housing in the irish free state

674 THE LATE PROF. W. H. PERKIN.

lungs, and their resistance might consequently beexpected to be higher. This factor may accountfor the relatively small incidence of suppurationwhich followed the experiments. Harkavy hascertainly shown that it is possible to produce suppura-tion in the lungs of dogs by direct inoculation withseptic material, but it is hard to see how this knowledgewill reduce the incidence of pulmonary complicationsfollowing tonsillectomy. As it is, every possibleprecaution is taken by surgeons to prevent theinhalation of septic material during these operations,because they are confident, without the reassuranceof experiment, that it is a real source of danger.

HOUSING IN THE IRISH FREE STATE.

A CENSUS was taken in the Irish Free State in 1926,and that section of the report which deals with therelation of population to housing was published lastweek. Accepting as the standard of overcrowdingthe fact of more than two people living in one room,it appears that in the whole country 781,000 persons,or 27-2 per cent. of the population, live in over-crowded conditions. The comparative percentagesfor Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, and Walesare respectively 18-1, 43-3, 9-8, and 7-2. The IrishFree State is thus shown to be in a better positionthan Scotland in this respect, but compares unfavour-ably with Northern Ireland, England, and Wales.The overcrowding in Ireland is worse in the ruralareas than in the smaller towns, and among ruralareas the worst are those along the western coast,particularly the counties of Donegal, Mayo, and Kerry.It is noteworthy, however, that this overcrowding inthe rural areas does not express itself in a higherdeath-rate. Mayo, for example, with 41-7 per cent.overcrowding has a lower death-rate than the com-bined 24 best-housed urban districts with an over-crowding of 15-2 per cent. In urban areas there areother influences deleterious to health which morethan counterbalance any advantage that may arisefrom better housing.

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EMBOLECTOMY.

To those who cherish the belief that medicalpractice is international, at any rate on the surgicalside, it must come as a surprise to discover that certainoperations are frequently practised in some countrieswhile they remain almost unknown in others. Theoperation of embolectomy illustrates this point.Were it an exceedingly technical and dim cult opera-tion, or were there grave reasons for regarding it asundeserving the serious attention of the practitioner,it would be easy to understand why its employmentis geographically so patchy. More than 20 years agoMr. Sampson Handley attempted the removal of anembolus lodged at the bifurcation of the abdominalaorta, and restored for a time the blood current inthe femoral artery. He placed the case on record 1as

" one of those pioneer failures on which ultimate

success so often rests." His report led Sir BerkeleyMoynihan to mention 2 a case under his care at theLeeds Infirmary four years previously, in which anembolus was removed from the popliteal artery andthe artery sutured; the patient, who had mitraldisease and granular kidneys, died with extensiveinfarcts five days later. But this work does notseem to have been followed up, and for the mostpart it has been Scandinavian surgeons at home orin the United States who have taken the lead in thisfield of surgery. The names of Haggstrom, Key,Lundberg, and Michaelsson appear in the literatureof the subject, and in the public hospitals of Scan-dinavia this operation has been increasingly per-formed during the last ten years, the general practi-tioners in these countries being sufficiently cognisant ofthe indications for, and prospects of, embolectomyto send their patients to hospital as soon as the correct

1 Brit. Med. Jour., 1907, ii., 712.2 Ibid., p. 826.

diagnosis has been made. In Minnesota Medicinefor May, 1929, the Norwegian surgeon, F. H. Wiese,.publishes a case of embolism of the right brachialartery in a woman, aged 64, suffering from heartdisease. She awoke one morning with severe painin the right arm, which was pale, cold, and paralysed.But she was not medically examined till between-6 and 7 P.M., nor was the operation, under localanaesthesia, started until 10.40 P.M., at least 14 hoursafter the onset of symptoms. Yet the operation wassuccessful, relieving her of severe pain, restoring-movement to the arm, and saving her from the-gangrene which would eventually have developed,.had the operation not been undertaken. Her deathseven weeks after the operation from embolism else-where in the body, complicated by a three-day-attack of pneumonia, emphasises the fairly commonobservation that this operation is in a certain sense-only a palliative. But even then the operation maybe justified, as it relieves pain, saves the patient fromthe much more serious operation of amputation for-gangrene, and restores the use of the limb. Dr.Wiese’s paper includes a useful summary of the-literature.

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THE LATE PROF. W. H. PERKIN.

To many doctors the name of Perkin--especiallyin association with Kipping-will recall little more-than a text-book on organic chemistry, which, in theirstudent days, they were compelled, more or lessunwillingly, to study. At that early stage of his;

career the medical student has little time, inclination,or knowledge to grasp the true significance of organicchemistry, and the important bearing which its methodshave upon medicine. As the result of the introductionof the term biochemistry there is a tendency tooverlook the fact that, without the preparatory workof the pure organic chemist, many of the outstandingachievements of biochemistry would still be in therealm of unsolved problems. The ability to establishthe constitution of a complex carbon compound.depends upon the skilful application of the methods oforganic chemistry, and no sooner has the constitutionof a physiologically important natural product beendetermined-be it hormone or alkaloid or what not-than attempts are made to synthesise it by those samemethods. It is in this field of synthetic organicchemistry that the work of Prof. W. H. Perkin, whodied last week, has been of such outstanding value.The son of Sir William Perkin, whose discovery of thefirst aniline dye from coal tar led to the foundation ofthe modern dye industry, Prof. Perkin was giftedwith great technical skill and an amazing facilityin overcoming experimental difficulties. He devotedmost of his life to elucidating the constitutionof some of the most complicated natural productsand accomplished synthesis of many of them.At the beginning of his research career he sethimself the problem of synthesising compounds con-taining three, four, or five membered carbon rings-

the possible existence of which was, at that time,scouted by such great organic chemists as AdolfvonBayer-his teacher ,Victor Meyer, and Emil Fischer.In spite of this discouragement, which wouldhave been sufficient to make other people hesitate,he persisted, and succeeded in producing such com-pounds. It would be impossible in small space togive an adequate account of Perkin’s contributionsto organic chemistry, but a few of his outstandingresearches may be recalled, while he originallystudied the synthesis of closed carbon chains for itsown sake, the methods thus initiated came to be

. developed and applied to the synthesis of naturalproducts ; amongst these, the colourless precursors.

.

of the logwood dyes brazilin and haematoxylin claimed’ his attention, and resulted in his assigning to these-

substances their probable constitution. It is in thegroup of alkaloids, however, that in recent years he