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1912, and its provisions are likely to be very far-reaching in their effects. It cannot be doubted thatthe regulations for controlling the manufacture, sale,possession, and distribution of the drugs to which thisAct applies will be somewhat inconvenient or evenharassing both to prescribers and dispensers, butit is possible that some of these would onlybe temporary as the public became educatedin the matter. In America a Federal narcoticlaw has been passed which is intended tofurnish a means by which all preparationscontaining opium or cocaine can be tracedfrom the importer to the ultimate consumer

and their final disposition determined, and tolimit the traffic in these drugs or preparations topersons legally qualified to carry on such business.It remains to be seen whether the regulations forthis country will agree in the main with thosealready adopted in America. If they do they willprobably be welcomed by all who place a desire forthe public welfare far beyond personal inconveni-ence or financial loss. Prescribers are sure to behampered by new regulations, but if these are

recognised as calculated to reduce the dangers ofthe distribution of narcotics, we believe that theywill be received with relative enthusiasm. Whetherthey will be equally agreeable to dispensingchemists is another matter, since it is possiblethat the regulations will not only diminish the saleof these articles, but will also involve a mostelaborate system of records and frequent inspec-tions. Troublesome though these may be, it is to behoped that experience in this country may enableus to repeat the commendation of an Americanpharmacist that the very men who have sufferedmost in the loss of sales by this legislation havebeen in the forefront in putting this law on thestatute books and seeing that it has been enforced.The clearly stated policy of the Council of the

- Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain will meetwith favour from all pharmaceutical chemists whohave set the scientific ideal before them, and fromall medical men who are in a position, as far astheir public efficiency is concerned, to .relegatetheir dispensing. But it is not reasonable toexpect that the reception of such regulations asthe Council of the Pharmaceutical Society desire,though they undoubtedly have the best of reasons fortheir creation, will be wholly favourable. As we havealready suggested, the separation of prescribing anddispensing should minimise the risks of the use ofnarcotics. In spite of due observance of the

provisions of the Pharmacy Acts evidence at

inquests has shown that hitherto these have hadlittle power in checking the sale and distributionof such drugs as morphine and cocaine. This isa great point in favour of the separation, butthere are whole districts where separation wouldproduce real practical difficulties, and wouldentail upon the public considerable hardship inhaving to make visits to separate centres for thetreatment of one ailment. A way of recon-

ciling the arguments for and the argumentsagainst the separation of prescribing and dis-pensing is for the medical practitioner, if hechoose to dispense, to obtain the services of amember of the Pharmaceutical Society, but forfinancial reasons this may not be practical. A

meeting between the General Medical Council andthe Council of the Pharmaceutical Society mightthrow light on a difficult situation.

1 Proc. Tennessee Pharm. Assoc., 1915, p. 43.

Annotations.THE PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

"Ne quid nimis."

ON Tuesday next, St. Andrew’s Day, Charles ScottSherrington, Waynflete Professor of Physiology in theUniversity of Oxford, is to be elected President of theRoyal Society of London for Improving Natural Know-ledge. The determination of the choice upon ProfessorSherrington is of more than usual interest to themedical profession. He is a qualified medical man,though he has not, we believe, ever indulged in theactive practice of his art, as did his great predecessors,Benjamin Brodie and Joseph Lister ; he belongs ratherto the group represented among past presidents byHuxley, who have, through the humane discipline of amedical training, found their real work in other,though related, flelds. For while his researches onthe nervous system have been truly philosophical, andclearly belong to those fundamental studies in which thenatural curiosity of the human mind finds exercise andsatisfaction, his results have been of prime importanceto practical medicine, and his conceptions have becomepart of the groundwork of neurology. His relation tomedicine illustrates plainly the truth that the mostreal help which medicine receives from physiology andthe other branches of natural science comes from thosewhose pursuit is knowledge rather than from thosewho make premature attempts to invade the unfamiliarground of clinical inquiry. During his career as

lecturer on physiology at St. Thomas’s HospitalMedical School, professor superintendent of the BrownSanatory Institute, Holt professor in the University ofLiverpool and of late years in Oxford, Sherrington hasendeared himself to many members of the professionwho will unite in wishing him a happy and successfultenure of the illustrious position which he now reaches.

THREATENED RECRUDESCENCE OF EPIDEMICKALA-AZAR IN ASSAM.

THERE are many who can recall the terrors of thekala-azar epidemic in Assam from 1880 to 1900, whichculminated in the Nowgong district, where one-third ofthe population were carried off within ten years andextensive areas of land fell out of cultivation. Forthem the information in a supplement to the SanitaryReport of the Province for 1919 by Major McCombieYoung, I.M.S., is of especial interest, as he givesevidence of a threatened recrudescence of the epidemicform of the disease spreading in areas previouslyuninfected. It will be remembered that the sparselypopulated Mikir Hills formed an obstacle to the furthereasternly extension of the epidemic from the Nowgongdistrict for a considerable time, but in 1910 a fewvillages were found to be infected in the neighbouringGolaghat subdivision of the Sibsagar district, whichwere promptly dealt with by moving the people fromthe infected sites-as recommended in the 1897 reporton an investigation of the disease, such segregationmeasures having in the meantime proved successfulon tea estates of the Nowgong District under the careof Dr. Dodds Price. In 1917 a more serious extensionof the disease was discovered in the most easternlySibsagar subdivision of the Sibsagar district, the centralJorhat subdivision having been almost completelyskipped by the disease. Similar measures were at oncecarried out under the direction of Major Young, whileby this time we were fortunately in possession of anefficient treatment of this deadly disease by antimonysalts intravenously, wnich has already reduced thedeath-rate from 90 per cent. to less than 25 per cent.,a special hospital having been provided in 1918 in thenewly infected area. In the recently issued reportthe present condition of the Province as regardskala-azar is carefully described, and it is pointedout that in Sibsagar the segregation measures havealso met with a considerable degree of success in