Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/318

 that might apply in the suppression of the epidemic. This committee consists of Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, University of Michigan, chairman; Professor Milton J. Rosenau, Harvard; Dr. William H. Park, department of health, New York City; Dr. Francis W. Peabody, Boston; Dr. John Howland, Johns Hopkins; Dr. Augustus B. Wadsworth, director of the state laboratories, Albany, and Professor Charles C. Bass, Tulane University. The members of the conference were conducted through the infantile paralysis wards of the Willard Parker Parker Hospital and were present at a clinic held there. The research workers will carry with them cultures of the disease and will work out various lines of investigation in their own laboratories. The report of the conference was presented to Dr. Haven Emerson on August 4 and lays stress on:

1. The early recognition and notification of the disease, and

2. The immediate isolation of patients and cases of suspicious illness. Furthermore, on account of incomplete knowledge concerning the disease, measures known to be effective in checking the spread of other infections should be applied and these are, particularly, personal hygiene, cleanliness of person and surroundings, and care of food, which should be thoroughly cooked. The special problems suggested for study are the following:

1. Methods of culture of the virus of poliomyelitis, with especial reference to corroboration of previous work, to simplification of methods, and to the distribution of the virus in the body of patients.

2. The immunologic reactions of patients, supposed carriers of the virus, and others.

3. The virulence for animals, of the crude virus, in order to determine if possible whether there are any differences in the virus causing outbreaks in different parts of the country as well as to discover, perchance, more susceptible animals for experimental purposes than are now available.

4. The microscopic study of the secretions of the nose and throat and of the intestinal contents of patients suffering from poliomyelitis, persons who have come in close contact with such patients, and others.

5. The transmission of the disease by insects and domestic animals and other possible modes of transmission.

6. The study of practical methods of disinfection.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

WE record with regret the death of John B. Murphy, the distinguished Chicago surgeon; of William Cole Esty, professor emeritus of mathematics, Amherst College; of William Simon, professor of chemistry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore; of Sir Victor Horsley, the distinguished English surgeon, and of Sir William Ramsay, the eminent British chemist.

Royal Society of Edinburgh has elected as foreign honorary fellows, Professor D. H. Campbell, professor of botany, Leland Stanford University; General W. C. Gorgas, U. S. Army, and Professor E. C. Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory. The Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S., one of the most distinguished English students of philosophy, was recently fined for issuing pamphlets to conscientious objectors to military service and deprived of his lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge; now it is said he has been. refused a passport to visit America to keep his engagement to lecture at Harvard University.

vocational-educational bill, providing for federal cooperation with the states in promoting agricultural and industrial education, makes an annual appropriation beginning at $500,000 and increasing each year by $250,000 until $3,000,000 is reached, to be apportioned to the states in proportion to their rural population.—The jury in the Surrogates' Court of New York City has declared invalid the will of Amos F. Eno, according to which Columbia University was made the residuary legatee and would receive an amount estimated at over four million dollars. It is understood that Columbia University will seek to obtain a new trial.