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dent, but some involved the head and occasionallythe whole body, and the majority of non-industrialaccidents were considered unavoidable. Over6 per cent. of the cases were due to causes which lieoutside the domain of the ophthalmologist from thepoint of view of treatment-vascular, renal, andcerebral diseases and diabetes in particular-and inthis connexion the committee draws attention to a

passage from its 1936 report : " After the earlyyears blindness, apart from accidents, is often dueto general disease, and the prevention of blindness tothis extent becomes part of preventive medicine. Forthis reason alone it is highly desirable that personswith defects of sight should seek expert medicaladvice with a view to finding out whether the causeof such defects is some disorder of general health."

SOYA-BEAN MILK AT SHANGHAI

OF the 350,000 destitute Chinese in camps andelsewhere in Shanghai it is the children who takemost harm from food deficiencies. According to areport received from the International Red Cross atShanghai through the Lord Mayor’s Fund for China,all the refugees, suffer more or less from beri-beri,and an attempt is being made to prevent this bysupplying them with soya-bean milk and cakes,which contain vitamin B1. This milk is produced atone of the hospitals : the beans are soaked and thencrushed in a mill run by a small motor, which couldgrind enough beans to give 15,000 lb. of milk in

. twelve hours ; but at present only 6000-7000 lb. ismade, for this is the limit of cooking facilities. Thebean mash is mixed with water and slowly boiled,and the hot solution is delivered to the camps, where

sugar and calcium lactate are added. One pound isallowed to one child each day and delivery is twicedaily. There are, it is stated, about 15,000 childrenunder six years of age in the International Settle-ment and French Concession to whom the bean milkis a necessity, but enough is available for only about7000. The bean residue after milk production ismixed with its own weight of whole-wheat flour andbaked into cakes by a firm in Shanghai at cost price.These cakes are distributed to 3200 children betweenthe ages of six and twelve, who receive two each day.The total cost of this project is about 11,000 dollars,but would of course be far greater if the milk andcakes were made on a sufficient scale. The best thatmost of the Shanghai camps can do for their refugeesis two meals a day of hot rice and a little vegetable,chiefly dried and salted turnip. Even to keep themsupplied with this meagre diet will become desperatelydifficult during the next two months. Unless freshfunds can be raised the camps will be faced withsomething approaching mass starvation.

THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY CORRECT WAY TO

WRITE

A STUDY of its history has convinced Dr. H.Callewaert that handwriting through the ages hasrightly tended to become cursive. Gothic hand-writing was at least aesthetically justifiable, but theso-called " simple script," in which the letters com-posing a word are not linked together, is to be- commended neither from the point of view of con-venience nor of physiology. An antebrachial action,with the point of the elbow used as the pivot ofrotation is, in Dr. Callewaert’s view, the physio-logically correct way to write, permitting of a largeand practical range of movement of the forearm and

1 Physiologie de l’écriture cursive. By Dr. H. Callewaert.Paris: Desclée, de Brouwer et Cie. 1937. Pp. 122.

hand working together, and of free movements of allthe fingers. A carpo-radial action, though much lessample in scope, permits of relatively rapid writing incertain circumstances, but a carpo-cubital action,often found in combination with a carpo-radial,should be avoided. The digito-radial action is fluentenough at the end of the line, but is restricted in scopeeven when there is a good functional dissociationbetween the two parts of the hand as in a mixeddigito-radial movement. Similarly in the auriculo-radial action there is limitation of range of movementbecause the action of the little finger is divorced fromthat of the other fingers. Any pronouncement by amedical man, of whatever country, on the subject ofhandwriting is likely enough to revive the age-oldpleasantry on the illegibility of prescriptions, withthe suggestion that of all people the doctor is leastqualified to speak with authority on this subject.It is certain that though nearly all handwriting tendsto become less formal and precise with the years,those who learnt in their youth to pen each letterseparately remain on the whole more easy to read inlater life. Perhaps the restrictions in the scope ofarm and hand movements, deplored by Dr. Callewaert,play a part in the retention of relative legibility bythose who started their writing in " simple script."

FERTILITY OF THE EARTH

IN a mechanised age it may be difficult for towns-people to remember that all the food of the humanrace is obtained by the tilling of the earth or theharvesting of the sea. Improved transport andmeans of food preservation have combined to reducethe effects of crop failures, at least on those nationswith sufficient means to buy abroad, so that, exceptin time of war, the townsman is inclined to look nofarther than the butcher, the grocer, and the sellerof what the late H. E. Armstrong called " cleaned upmilk" for the supply of his daily food. It wastherefore a wise move on the part of the RoyalInstitution to arrange for the delivery in the heartof London of a course of lectures on the fertility of theearth. Sir Frederick Keeble, whose eloquence com-pleted the series, expressed some alarm at the deteri-oration of physique and fertility in the human race andat the decreasing fertility of the soil. He welcomed thedevelopment of grass farming at the expense ofarable, but argued for the better cultivation andutilisation of grass, deploring the widespread use ofconcentrated cattle foods and the time-honouredmethod of preserving grass as hay. The specimen ofartificially dried grass shown on the lecture tablewas as green as alpine hay, but it was difficult toassent to the view that lowland hay, when wellmade and stored, must lose so large a proportion ofsalts and protein as he suggested. A strong point,amply illustrated by numerical data, was the advan-tage of increasing the yield of grass by the properuse of fertilisers all through the year, enabling stockto spend more of their time grazing, and to grazeon newly grown grass in which nutritious and growth-promoting constituents had not given place to fibrousmatters of use mainly as "roughage." Most food-stufes derived from land plants are, according to thelecturer, deficient in iodine and iron, whence ariselack of vitality and anaemia. His main thesis, how-ever, was the desirability of fuller recognition of thedictum that " all flesh is grass" and of greaterattention to the improvement of pasturage. Muchmore could be done in maintaining soil in fertile con-dition by better cultivation, keeping up its contentof humus, and supplementing its available con-

stituents by the judicious use of manures, including