174 THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND.

should the qualifying words be connected with those they .

qualify ncd equally legible, but they should be equally intelli-gible. "Mixed" and" prepared" do not by themselves suffi-ciently indicate the nature of the process-the removal of aportion of the fat and of the woody fibre to make a finesoluble cocoa being no less a "preparation" than the additionof equal weights of brown sugar and potato starch.

THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONSOF ENGLAND.

A QUARTERLY meeting of the Council was held on thellth ins’;., the President, Mr. Christopher Heath, being in

the chair. The President reported the result of the electionof members of the Council, as given in THE LANCET of

July 6h; and Mr. Alfred Willett, Mr. Treves, Mr. Butlin,Mr. Alfred Cooper, and Dr. Ward Cousins were introduced,..and made a declaration in the terms of the oath prescribedby the Charter of 1800, and took their seats as members ofthe Council.A recommendation by the Museum Committee was adopted,

to the effect that the skeleton of a Diornis Maximus be pur-.chased from the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, NewZealand, for f.70, and that Mr. Barlow of the NaturalHistory Museum be employed to set up the skeleton.The gift by Miss Greenhill of several volumes in MS. of alexicon of Greek medical terms, compiled by the late Dr. Greenhill of Hastings, was accepted with the best thanks ofthe Council.The President reported the half-yearly meeting of Fellows,on the 4th inst., at which forty-five Fellows, includingfourteen members of the Council, had attended, but that asno notices of motions had been given for the meeting no dis-cussion of any kind took place.The Council proceeded to elect two members of the Board-of Examiners in Dental Surgery, Mr. Barrett being re-elected.and Mr. Frederick Canton being elected.

The Council directed that the annual calendar should be,completed to this date, and that the usual number of copiesthereof be printed and offered for sale at ls. per copy.

The following statement of attendance of members ofCouncil during the past collegiate year was read :-

A letter was read, dated the 6th inst., from Mr. W. G.Dickinson, asking the Council, on behalf of the Committeeof the "Society of Members," to appoint a committee toconfer with a deputation on the subject of the proposedalterations in the Charter. The Council appointed for thispurpose the committee which already exists for the

.purpoae of receiving deputations from Fellows. A petitionwas read from the London School of Medicine for Women, asking the Council to admit women to the examinations

for the diploma of Membership. The matter was referredto the Committee of Management.

Mr. Christopher Heath was re-elected President, andMr. Reginald Harrison and Mr. Pickering Pick were appointedVice-Presidents, as we announced last week

Mr. J. H. Targett was reappointed Pathological Curator.The next ordinary meeting of the Council is to be held en

Monday, the 29.h inst.

THE HOME OFFICE INQUIRY INTO THECASE OF THOMAS WEIR.

WE have received the report of the inquiry ordered byMr. Asquith, as Secretary of State for the Home Depart-ment, into the cause of death of a patient namedThomas Weir of St. Anne’s Heath, Virginia Water.The inquiry was held by Mr. Gully, Q.C., the presentspeaker of the House of Commons, assisted by Dr.Savage, and the specific direction it was to take is givenin the following words :-" To report to the Home Secretaryupon the treatment of Thomas Weir, upon the sufficiency ofthe supervision under which it was carried out, and on theregulations, rules, and by-laws in force in the said hos-pital so far as relates to their adequacy to secure theproper treatment and supervision of insane patients." Theinquiry showed that Weir had been subjected to the form ofrestraint known as "the dry-pack " (an apparatus consistingof a blanket, straps, and webbing, so arranged as to limitthe movement of the limbs in cases of maniacal excite-ment with violence), and that he died of exhaustion andcollapse after undergoing the treatment. Dr. Savage,while finding the dry-pack a useful remedy in cases ofmania both as a curative and restraining process, is ofopinion that in Weir’s case the use of the apparatus was ex-cessive. The report goes on to say that in the administrationof the treatment "almost every ordinary and proper pre-caution seems to have been neglected," and gives in detailthe reasons for arriving at this severe conclusion. Certainrecommendations made by the Lunacy Commissioners lastautumn with reference to this case are published as anappendix to the report and receive the concurrence of Mr.Gully and Dr. Savage. The three more important ones runas follows :-(1) That the use of the I dry-pack in theform employed at the Holloway Sanatorium ought notto be permitted, the older form of packing in blanketswithout straps being much preferable ; (2) that me-

chanical restraint in institutions for the care of the insaneshould only be employed upon the direct authority of thesuperintendent or his official deputy ; and (3) that restrainedpatients should be continuously watched by skilled attend-ants and visited at short intervals by members of the medicalstaff.

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Public Health and Poor Law.LOCAL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT,

REPORTS OF MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH.

St. -Helens Urban Sanitary District.-We cannot noticethe report as to this district without a brief reference tothe former medical officer of health, the late Mr. RobertMcNicoll, to whose memory the present medical officer ofhealth, Dr. John Robertson, contributes a fitting obituarynotice. Mr. McNicoll practised medicine in St. Helens forfifty years, and for over twenty of those years he acted asmedical officer of health to the borough ; he was one of thefirst medical officers of health appointed in England. Thoseof our readers who can recall Mr. McNicoll’s valuable annualreports will not need to be reminded of the excellent andconscientious work which he performed, and as Dr. Robert-son aptly puts it, had Mr. McNicoll lived but a few dayslonger he would have seen the completion of a public testi-monial to him in the founding of "The McNicoll Scholar-ship" at the Cowley Middle Schools. This is a fittingtestimony to his memory. There was, Dr. Robertsonobserves, a decrease in the birth-rate of St. Helens in themiddle of 1894, and he attributes it in all probability to the