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lions. About half an hour before our arrival oneof his natives had run in saying that there was a lionnear the house. The farmer got his rifle and followedthe native. In the bush about 100 yards away hesaw a tawny body and fired at it. The woman hadbeen draped in the usual square of orange colouredcalico. Natives are seldom in error about animals,and one can understand the farmer’s action on thenative’s statement and on seeing the tawny objectcrouching in the bush. But had we not arrived

just at the right moment the farmer might have haddifficulty in defending his position. Europeans inthe bush are quite likely to mistake domestic animals,and even man, for game. Not so very long ago aboy shot his sister in mistake for an antelope. Theold hunter’s maxim " never shoot unless you can

see enough of the animal to identify it" is not

always obeyed.* * *

I wonder how many of my readers have ever shota monkey. I did once, and never, never again !I was in a canoe paddling up a river with my brother.A native with us pointed out a monkey in a treeabove us. Quite instinctively I fired and hit it inthe chest-lower than I aimed. The monkey fellsome distance and then caught at a branch. Ittried to stuff some leaves into its wound, and it criedjust like a child in fearful pain. I was completelyunnerved, so that every one of five shots I nred atit to end its agony and its dreadful crying wentwide. I had to hand the rifle to the native to finishthe monkey ; my brother refused the job.

CORRESPONDENCEAIR-BORNE INFECTION IN OPERATING

THEATRESTo the Editor of THE LANCET

SiR,-The paper by Dr. S. T. Cowan in your issueof Nov. 5th and your leading article on the samesubject arouse recollections of Lister’s early work onthe problems connected with wound treatment. Itwas the conviction of the existence of air-borneinfection which led Lister to devise the carbolic

spray. One of the younger school of neuro-surgeonswas so impressed with this risk during the longexposure so often necessary in neurological operationsthat, in 1933, he actually borrowed an old carbolicspray, which I had in my possession, and used itin a series of cases in the hope that the antisepticvapour might sufficiently sterilise the atmosphere inthe vicinity of the operation area. The apparatuswas a portable steam spray, which had been regularlyused by my old teacher Rutherford Morison until1891, when the method was discarded. I lent it to

my young friend, and it is interesting to think of itcoming into its own again after so long.The proved risk of air-borne infections suggests the

necessity of keeping the operation area covered asfar as ever possible, and I feel sure that it willultimately be proved that the use of gauze soakedin a weak antiseptic, such as 1 in 5000 biniodideof mercury, will serve this purpose and will not befound harmful to the tissues.

I am. Sir. vmrrs faithfiillv-G. GREY TURNER.

British Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith,London, W., Nov. 9th.

THE ARCHES OF THE FOOT

To the Editor of THE LANCETSiR,-It is a pity that English orthop2edic surgeons

do not abolish the term " flat-foot " for conditionsthat are pathological. It must be very confusing fora foreigner to realise what we mean when we find asurgeon claiming that a flat foot is a normal condition,and in the next paragraph will discuss flat-foot as adisability. It is quite time, as I pointed out overforty-five years ago (Walsham and Kent Hughes,"Deformities of the Foot"), that we ceased todescribe longitudinal and transverse arches of thefoot. T. S. Ellis (" The Human Foot ") applied theterm " semi-dome," which fits in much more accuratelywith the anatomy and function of the foot.

I was glad to see McMurray adopted the termsemi-dome " but later on still mentions the talusas a key-stone. Ellis’s whole point is that the talushas neither the position nor the shape to performsuch a function. I am one of those happy individuals

blessed with a foot with a low arch, and though it isnot considered a handsome object it has carried mewell for 74 years through all kinds of athletics andheavy manual labour. A pathological flat-footseldom occurs in such a foot. The foot with a higharch causes most of the aches and pains and instability.The heads of all my metatarsals touch the ground.This frequently is not the case in a high-arched footwhich is often a genuine cavus with loss of dorsalflexion and some contraction of plantar muscles andligaments. I think the original anatomist to describethe longitudinal and transverse arches must havetaken this type for his description. The low-archtype seemed to me common among bare-footed

Japanese, Batavians, and Australian aboriginals.The frequency of foot trouble in military Germany

is easily explained by overstrain of youth. Adolescentsrequire leisure and not over-exercise, and as Ellis

pointed out, the military position is stupid. Weshould stand and walk with feet straight and notabducted. In taking antero-posterior sections throughthe cuneiform bones and cuboid, I tried to demonstrate(Walsham and Kent Hughes) that the weight of thebody was transmitted through the medial portion ofthe foot, and that the lateral portion of the cuboidwas cancellous and contained no compact bone,proving Ellis’s contention that the lateral part ofthe foot was not meant to transmit weight. That iswhy I have always raised " the waist to the sole "by a leather - arch beneath the insole, instead of

raising the inner border of the foot in early fallenarches. We want to tilt back the talus and calcaneusinto their proper position and not merely to throwthe weight upon the outer border of the foot.

Collapse and spread of the foot anteriorly is surelya very real entity and in my opinion frequentlyprecedes tilting of the talus and calcaneus medially.Pain is due to stretching of ligaments and not nippingof nerves. Real metatarsalgia is due to passing of adigital nerve directly under the head of a meta-tarsal bone. I have only seen some half-dozen cases,four of which I proved by operation. If you placeyour fingers under the heads of the metatarsals whena patient is standing up, you will get evidence ofthe amount of weight transmitted to each bone.

I cannot agree with Mr. Bruce and Dr. Walmsleyabout the production of clawed toes. Even in post-paralytic cases I found upon dissection that theinterossei and lumbricales were hypertrophied, insome instances enormously so. Duchenne’s argumentarose from the fact that he failed to get response toelectrical reactions which was natural under thecircumstances. The prevalence of flat-foot is largelydue to a shortened tendo Achillis A person with