niture dyed with aniline colours, thus proving that the injury is caused not merely by personal contact, but by breathing a poisoned atmosphere. The writer concluded by strongly urging that the Government should be appealed to to take legislative measures to suppress this wholesale poisoning.

Dr. WILLIAM HARDWICKE exhibited An Apparatus for Analysis of Air,' adapted for medical officers of health. The special feature was the method of collecting the air by an aspirator, graduated into cubic litres.' Dr. Hardwicke said that too little attention had been given to the nitrogenous matters in the atmosphere, and their relation to epidemic diseases.

A Paper on The Variations in the Composition of River Waters' was read by Mr. J. ALFRED WANKlyn. A tabular statement was given of the composition of the water of the river Nile in different months. The remarkable point brought out in this table is the great relative alteration in the proportion of chlorine; that whereas in the beginning of June, just at the beginning of the rise of the Nile, the chlorine amounts to 1·8 grains per gallon, the chlorine sinks to 0-3 grains per gallon when the Nile has attained a great size, and remains at very little above that proportion until the end of the year. The water of the Nile is sometimes quite as much charged with organic matter as the Thames at Hampton Court. But, like Thames water, it is, no doubt, amenable to wholesale filtration, and a Nile water company ought to deliver excellent water. The water of the Nile is only about half as hard as the London Thames water.

A Paper on Assimilative Food,' 2 was read by Mr. W. J. COOPER. Nutriment properly defined consists of all the various elementary substances necessary to build up the human body. And as starch forms the greatest proportion of the necessary element, so starch is in one sense the most important aliment of nutrition. It has been objected to such foods as arrowroot, corn flour, and especially in the case of corn flour, that the gluten is entirely extracted, and that, therefore, these finely divided powders are not nutritious.

1 The description was very briefly given, in order to make way for the many papers on the list. It was proposed to be made the subject of a communication at one of the evening meetings of the Association in London.

2 This paper is printed entire in Sanitary Record, October 16, 1875.

Such objections are somewhat similar to the objections made some years ago to extraction of quinine from bark or morphia from opium. It is of the utmost importance that medical men should be able to administer exact quantities of any active medicine; and it is of no less importance that invalids and children should be fed with such proportions of assimilable food suitable to their various constitutions. Arrowroot and corn flour from the delicacy of their structure, are easily converted into gelatinous and readily assimilable aliments, and the fact that they consist almost entirely of starch, enables the doctor or nurse to admix with other alimentary substances the proper quantity of this nutriment which forms four-fifths the weight of the food of a large proportion of the inhabitants of the world. There is also another very sound reason for the abstraction of the nitrogenous matter from corn flour, it enables the manufacturer to grind it finer and get into a form which renders it, when boiled, 'gelatinous and digestible. There is no doubt much infantile mortality is caused by ignorance in the matter of children's diet. Some young people are in the habit of giving meat to young children. Children should be fed on milk as long as they thrive upon it. But no child less than twelve months old should have anything but milk, or milk with sugar and water. If people are anxious that their children should thrive and grow up healthy and strong, too much attention cannot be given to the matter of their daily food; and great care should be taken that the dainty child has sufficient nourishment. It is not only that the quality of the food must be good, and the quantity sufficient, but the child's constitution should be studied with the object of ascertaining the nature of the food which is likely to be assimilated. It should be well understood that large quantities of food may pass through the body without nourishing it. Different climates and different constitutions necessitate alterations in dietary. Parents and those who have the rearing of children should study the food which children of differing constitutions require and secure to them the inestimable benefit of assimilable food, bearing in mind the ancient but literally truthful adage, that what is one man's meat is another man's poison.'

Dr. E. J. SYSON read a paper on A Policy of Sewage,' which reviewed the shortcomings of the policy of sewage adopted by the present Government, as indicated by the Public Health Bill, 1875, and then gave an outline of what he believed to be a more effectual and more economic policy. He admitted and welcomed the Bill of 1875 as a great

improvement on its predecessors, but complained that through want of care its new sanitary provisions were rendered nugatory, especially as regards water supply, combination of districts, and systematic sanitary work. Dr. Syson then suggested that a new and bolder policy which not only consolidated Acts, but officers and offices, was the policy required. He recommended the employment and payment of Poor Law Medical Officers as assistant or co-adjutant Medical Officers of Health, and would map out the country into districts as large as workable, and appoint to each of them a Head Medical Officer of Health, who should act as Officer of Health, Factory Inspector, Inspector of Vaccination, and in time as a Coroner. Dr. Syson would also separate the Health Department from the Poor Law Department, and put the new Board under the direct control of a Minister of Health, with a duly qualified medical man as chief secretary.

A Paper on the Separate System of Town Sewerage was read by Lieut.-Colonel Jones, V.C., who opened with the definition of a sewer and a drain, and showed that when waterworks were introduced it was desirable to provide distinctly for the removal from the town of so much foul water as the new works brought in clean. The old drains of towns were already fully occupied by surface and subsoil water, and it was a mistake to encumber them with sewage. They were liable to be choked up with road detritus, and the current of sewage in dry weather was very sluggish along the broad inverts of such channels, which were necessarily made large enough for storms of only occasional occurrence. No arrangements can provide for the purification of the whole quantity of rainfall and sewage in time of storm, and, consequently, provision is always made by overflows for an occasional escape of this mixture into the nearest watercourse; but Lieut.Colonel Jones contended that it would be better to allow the rain water to flow into the nearest watercourse directly, instead of through the medium of a foul sewer. If sewage is to be pumped, purified, or utilised in any way, it is evident that the expense of such processes must be nearly proportionate to the volume of sewage dealt with, and consequently it is desirable to keep out of sewers any water which is sufficiently clean to pass into a river. Lieut.-Colonel Jones, speaking from his own experience, asserts that the uncertainty due to rainfall is often sufficient to turn the profitable use of

This paper is printed in full in Public Health, Nov. 6, 1875.

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sewage upon land into an absolute loss, because a farmer least desires to have his land deluged by a weak solution of manure at the very time when he is receiving more water than he needs from the clouds. The separate system has been tried for more than twenty years with good results at Tottenham, and for shorter periods at Aldershot, Eton, Windsor Castle, &c.; it is also now being adopted in the great sewerage works in progress at Oxford, but the combined system still lingers in most of our towns, and it seems desirable that Borough Surand Local Boards should attend to this matter, so that veyors extensions of sewerage works so frequently required throughout the country may not be carried out on a faulty system.

on.

A Paper by Mrs. WILSON, on The History of Slaughterhouse Legislation,' was read. In this communication Mrs. Wilson drew special attention to the various plans that have been proposed for the improvement of sanitary regulations over slaughter-houses. The efforts made in 1844, and since that period, were noticed, and the causes of failure commented In the course of the paper the authoress drew attention to a voluntary effort now being commenced in London for forming a model abattoir, and for introducing the process of slaughtering animals without the infliction of pain. The most obvious method of improvement is in slaughtering at the homesteads. By this method many advantages are gained for the owner of the cattle and for the cattle. Metropolitan meat markets, like the new Meat Market, are required in much larger numbers. If we must be meat-eaters let us throw into the work of the supply of the sad necessity as much humanity and refinement as advance in science and means of locomotion will permit.

DR. RICHARDSON drew attention to an Apparatus for Slaughtering Oxen.' It is the invention of one George Leykauf, in Bavaria. Owing to its merits the under-mentioned municipalities made it compulsory for butchers to hereafter apply it and prohibiting any other mode. Towns in Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and Holland: Altona, Augsburg, Berlin, Brun, Carlsruhe, Cologne, Dresden, Elberfeld, Frankfort, Ferrara, Graz, Haag Hanau, Hamburg, Milan, Munich, Nuremberg, Presburg, Strassburg, St. Petersburgh, Stockholm, Treviso, Udine, Viacenza. A leather mask is buckled over the head of the animal, blinding it, and on the forehead is a short steel rod fitting into a socket, which is driven into the animal's head by a mallet. The torture and pain caused

by pole-axing must be obvious. It often happens that 10, even 15 blows are directed against the animal before death is caused, or even before it is felled to the ground. This mask would abolish much cruel treatment, as one blow would suffice to stun and kill instantaneously the most powerful animal, while to the slaughterman himself a far greater protection is thereby insured. It does not require an experienced man to use it.

The PRESIDENT drew earnest attention to the last Report, 1874-5, of The Ladies' Sanitary Association.'1 The Association is under the direction of an important committee of ladies, and a publishing committee of physicians, for supervising the publications issued by the Society. The Association provides park parties in the summer for young children; publishes works on sanitary science; organises branch societies; and is supporting the movement for the provision of block rooms' for ladies and children in London and other large centres. Its Cottage School for young girls at Potter's Bar prospers, and good training in domestic duties is provided for girls who have just left school and wish to go into service. Its depôt at Rotherhithe continues to aid, by the loan of utensils, those who have no means of their own for cleaning rooms. In concluding his description of the Association, the President said that the untiring exertions of the ladies who superintend the Association were beyond praise. erinten

A Paper on the subject of Trained Nurses for the Sick Poor was read by SIR EDMUND LECHMERE, Bart. Having traced the history of previous efforts to draw public attention to the value of district nurses for the poor, and especially the action taken by the English branch of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, the writer drew attention to the valuable example afforded by the Liverpool and the East London Nursing Institutions, both of which had devoted themselves exclusively to the nursing of the poor. He urged a year's training in a first-rate hospital and subsequent experience in district nursing as the minimum amount of training which should be required, and suggested the connection of district nurses with provident dispensaries, and where not so connected, a small payment by the poor where possible. Sir Edmund urged the profession of a trained nurse, provided the standard of nursing is raised, and adequate pay is offered, as one worthy

1 The Office of the Association is 22 Berner Street, Oxford Street, London.