than that of Sweden for the ages 10–31. The England and Wales value at age 19 was now only 59·8 per cent, of that of Sweden. From age 32 the male mortality in Sweden was less than that of England and Wales. The female rate for England and Wales was below that of Sweden for the ages 10–36 and above for 37–50. The mortality of 1901–10, of both countries, had shown considerable improvement on that of the earlier period. This decline in mortality has been general and has been shown in the experience of most countries.

Mombasa is the main port for the East African coast, handling all exports and imports for the two territories, Kenya and Uganda, which are incidentally the worst plague centres in the area. A fair amount of the Tanganyika and Belgian Congo produce also reaches this port. As Mombasa is the receiving centre for all the export trade of Kenya and Uganda, it might be expected that plague, if conveyable in any form or by any means, would appear regularly with the arrival of some of the main crops which are usually considered to be associated with the disease in the interior. Maize and cotton are generally supposed to be connected with the incidence of plague, and it is of particular interest to contrast briefly the figures for the incidence of the disease at the port within recent years and the periods of export of these crops.

We recently described a new method for measuring the carcinogenicity of mineral oils, etc. (J. Hygiene, 35, 125). Further researches have provided a considerable amount of fresh data, which are briefly discussed in this paper. It may be recalled that the basic principle of the test depends upon the fall in the refractive index of an oil when injected into, and subsequently recovered from, the peritoneal cavity of the experimental animal. The standard procedure we have provisionally adopted is the injection of 0·5 c.c. of oil into a 20-g. male albino mouse, the oil being recovered after remaining 1 week in the animal. Up to the present we have performed about 800 tests with some 200 oils, half of which were ordinary commercial products. The general indications we have obtained are that the fall in the refractive index (K.I.F.) is proportional to the degree of unsaturation or dehydrogenation of an oil of given viscosity, the fall being a measure of the carcinogenicity plus dermaticity of the oil in question.

1. Psittacosis infection is enzootic amongst several of the common species of Australian parrots in the wild state. A large proportion of recently caught individuals of Psephotus haematonotus, Trichoglossus (two species) and Leptolophus hollandicus are infected. In other genera, demonstrable infection is rare, but enlarged non-infective spleens probably indicative of past infection are common.

2. The virus strains derived from wild Australian parrots appear to resemble closely those isolated from human and parrot infections in Europe and America.

The investigation recorded in the present paper was undertaken as a corollary to the clinical trials with a new antityphoid serum, the results of which were recently published (Felix, 1935). Its object was to enquire into:

(i) the occurrence of Vi antigen in strains of B. typhosus freshly isolated from cases of typhoid fever;

(ii) the occurrence of Vi antibody in the blood serum of typhoid patients and convalescents.

1. Rough variants, derived from strains of B. typhosus which possess the Vi antigen, may still contain this antigen though the smooth O antigen has been lost.

2. Such variants, which are non-virulent, are yet capable of inducing active and passive immunity.

3. The virulence of B. typhosus depends on the combined activity of the smooth O and the Vi antigen. Nevertheless the Vi antibody alone is sufficient to protect against infection with strains of the highly virulent type.

4. The use of avirulent, rough, but Vi-containing variants as vaccines and in the preparation of therapeutic sera is discussed.

1. The survival of coliform organisms was studied in river water, either raw or sterilised, kept at different temperatures.

2. For determining the coliform count and the differential coli-aerogenes count in sterilised river water, direct plating of the water on agar, with subsequent study of a number of colonies picked at random, was used. For raw river water the rapid method described by Wilson and his colleagues (1935) was used, which obviates the necessity of plating and of colonial examination.

3. When Bact. coli and Bact. aerogenes were held in stored river water, which was protected from agitation, they underwent a gradual decrease in numbers and finally disappeared. At 37°C. they died out rapidly, but survived for a much longer time at temperatures in the neighbourhood of 0°C. They were able to survive longer in sterile water than in raw water.

4. Observations, however, made on water kept at room temperature and subjected to gentle aeration showed that not only did the organisms not die out, but that they actually multiplied, so that their numbers were considerably higher at the end of two months than at the beginning of the experiment.

5. In raw river water coliform bacilli survived longer at room temperature when kept in the dark than in daylight.

6. On the whole, aerogenes1 proved more resistant than Bact. coli to the environmental conditions provided. This was particularly noticeable in samples kept at room temperature (18°C.). In samples of raw water kept at 37°C. aerogenes proved slightly more resistant than coli, while at 0–2°C. the reverse was true.

7. The general conclusion seems to be that, except at very low temperatures, aerogenes is likely to survive longer in raw river water than Bact. coli.

8. This conclusion is clearly of importance in the interpretation of the coli-aerogenes results in water analysis.