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AUXILIARY AIR FORCE

Flying Offr. 1. A. G. L. Dick is promoted to the rank ofFlight Lt.

INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE

Capt. P. Papatla relinquishes his temp. commn.Indian Medical Department.-Sub-Maj. and Hon. Lt. Rai

Sahib Ram Ditta Mal, Bahadur, O.B.I., to be Hon. Capt.DEATHS IN THE SERVICES

Lt.-Col. ERNEST GEORGE FRENCH, R.A.M.C., retd.,who died on July 25th in his sixty-first year, was educatedat Edinburgh and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London,

qualifying M.B. in 1898, M.D. in 1906, and F.R.C.S. Edin.in 1909. Entering the R.A.M.C. in 1901, he served in theSouth African War, taking part in the action at RhenosterKop and gaining the Queen’s medal with five clasps.Later, in the European War, he received the King’s medaland was twice mentioned in dispatches. He had beenchief assistant in the Skin Department at St. Bart.’s,and was put in command of the Military Hospital,Rochester-row, with rank as specialist in dermatology ofthe British Armv. He was the author of a work on themodern treatment of syphilis (1926). He married AdèleM. Carvalho who survives him.

GRAINS AND SCRUPLES

ITnd,er this heading appear week by week the unfettered thoughts of doctors invarious occupations. Each contributor is responsible for the section for a month ; ;

his name can be seen later in the half-yearly index.

FROM A READER

V

CONTEMPLATION of my steamer’s wake across theNorth Sea has increased my admiration of the superbaeronautics of the gull. I watched several of themriding with outstretched wings on the eddies of airabout the stern, and saw one achieve a record oftwelve minutes’ suspension without a flap of thewings. Like most amateurish bird watchers, I am

deplorably sentimental, and a more intimate examina-tion of the birds in a small Swedish archipelagorecalled all the unpleasantries of these stinkingflesh eaters. The greater black-backed gull is a

cunning bully, a sort of Bulldog Drummond of thefiord, with a peculiarly repulsive expression of a youngwoman who, trying to imitate the patrician hauteurof the ladies drawn in current fashion journals, suc-ceeds only in looking snooty and rapacious. I have

just seen a gull as tame as such a bird could be.When barely fully grown, the story goes, it accepteda piece of fish from an old sailor, and every day sincefor twenty years it has returned to feed from him.It was fat and ugly, and the only signs of attachmentit had for its benefactor were to take fish from hishand alone, and to waddle after him pecking viciouslyat his trouser legs if no food was forthcoming. After

feeding, it flew heavily away, with barely enoughlift to clear the water. Apart from the constancyof its cupboard love, its chief claim to fame wasthat many years ago it found a barrel of herrings leftopen, and put down twenty pounds at a sitting.

* * *

The complacently monolingual Britisher is a bitof myth, but I doubt if he will ever die. There is asimilar belief that all Russians are superb linguists.Turgenev attempted to explode it, but it is stillinvoked with satisfaction when we find that a voluble

polyglot is a Russian. Necessity is the only teacherof languages for most of us, and on the whole Englishpeople make a fair showing with foreign languages.(Let me hasten to add, throwing a sop to anotherbelief, that they speak them with a vile accent,quite unlike, one must suppose, the exquisitelymodulated Oxford accent of the visiting German orFrenchman.) In a Scandinavian country, to whoselanguage necessity hasn’t driven me except for afew numerals and food words, I am distressinglydependent on gesture and the superior education ofmy hosts. But grateful as I feel for the excellentteaching of English in Swedish secondary schools,English with a marked Swedish accent is nearly asincomprehensible as Swedish itself.

In accent lies one of the prime difficulties of a

universal language. Whether it is dog Latin, basicEnglish, or Esperanto, it will sound fluid and vowellyon the lips of an Italian, and the Dane, for example,will make it characteristically nasal and staccato.

Only by writing the language in the several nationalphonetics would the spoken word be universal;perhaps it is better to stick to the universal writtenlanguage, and let speech look after itself. When indoubt we can always translate the peculiarities ofthe foreigner’s Esperanto or basic English. Afterall, we have the celebrated precedent of Shakespeare’s

0 weederdee degar lano devar.

with which the Times conveyed the niceties of a

foreign actress’s rendering of0 wither’d is the garland of the war.

* * *

Sweden is said to be the most civilised country inthe world. I should hesitate to endorse this remark,for I don’t know what civilisation is. For one person,such praise is deserved when he finds electric light inremote villages and sanitation dependent on runningwater. Reasonable divorce laws, a fair degree of

intelligent socialisation, and a proper attitude to theLeague of Nations might be grounds for another’sendorsement. And there is even the unjustly cele-brated medical definition of civilisation as syphilisa-tion to consider-but that is more noteworthy as asniggering near-pun than anything else. But without

bothering about definition, I am content to findSweden exceptionally attractive, full of savoir vivreand modern conveniences.

* * *

As holiday reading the detective story remainsthe most popular. The bland assumption of reviewersin the higher-toned weeklies that its popularitydepends on the vicarious satisfaction of blood-lustis puzzling. I’m certainly not conscious of it, norare any of the readers I’ve asked about it ; if suchsubjective observation can be accepted as evidenceabout a thing like blood-lust. One satisfaction canbe found in all stories of detection-that of thescientific instinct. The reader is stimulated to investi-gate something, and has the vicarious pleasure of

tidying up a mysterious phenomenon. The almostconstant use of murder as a theme is accidental, forreally big thefts, of jewels or war office secrets, canbe equally fascinating. The real point about theubiquity of crime in the stories is that it takes thievesand killers, with their threat to really importantthings like property and life, to rouse us to the pointof intellectual activity. As for blood-lust, it can beso much more easily satisfied every morning for theexpenditure of one penny.

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Detective story writers are of two kinds : settersand solvers of a puzzle, and novelists who lard moreor less good detection with character, irrelevantinformation, and love interest. It would be interest-

ing to know whether doctors, whose existence ismade up of a series of detective problems, like theirdetection plain or fancy. I should imagine that

practitioners like it plain, for they must be tired ofadjusting their detection to the all-too-humaninterests, while medical workers more remote frompatients probably like it fancy, for they are sick ofmere fact. I manage both kinds, though I preferthe fancy. I like to learn with Miss Sayers the rightpoets to quote for refined love-making, the right wayto refer to that paragon of the peerage, Lord PeterWimsey; to know that a detailed knowledge of

Taylor’s Jurisprudence is compatible with a tenseOxonian reverence for Scarlatti and Bach. Butthese paragons must wear their learning with an air.The angular erudition of Philo Vance is too muchfor flesh to bear, and even the urbane Ellery Queengoes too far when the editor appends to one of hislearned remarks a footnote to the effect that" Queen is evidently referring to Schopenhauer’sdictum that ..." If our policemen are to be learned,let them at least be light.

* * *

Looking over my grains and scruples, I am struckby the way in which they have insensibly piled upuntil the pages are laden with avpirdupois of porten-tous solidity. It takes a long familiarity withjournalism to believe that a light thought, withoutcosmic significance or roots deep in experience, is

really worth printing. Both I and my predecessorsin these columns have yielded to that acquired lustfor diagnosis, the desire to explain and relegate all

things to a general scheme. The influence of SirThomas Browne, with his orotund pontifications, hasbeen too much for us, and though we have’nt attempted

a Religio Medici, there is a whiff of incense pervadingeven our lightest moments.As a self-designated Reader, my preoccupation

in these columns has been with writers ; which isno bad thing in itself, for experience is most con.

veniently handed on in print. But the literary gentshave come to regard the art of conveying experienceas the most important part of living, and have madeLiterature synonymous with Life; the writer’s lifeand work are one, and the heritage of Great Thoughtshas become the gallery of Great Men. This is all

very well for the literary gents, but it can be rathertiresome for the rest of us, because criticism and under-

standing are expected to be as much concerned withmen as with their " message." It is no longer enoughfor us to read intelligently; we must be erudite aswell, with a background of great poets, novelists, andcritics ; we must be familiar with a host of illustriouspersons-believing this with Francis Bacon, andthat with Emily Bronte-and live in a select familyof what Mr. Aldous Huxley calls culture-uncles andculture-aunts. To be well read is an end in itself,and bookishness has become a game, well seasonedwith intellectual snobbery. The proper attitude toit all would be " I don’t know about Art and all that,but I know what I like," if this were not the expressionof the most intense intellectual snobbery of all, thecredo of the Plain Man with No Nonsense about him.Apparently there is no escape. To be educated

one must suffer the taint of Culture. But I must

protest against it ; and, bookish to the end, I cannotdo better than quote culture-uncle Bernard Shaw.It was in Cashel Byron that Lydia Carew, tired ofher arty-crafty, overcultured acquaintances, sighed," If one could only find an educated man who hadnever read a book, what a delightful companion hewould be."

*** This concludes the five articles by a Reader.Next month F.R.O.S. (1936) will be responsible forthese columns.-ED. L.

PANEL AND CONTRACT PRACTICE

A Sunday Sore ThroatON a certain Sunday, about 10 A.M., a domestic

servant told her employer that she had a sore throatand was sent to bed. Some three hours later the

employer telephoned to the responsible insurance

practitioner asking him to visit the patient. Thedoctor was somewhat annoyed at being called outon Sunday and suggested that the girl should be sentto him if she required his services. Later in the

day he sent notes to the insured person and to themistress, in the former requesting the maid forthwithto choose another doctor and in the latter makingobservations about the unreasonable attitude adoptedby the mistresses of some domestic servants.The girl, in her evidence before the medical service

subcommittee, when asked whether she felt ill apart fromhaving a sore throat, replied, " No, not exactly ill, but itcertainly did make me feel queer." Another practitionervisited her on the Sunday evening and he gave her aninjection and some tablets.The mistress said that she was concerned because the

girl was delicate, had recently undergone a nasal operation,and had been advised to exercise care in the event of acold being contracted. The maid had told her that hertemperature, which was usually subnormal, had risen tonormal, and the mistress seems to have regarded this asindicating feverishness. She waited until about 1 r.M.

before telephoning because she assumed that the doctorwould be out during the morning. She said that she told

the doctor that the girl had an extremely sore throat andhad been sent to bed, and when the doctor inquired asto the girl’s temperature she replied that it was normal.The doctor then suggested that the girl should come tohis house, but she would not take the responsibility ofallowing her to go out as she was thoroughly warm inbed. She agreed that had she not already sent the girlto bed she would have sent her to the doctor. She wasnot aware that in this particular insurance committee’sarea it was only in case of emergency that an insurancedoctor should be called on a Sunday. The services of theother doctor were not sought until after the notes hadbeen received from the responsible doctor.The practitioner told the subcommittee that the tele-

phone call came while he was having his lunch. He wasinformed that the maid had a sore throat, and that hertemperature, usually below normal, was that morningright up to normal. He was not informed that the patienthad been under a throat and ear specialist, and he did notremember being told that the girl had been in bed since10 A.M. He thought, in all the circumstances, the patientcould come round to him particularly as he knew theemployers possessed a motor-car. He told the mistressthat a doctor should not be called on a Sunday unlessin a case of serious emergency, and had the informationgiven to him suggested the existence of emergency hewould have attended immediately ; he felt indignant atbeing asked on a Sunday to visit a patient who had anormal temperature. He telephoned the mistress a fewminutes later with the object of reading to her the instruc-tions printed on a medical card, and having understoodthat another doctor was going to be called in he subse-