General.

THE CALCUTTA CONVOCATION.

The Convocation of the Calcutta University was held on the 11th March at the Senate House, H. E. Lord Carmichael, the Rector, presiding. Dr. Devaprasad Sarbadhicary, the-Vice-Chancellor, began his Convocation Address with a reference to the unique ceremonial of the laying of the foundation-stone of the Hindu University by H. E. the Viceroy, and characterised it as a matter of high significance. He said it was his privilege to press the student housing question on the attention of the Government, who had been good enough to adopt a scheine of separate central infirmary, apart from the ordinary sick-rooms provided in hostels. Continuing, he said that they had 761 recognised schools and 51 affiliated colleges as against 50 schools and 13 colleges in 1857.

Referring to the recent Presidency College incident, he appealed to the students to co-operate together to help in the cause of order, good government and seemliness. He sought their cooperation, because stern public opinion amongst the students themselves would be far more effective than any repressive measures the authorities could devise.

In conclusion, he paid a high tribute to the wonderful service of the Bengal young men, many of them graduates of the Calcutta University, who were serving in Mesopotamia for the name of their King and country.

H. E. the rector wound up the proceedings with a speech mainly relating to the Presidency College affairs. He held up the ancient Hindu ideal of Guru and Sishya for the adoption of the modern student.

LONGEVITY: HINDUS AND MOHAMEDANS.

We learn from a Moslem contemporary that in Bengal, the Hindu males have a longer life than the Mussulman male, the difference however is slight. On the other hand, the Mussulman males in Behar have a longer span of life than their coreligionists in Bongal, or the Hindus of either province. In Behar and Orissa, as a whole, the Mussulmans have greater vitality or greater ability to withstand disease than the Hindus, but the reverse is the case in Bengal, where the Mussulmans have decidedly a higher average death rate than the Hindus. It is probably not generally known that both in Bengal and Behar

proportion of females among the Mussulmans igher than among the Hindus,

CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY ACTIVITIES.

Dr. Devaprasad Sarbadhicary, in the course of his Convocation Address to the Calcutta University, gave the following summary of the University activities since the days of Lord Minto. It is a fair record of progress of which the University has reason to be proud. Dr. Sarbadhicary said :— During Lord Minto's Chancellorship Rs. 10,35,048 were paid by the Government of India to the University on account of capital and recurring expenditure. During Lord Curzon's regime no grants had beer. made. During Lord Hardinge's Chancellorship however the recurring expenditure alone amounted to Rs. 13,02,283, and the capital grants for University purposes amounted to Rs. 32,35,000, including grant for hostels, for private colleges in the Mofussil and at Calcutta. This made a record total, in five years, of Rs. 45,37,283.

The grant to private colleges during the period rose from Rs. 80,000 in 1910-11 to Rs. 1,23,000 in 1914-15. Unfortunately owing to the War the expected grant of Rs. 1,29,000 towards the same purpose this year has been unavoidably withheld. We have every hope that as soon as there is a favourable opportunity, this year's omission will be rectified.

Last year the number affected by our work was phenomenal and unprecedented. We had 12,617 candidates for the Matriculation Examination as against the modest 244 with which we began in 1857. The number of candidates for the Intermediate Examination rose from 163 in 1861 to 6,905 in 1915. Our would-be Bachelors were 13 in 1858, and 3,499 last year; and against the single aspirant for Mastership of Arts in 1861, the number of candidates for Masterships in 1915 stood at 718. Candidates for the newly instituted Licentiateship in Teaching rose from 12 in 1909 to 40 in 1915, and those for the degice of Bachelor of Teaching rose from 16 in 1909 to 60 last year. The number of candidates for Bachelor in Law in 1858 was 19, and the number in 1915 was 590-by no means the largest on our records; for we had 993 candidates in 1911, 704 candidates in 1902, 705 in 1912. The number of candidates for Bachelor of Medicine was 2 in 1867, and 137 in 1915. The number of candidates for Bachelor of Engineering was 1 in 1866, and was 26 in 1915. The number of candidates for Master in Law in 1908 was 4, in 1913 was 14, and in 1915, 11.

We have 761 recognised schools and 51 affiliated colleges as against 50 schools and 13 colleges in 1857.

He

HE"army surgeon appears for the first time in history about the year 1312, when war was more common than peace. may have beer. a lineal descendant of the old Roman Medici, but he probably did not confine his work to surgery, pure and simple, like the "Doctour of Physik," of whom Chaucer wrote:

In all the world ne was there non bim lyk To speke of Physik or of Surgerye. The army surgeon of to-day has a much wider field than that of "Physik or of Surgerye," and it may be of interest to briefly consider the work which is being done within sight of the guns by the medical men attached to the various armies in the field. Many find their whole time occupied in watchful supervision of food supplies and billets, prevention of parasitic infections, treatment of sore feet, diarrhoea, or muscular rheumatism, and the thousand and one things which help to keep the soldier an efficient fighting man. This work, though monotonous, is nevertheless of the utmost importance. If we are to beat the Germans, however, it must be by providing big battalions, and it is no use enlisting men unless we employ every known method Science has provided to keep them healthy.

Fortunately for the British Army, the Medical Insurance Act had provided the Medical Research Fund, which made it possible to immediately bring trained research workers into the Army Medical Department. As the war has progressed, the need for medical and scientific help has increased with the numbers of the forces engaged, and there are now a large number of the most able and highly trained workers attached to the various armies in the field carrying out the most valuable investigations,

No. 5.

A research which costs a few hundred pounds may give results which in their application at once save the country as many millions in money. Not only from the financial side is research economical, but the saving in suffering to the brave men who have gone to fight for their country is not to be measured in gold.

The altered conditions of life must influence the health of both Army and Navy, where war, by massing large numbers of men together in close quarters, facilitates the spread of infections and fevers. This is counteracted to some extent by the improvement of physique and health of recruits, resulting from their physical training in fresh air and sunshine. The universal experience of war, however, has been the outbreak of epidemic disease, as shown in the case of typhoid fever in the South African War and of typhus in Serbia and, to a lesser extent, of cerebro-spinal fever among our own men during the present war. In France and Belgium there has been no violent epidemic of any kind, and this has been largely due to the efforts of the trained bacteriologists and sanitarians who have been investigating the best methods for prevention of disease.

Owing to the conditions associated with more or less stationary military operations, as are in existence in France, it was foreseen that a plague of flies was to be expected. Within recent years it has been proved that these insects play a very active part in the spread of cholera, typhoid and dysentery, and a commission of three well-known British entomologists has been on service in the field for over a year past, visiting all parts of the front in turn and carrying out an extensive series of experiments with a view to ascertaining the best method of dealing with the fly nuisance. So

far, few cases of typhoid fever have occurred amongst the British troops in France, although this fortunate state of things may be partly attributed to the protection conferred by anti-typhoid inoculation. Cholera is not usually met with in Western Europe, but it might very well appear under war conditions, and the presence of flies would help to spread the disease broadcast. Dysentery is a disease which has practically always appeared among armies in the field, and our forces in Gallipoli unfortunately proved no exception to the rule. A number of investigators have thrown considerable light on the nature of this disease, and it is to be hoped that they will be able to indicate the measures to be taken in order to prevent the disease spreading to civilian populations when invalided and disbanded soldiers return to their homes.

Typhus fever, a disease little heard of prior to the war, has appeared in epidemic form in Serbia, and, according to report, has spread through Austria. It has certainly occurred in the prisoners' camps in Germany mainly owing to the disgraceful conditions under which the prisoners were kept; and an illuminating article on this disease has been written by a British Medical Officer, who found himself a prisoner in a camp where a typhus epidemic broke out. With the knowledge gained from the epidemic in Serbia, it is hoped that no further outbreak will occur among the allied armies.

The exigencies of war, by exposing large numbers of men to adverse conditions, also lead to outbreaks of other diseases which in normal circumstances are unheard of. These include "trench frost-bite," "trench shin," "trench nephritis," and "trench fever," all of which are caused by the conditions of life in the trenches. Large numbers of men were invalided for one or other of these diseases during the winter of 1914-15, but already investigation has shown how prevention may be effected in some of them. Having discovered the cause, it will doubtless be possible to prevent their recurrence, at least in anything like the same numbers.

Even aviation has diseases peculiar to itself. Workers in aeroplane factories have been found to suffer from a new form of jaundice which puzzled their medical attendants until it was discovered that it was caused by exposure to the fumes of tetra-chlor-ethane used for painting the wings of aeroplanes. Some aviation pupils also are found on trial to lack the nerve and that co-ordination of hand and eye which are indispensable. The name

suggested for this condition is "aerasthenia," and it is held to be an absolute disqualification.

During the early days of the war a large number of cases of tetanus occurred among the wounded. The wounds were invariably infected with the muddy soil of Flanders, a soil which has for centuries undergone intensive cultivation, and in which the tetanus germs were always to be found. Anti-tetanic serum was therefore given to all wounded men immediately they were brought in, and the incidence of tetanus largely decreased.

Cerebro-spinal fever, although not a not a war disease, has, since war broke out, prevailed in epidemic form in Britain, and over four hundred deaths occurred in the home army during the first year of the war. The disease is not easily diag nosed without bacteriological assistance, and the researches carried out have proved of the greatest value both as regards prevention and cure.

The campaigns in East Africa and in Mesopctamia, like all campaigns in tropical countries, will in large measure depend on the efficiency of the means adopted to prevent the occurrence of tropical diseases. The knowledge which has resulted from research work already completed, and the work which is still being carried out, in diseases like malaria, dysentery, tick fever, epidemic jaundice and trypanosomiasis, will doubtless be fully utilized to protect our armies in these fields. The success attending the efforts of the medical officers, however, will depend to a large extent upon the observance by all ranks of the preventive and curative measures advised.

In the field of surgery an enormous amount of new work has been done. Injuries to nerves, to the spinal chord and to the brain have all been studied by expert investigators, and have resulted in interesting additions to our knowledge. Most ingenious apparatus have been invented for treatment of fractures, etc., and an exhibition of these, to illustrate the methods which have been found most useful in the war, has been held in London. The whole subject of war orthopaedics is also being studied by a few surgeons in a number of centres, and this research will enable the unfortunate men who have been maimed to start life afresh with well-fitted and useful artificial limbs.

Owing to the large percentage of wounds which were found to be infected, the study of antiseptics assumed a new importance, especially as some authorities took up the view that antiseptics were useless. The Medical Research Committee arranged for the carrying out of a research on antiseptic