352

concerned purely with fishing and licensing matters andcontaining in their composition some 50 per cent. of personsinterested in the fishing industry. These committees haveno concern whatever with the public health and they possessno advisers capable of guiding them in that direction. Asfar as we have been able to gather, the work of the SelectCommittee seems to have been performed in a somewhat

perfunctory manner. In the first place, they decided to

accept as proved the fact that illness can at times be causedthrough the agency of oysters ; they expressed themselves assatisfied with the evidence on this point. We are afraid, how-ever, that the Committee were content with very insufficient

evidence, since the questions which they put to the witnessesdid not as a whole indicate that intimate knowledge of thesubject which conviction by means of the considera-tion of evidence would be likely to engender. But what

perhaps is the most remarkable fact in connexion with

the doings of the Committee is that they amended theBill in the direction of conferring its administration uponthe Sea Fisheries Committees without in the first instance

endeavouring to ascertain whether the jurisdiction of thesecommittees extended to all the estuaries in which

oyster layings are found. They were, it appears, told byDr. Bulstrode that the Sea Fisheries districts as at presentconstituted did not so extend in all cases and that

some extension of jurisdiction might become necessary. In

spite, however, of this fact-there seems to be no questionthat it is a fact-the Lords’ Committee seem to have takenno trouble to ascertain the actual position of affairs, andwithout attempting to define what they mean by " SeaFisheries Committees" or any suggestion as to what is to

happen in inland districts where there are no salmon

conservators, the Lords allowed their Bill to go forward asan "amended" measure, and now the Select Committeehave presumably suffered the ignominy of learning from theBoard of Trade that the change which they introducedinto the Bill has rendered the measure impracti-cable. How much better it would have been for the

reputation of public business in the House of Lordsif the Committee had ascertained this fact before

"amending" " the Bill! As we ventured to predictin our last issue Mr. Chaplin has chosen to drop theBill altogether rather than in his capacity as Presidentof the Central Health Authority of this country to accept themangled and impracticable measure sent to him by the SelectCommittee. The contention of Lord Harris, as reported inthe Times of August lst, that the Bill primarily concernedthe oysters, is surely too grotesque, and it could only beequalled by a plea in reference, say, to a public health Billfor the prevention of the adulteration of beer that as the

question was one which concerned more particularly the hopsit was proposed to confer the administration of the Act uponthe hop-pickers. We trust that the next public healthmeasure which is dealt with by a Select Committee of theHouse of Lords will receive more consideraton than did the

now defunct Osyter Bill. -

THE QUEEN v. LEICESTER GUARDIANS.

" THE forty-five guardians of Leicester sounds like thecommencement of a nonsense-verse destined to rhyme with"fester," but is only intended to designate certain gentlemenand ladies who spent a hot though possibly instructive

morning last week in the London law-courts. The objectaimed at by them in their journey from the Midlands to theStrand is a little obscure but the occasion was as follows.The guardians of Leicester refuse to obey the law of theircountry which says that they shall" appoint a vaccinationofficer ; the Local Government Board has answered the

question Quis custod’iet c1tstodes?" " by asking the High Courtof Justice to grant its " mandamus " ordering the Leicester

guardians to comply with the law. As the Local GovernmentBoard had obtained a "rule nisi" for the mandamus theboard of guardians found themselves called upontollshowcause why the rule should not be made absolute" beforewhat is known as a Divisional Court of the High Court ofJustice sitting to hear cases set down in what is called theI Crown paper." The occasion, it may therefore be remarked,was one for technical argument as to the construction ofstatutes and the inner inwardness of decided cases ratherthan for the demonstration of enthusiasm by personsthirsting for martyrdom or any other form of fame. The

guardians of Leicester, however, thought otherwise and45 of them visited the metropolis and, we hope, im-proved their knowledge of law and procedure. Oneor two of them seem to have broken the sleepystillness of the Court with cheers at one pointbut to have desisted on realising that if they were turnedout there would he nothing for it but to go to the Earl’s.Court Exhibition, or return to Leicester, without hearingjudgment delivered. Their counsel was Mr. Asquith, Q.C.,formerly Home Secretary under Mr. Gladstone, who may, ifhe ever be in office again, have to deal with anti-vaccina-tionists. No doubt he can dissociate the views of an advocatefrom those of his clients-most reasonable people can-but it.does not therefore follow that those who briefed him will beable to do so. Be this as it may, neither Mr. Asquith’s per--sonal views on vaccination nor those of his clients had any-thing to do with his argument which was, of course,a purely legal one. His main point was that the Local-Government Board could themselves appoint a vaccina-

tion officer and that the mandamus of the court

is not the proper remedy if the same thing can be

had by another process. The answer of the Solicitor-

General, adopted without much argument from him by thecourt, was that the appointment of an officer by the

guardians was the thing sought ; that this was not the sameas the appointment of a vaccination officer by the LocalGovernment Board, or, in other words, that the alternativeplan to which he called their attention would not yield the-same result as a mandamus would give ; and that conse-quently the Local Government Board had rightly asked the-court to order the Leicester Guardians to obey the law.

The matter is probably not at an end yet. The law has been.laid down with clearness where it was apparently not obscure-before, but the Leicester Guardians who took a railwayjourney and listened to Mr. Justice Phillimore and Mr.Justice Darling will possibly seek some more picturesque-method of displaying their enthusiasm. We hope they willforgive us if we suggest that that adopted last week, with,the kind of publicity given to it by a section of the press,.was little short of ludicrous.

’

KALA-AZAR.

KALA-AZAR is an epidemic disease attended with a high*death-rate and especially prevalent in Assam. Though itappears to have existed for many years in the Garo Hills itwas not officially noticed until 1882, when an investigationby Captain McNaught, civil surgeon of Tura in the Garo-

Hills, was published. After this date the disease spread upthe Brahmaputra Valley and at the present time is found in theNowgong District. It has no doubt been sometimes confusedwith ankylostomiasis and its pathology presents some unusual,features, notably the fact that it appears to be malarialin its nature but nevertheless resists quinine and is com-municable from one person to another. In 1890 Major-Giles, I.M.S., published a report in which he maintainedthat the disease was ankylostomiasis, or rather, perhaps,."a mixed ansemia brought about by ankylostomiasis actingon a population worn down by chronic malarial poisoning.""These opinions did not meet with general acceptance, and-