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.and colonial administrator ; Sir Patrick Manson ;David Masson ; James Clerk Maxwell (who, however,was merely a professorial bird of passage as far asAberdeen was concerned) : Peter Redfern : AlexanderReid. ’’ the first lecturer on surgery in London " ;Sir James Stirling : Augustus Desire Waller. This isa list of which any university may be proud. We

sincerely hope that young graduates of other univer-sities will do as Mr. McCulloch has done, for we countit a sign of health when students of a university nursethe memory of distinguished graduates. We give theauthor full credit for being moved to compile this listas a labour of love. A-nd yet, a remark he lets dropin his preface leaves us a little uncertain as to whetheror not his motives may not have been a little mixed.We rather suspect he means

" to down the southron,"for it appears that a Cambridge undergraduate hadcast aspersions on the ancient university of thenorth ; the list is intended for the education of thatundergraduate. But was the Cambridge under-graduate not merely in a playful mood when hechallenged Mr. McCulloch ?

THE MUSCULARIS MUCOSÆ.

THOSE medical historians who have had theadvantage of living after the time of Harvey havefrequently expressed astonishment that the completecirculation had remained undiscovered throughoutso long a period. From Erasistratus to Fabricius allpractical anatomists had been acquainted with thecardiac valvular arrangements and with the direc-tions towards which the separate valves opened ;yet the vision was kept from their eyes by virtue ofthat human truth, that we see as a rule only thatfor which we are looking, and they spent their energiesin the effort to fit the facts to the theories, ratherthan in altering their ideas in conformity with thefacts which they observed. This curious weaknessof the human understanding applies to small mattersas well as to large, to the microscopic as to the macro-

. scopic. The presence of a certain special tissue witha definite function, such as muscle cells with theircontractile powers, should imply of necessity thatthe tissue is there to exercise its function, and thatthe organ which contains it is so far contractile.The existence of muscle, for example, in the cerebralarteries ought to have been enough in itself to showthat these vessels had vaso-motor properties, as Iarteries elsewhere, yet this was strenuously deniedon purely negative grounds, though voices called inthe wilderness never so loudly. Similar things mightbe said about the vessels of the lung.There is another situation in which muscle has

been known for many years, but no definite functionhas been assigned to it, nor reasonable explanationgiven of its presence. We refer to the submucousmusculature, the rrzuscularis mucosae, such as isfound in the stomach and intestines, and aboutwhich Prof. Gosta Forssell, of Stockholm, recentlyread a very interesting and important paper in theSection of Electro-Therapeutics of the Royal Societyof Medicine, which was reported and illustrated inTHE LANCET for March 31st. Anatomically, themuscularis inucosce is a well-developed and con-

tinuous layer. In the stomach it even shows hereand there a tendency to form outer and innerstrata running in cross directions. It has a definiteand full nerve-supply from the submucous plexus,which is itself a distinct and separate derivativeof the my enterie plexus. These facts alone maybe said to point strongly to some definite and impor-tant r6le which, up to the present, has not beendemonstrated. The general idea of medical menconcerning the matter is probably what Sir HumphryRolleston happily expressed when he said, in thediscussion, that he had previously regarded thegastro-intestinal mucosa as capable of about thesame range of movement as the skin possesses in theact of " gooseflesh." Prof. Forssell has much wideiconceptions than this, views of definite action andfunction that will, without doubt, lead to consider-

able physiological criticism. He holds that themucous membrane is not mechanically passive, butits folds represent phases of active movement, andit is actively concerned in controlling the rate of flowalong the alimentary canal and in the formation of" digestive chambers " of varying form and size, inwhich the material can be more intimately sur-

rounded by the membrane. This throws on themucous membrane a much greater responsibility forthe success of the digestive processes than has beenaccorded to it hitherto, and is a view that calls forserious investigation and consideration. The ultimateproof must rest on experiment and direct observa-tion ; anatomical preparations are in this respect oflittle value, but the deductions from experiment andobservation must be in accordance with anatomicalfact if they are to stand. The relation of musclecells to the central lacteal of a villus is quite in keep-ing with an assumed action on this channel, and thereseems to be no reason why the whole strand mightnot also alter the shape and length of the projection ;but it might be objected, for instance, if one wereconsidering the valvulse conniventes or folds ofKerckring, that the method of continuity of theirmuscular layers with the general basal stratumcould only allow of a limited amount of alterationin position. However this may be, the skiagramsshown by Prof. Forssell, especially those of thejejunal loop, are very suggestive arguments for theviews he adopts, and it seems to us that he has openeda new phase in the physiological study of all thefactors which combine to constitute the processes ofdigestion. _____

RECENT WORK ON THE SCHICK TEST.

OBSERVERS on both sides of the Atlantic continue tomake fruitful studies of diphtheria in the new lightthrown by the Schick test for immunity and the methodof producing immunity by toxin-antitoxin mixtures.In a recent reportl by Surgeon-Commander Sheldon F.Dudley, R.N., he records observations on the distribu-tion of immunity in a school of over 1000 boys and onthe changes from susceptibility to immunity whichoccurred during outbreaks of diphtheria. He alsocorrelates the results of the test with the incidence ofcases of diphtheria and of carriers. An epidemic ofscarlet fever was in progress at the same time, and hedraws some conclusions as to the mode of spreadapplicable to both diseases. The report indicates theway in which at the present time new light is fallingon the more obscure problems in the epidemiology ofdiphtheria. During the epidemic the finds of" morphological diphtheria bacilli " were dividedamong 63 cases of membranous diphtheria, 14 of non-membranous sore-throat, and 28 carriers. The Schicktest carried out four months after the beginning of theepidemic revealed the fact that among the new boysentering the school at 11 to 13 years of age immunitywas present in 55 per cent., and that of 764 boys,who had been at least one term in the school and beenexposed to the chances of infection during the heightof the epidemic, 86 per cent. gave a negative result tothe test-i.e., were immune. Those boys who had beentwo and a half to four and a half years in the schoolwere immune to the extent of 95 per cent. The obser-vations made confirm the statements of other workersin finding that the Schick test is invariably positivein actual cases of diphtheria, but that in carriers theresults are negative. In fact, carriers are generallyconsidered to owe their escape from active disease tothis immunity. The production of active immunityto diphtheria is a slow process. Immunising doses oftoxin-antitoxin mixtures in a large percentage of thoseinoculated did not produce immunity (Schick-negativereaction) for eight weeks to three months. In the

present series of cases of clinical diphtheria it wasshown that the Schick-positive reaction during theattack had been converted into a Schick-negative in

1 The Schick Test, Diphtheria and Scarlet Fever : A Study inEpidemiology. Medical Research Council, Special ReportSeries, No. 75.