1296

.:not be described as atrophic. The cord also seemed small andof rather harder consistence than normal. On examinationof the cord after hardening and staining there were found tobe marked sclerotic changes affecting chiefly the posteriorcolumns and also the anterior and lateral pyramidal tracts.The condition was similar throughout the cord in the

- cervical, dorsal, and lumbar regions. The posterior nerve-roots were also found to be degenerated, but the anteriorwere normal. In conclusion Dr. Burr gives an excellent

’’J’éwmé of the views held by various observers as to thenature and origin of the sclerotic changes present in the cordin this disease, and he expresses his belief that a neurogliarsclerosis of the posterior columns is the primary lesion. Dr.Burr is to be congratulated on the care and completeness

Iwith which he has carried out his investigation.

"CRAMMING" IN BOARD SCHOOLS.

MR. T. PRIDGIN TEALE has once more been lifting uphis voice against "cramming" in education. This time,in the Yorkshire Post, it is with reference to Board schooleducation and questions raised during the contest inLeeds. Mr. Teale seeks to direct attention to a real

evil-viz., the pressure put on children by the actionof the Leeds Board, even the youngest having to performmpossible feats of lessons or of drill. Towards the

examination time this pressure becomes acute. He makes

many startling statements on the authority of persons onwhose accuracy he can fully rely, of which the following isthe gist. Corporal punishment is needed because the timegiven is not sufficient to draw forth the best the child cando. In many schools the recreation interval in morning andafternoon schools is omitted for the furtherance of "cram."The Leeds Board has reimposed the system of percentagewhich the Government has abandoned. Infants aged threeand four years are examined in mental arithmetic, arithmeticon slates, in "phrasing " of sentences, &o. Before drillexaminations children from eight to thirteen years of ageare kept at drill from half-past ten to twelve and for anhour in the afternoon. We congratulate Leeds on having forone of its citizens a member of the profession who feels it hisduty to point out such great evils. Some of the state-

ments seem scarcely credible, but Mr. Teale is not a manlikely to have made them on insufficient evidence.

THE RECENT SMALL-POX EPIDEMIC ATWILLENHALL.

MR. TILDESLEY, the medical superintendent of the small-pox hospital at Willenhall, has just issued an interestingreport on the recent small-pox epidemic in that town in sofar as the cases of the disease were isolated. The evidencewhich Mr. Tildesley has adduced is full of valuable matter,and is conclusive once again of the efficiency of vaccination.From June llth to Nov. 4th of the present year there were261 patients treated in the hospital, but these do not by anymeans include all the cases notified, since many weretreated at their own homes, especially prior to the opening ofthe institution. Briefly stated the data are as follows:Of the 261 patients, 48, or 184 per cent., were aged tenyears and under ; other 101, or 3S.3 per cent., were agedfrom eleven to twenty years ; the cases from birth to twentyyears of age being 149, or 56’7 per cent. of the whole. The

deaths numbered 14, being at the rate of 5’3 per cent.of attacks ; but whilst as many as 13 were in the 36unvaccinated patients, yielding a mortality rate of 38’8

per cent. of cases, there was only a single death amongthe 225 vaccinated persons, a percentage of only 0’44—or,in other words, the mortality among the unvaccinated caseswas relatively eighty-eight times as great as among the

vaccinated. All of the unvaccinated cases without exceptionwere confluent attacks, but of the other class only 5 per cent.

were of that nature. The single death in the vaccinated wasin a person who had only one faint and doubtful scar visible.In each of 41 cases either not vaccinated or having but onefaint scar the disease took a severe form, frequently accom-panied by complications. All the 119 cases with four scars

passed through mild attacks with no sequelse. In regard tothe total cost of the epidemic in its isolation phases, Mr.Tildesley points out that the weekly average cost per patientwas only 158. 9d. Each patient cost the rates on the average.S3 15s. 6d., this covering maintenance and nursing for theaverage stay in hospital of twenty-four days. The hospitalmanagement is to be congratulated on such a veryreasonable outlay.

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HOMICIDE IN THE ITALIAN ARMY.

"ORDINARY breach of discipline," says a high medico-military authority, " is rarer in the Italian than in any otherEuropean army. Not so with manslaughter, which hasbecome neither more nor less than a horrible specialty (1lnaorribile specialità) of the Italian service." The wholesale

slaughter of comrades perpetrated by homicidal maniacs likeMisdea, Magri, Torres, and quite lately Radice and Renando,seems to multiply from year to year in the peninsula untilthe army of Italy threatens to prove more destructive toitself in the barracks than to the enemy in the field. HerWar Office is seriously engaged in devising measures tocheck the phenomenon, and one critic believes he haslaid his finger on the cause when he points to the

I I obbligatorio servizio " (obligatory service) enforced so

sternly throughout the kingdom. It is quite true thatunder that system the ranks are periodically recruitedfrom the prisons-the budding criminal or full-fledgedmalefactor recently emerged from strong lodgings " havingequally to serve with the young shopman, or agriculturallabourer, or university student. There is thus introducedinto the army a contingent of possible Misdeas and Magris-to the inevitable demoralisation of the service and the

periodical outbreak of crime, homicidal and other. To ex-

clude from the conscription all whose record is criminal seemsthe obvious course in these circumstances ; but the objectionto this is immediate and unanswerable. Italy would then haveher youth disqualifying themselves for the army by qualifyingfor the prison; and just as personal mutilation was and ispractised to evade military service, so will there be moral

taint-crime, in short-cultivated with the same object.Italy, of all countries, cannot afford to put this premiumupon criminality. Another and a far sounder remedy is thatproposed by the medical school of which Lombroso and hisdisciples are the head. Let the preliminary inspection ofthe conscript be conducted on a far more thorough, scientific,and satisfactory system than that now in force. Let the

psychological expert act as assessor to the army surgeon inexcluding the mentally infirm as well as the bodily defective.Let the tests familiar to such alienists as Italy possesses inabundance be carefully applied so as to exclude the brachy-cephalous, the cranially unsymmetrical-the victim, in short,to congenital misdevelopment-and one source of the intro-duction of crime into the army will be blocked ab iaitio.Dr. Frigerio, director of the lunatic asylum at Alessandria,whose luminous and incisive review of the Magri case wasrecently noticed in these columns,1 demonstrated con-

clusively that had that wholesale homicide been properlyexamined at the conscription his physical and mental con-formation would have relegated him to the "mani-comio" (madhouse) rather than to any society, civilor military. When too late-when, indeed, on his trialfor a series of homicides committed suddenly in barracks-that wretched epileptic was found to be "ultra-brachy-cephalic, with want of symmetry in the nasal, oral, and

1 THE LANCET, Sept. 22nd, 1894.