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towns a certain number of undressing and douchingboxes are provided for the older children; and in a

few towns, notably Cologne, separate undressing and douchingboxes are provided for all children without exception. The

average duration of a bath seems to be from 20 to 30

minutes ; the showers are generally started at about bloodheat and gradually reduced to a temperature varying fromS5" to 700 F. As a rule the children stand in a large shallowtrough during the douching operation and the douchingitself is carried on either by means of single sprays to eachchild or by sprays which cast the water further apart and forma kind of rain. In the newer German public swimming bathsno persons are allowed to enter the swimming pool withouthaving previously soaped and washed themselves under thedouches provided for this purpose. Mr. Rose states that the

half hour devoted to shower baths per week has amply repaiditself in the improvement of the clothing and health of thechildren; it seems probable that it has also produced anincreased capacity for learning, as well as some diminutionof verminous conditions, skin diseases, and infection. In

conclusion, he makes a variety of suggestions and estimateswith respect to the construction and the use of school showerbaths.

___

THE PREVENTION OF SMOKE IN LONDON AND

IN PROVINCIAL TOWNS.

Is there any reason why certain provincial towns shouldapparently be exempt from that clause of the PublicHealth Act which provides that any fireplace or furnacewhich does not as far as practicable consume the smoke

arising from the combustible used in such fireplace or

furnace and is used for working engines by steam or in anymill, factory, dyehouse, brewery, bakehouse, or gaswork, orin any manufacturing or trade process whatsoever " shall bedeemed to be a nuisance liable to be dealt with summarilyand a penalty imposed? Commendable work in the directionof abating the smoke nuisance in and around the metropolishas during recent years been done owing to the vigilanceof our health authorities, who have been stirred to

exercise their duty in this matter by the revelations

published in THE LANCET and by the action alsoof the Coal Smoke Abatement Association under the

presidency of Sir William Richmond. The condition of theLondon atmosphere has undoubtedly improved duringrecent years owing to a decided abatement of the smoke

nuisance, and we utterly fail to understand why a similarimprovement is not attempted in provincial towns andespecially in those which are the centre of busy manu-facturing areas. We may refer to Nottingham as a brilliantexception, for there, we believe, the lace manufacturers werecompelled to abate the smoke nuisance purely in their owninterest, for the smoke spoiled their goods. The shorteningof lives by a compulsory existence in air intensely and con-stantly polluted with smoke is a much more serious matterthan the spoiling of lace. The example of Nottinghamis a splendid object lesson and proves absolutelythat the smoke nuisance from factories need not be.Yet we still have the black country " with us as smoke-besmirched as ever. The condition of the air between, say,Wolverhampton, to give one example, and Birmingham is adisgrace to any civilised community. Smoke of the filthiest

description hangs as a dark pall for miles, absolutely shuttingout the sun and the sky. Thousands of chimneys pour forthtorrents of black smoke. " Torrents is no exaggeration,while to say in the words of the Act that these chimneys sendforth "black smoke in such quantity as to be a nuisance "

conveys but the feeblest impression of the real state ofaffairs. Under this pall at intervening places like Dudley,Oldbury, West Bromwich, and elsewhere, thousands of work-people, men, women, and children, take their recreation, and

it is pitiable to witness under what intensely impure con-ditions of the air these people attempt to preserve a healthybody. The pollution of the air is as much a scandal as thepollution of water and food, and the interference of the Stateis badly and instantly wanted in order that this wanton andwholesale defilement may be stopped. It would be idle to

deny that this evil is a serious factor in the high rate ofmortality which smoke-drenched districts commonly show.

FOREST FIRES IN SOUTHERN EUROPE.

WITHIN the zone bounded on the north by Grenoble andToulon and on the south by Algiers, on the west by Logronoin Spain and on the east by Catanzaro in Italy, there havebeen, coincidently with the recent heat wave, a seriesof forest fires disastrous to all those countries, but more espe-cially to Italy and Spain, where the problem of replantingthe denuded hillsides is of clamant urgency. Reckless tree-

felling in both peninsulas for carpentry in all its branchesand not least for fuel has reduced immense tracts of

territory to prairie or to what the Italians call " macchia"-that is, stunted forest growth, useful neither for timber norfor fuel, and rendering tillage or even pasture difficult andprecarious. This fatal practice has been going on for

centuries-changing the climate for the worse, renderingthe rainfall uncertain, between autumnal inundations andsummer droughts, circumscribing agriculture, and spoilingthe amenity of the landscape. Spain was an early sinnerand suffered in this respect, her timber becoming prematurelyexhausted, so as even to restrict her ship-building and gradu-ally to diminish, if not to extinguish, her mercantile marine.Italy has sinned and suffered still more-for this among otherreasons that, having become for half a century the winterresort of the northern races with their craving for heatingand fuel, she is exposed to a drain on her forest-growthfrom which other countries are exempt. The Vox Urbis, anable Latin journal published in Rome, devotes in its currentnumber a leading article to the subject-" De Silvis LegeTuendis "-and points out to Italy how sorely she needs" to take a leaf," literally so, out of the trans-Alpine book.While on her own side of the water-shed her riversare gravel pits for ten months of the year, thanks to

the excessive floods of the other two-in low water, so to

say, after a "run on their own banks "-the correspondingstreams on the Swiss side maintain a steady, equableflow, in summer as well as in winter, and this because ofthe wise law, stringently enforced throughout the Confedera-tion, that no tree shall be felled without its replacement bythe planting of another. By this means the conservation ofmoisture, its gradual, almost imperceptible, evaporation, andits no less gradual descent in showers, keep the rivers

regularly supplied all the year round, not only pre-venting floods but turning the said rivers into agentsfor the development of electric energy and making theirbanks the seat of prosperous and multiplying factoriesof the steel and iron and other industries. Poor Italy, onthe contrary, having no such law and, late in the day,beginning vigorously to enact, if feebly to enforce, an

imitation of it, has the mortification of seeing her water-supply alternating between short-lived inundation and

prolonged drought with all their disastrous consequences and,unkindest cut of all, the electric agency which, throughGalvani and Volta, Nobili and Matteucci, she made knownto the world, utilised by a rival power on the northernside of the watershed-taken out of her hands indeed-as an industrial and lucrative force, sorely as she

needs new outlets for enterprise and sources of gain.Late in the day, we have said, has she awakened to hersuicidal treatment of her woods and forests and now realises

that, thanks to the floods that, in the autumn especially,devastate her hillsides and plains, the binding soil required

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-for replanting those hillsides is washed away and the task ofTeafforesting becomes next to impossible. Within livingmemory the Sabine range so conspicuous from Rome andso dear to the scholar for its associations with the

Lucretilis and Ustica of Horace was waving with foliage, awelcome retreat in the dog-days, when-

" ...... Pastor umbras cum grege languidoRivumque fessus quaerit et horridi

Dumeta Silvani, caretqueRipa vagis taciturna ventis."

Now, owing to the increased demand for fuel in the

ever-multiplying hotels and pensions, that mountain slope isbare limestone, reduced to bed rock on which planting isimpracticable. When reafforesting has thus become Italy’s" prima cura," when every tree is precious and likely tobecome more so from the difficulty of replanting, we canunderstand the bitterness with which Italians read of woodson fire (" boschi in fiamme ") in Liguria, in Calabria, evenunder the shadow of the Vatican itself, where many roodsof plantation on the lower spurs of the Janiculars werethe other day reduced to charcoal. Dr. Angelo Celli,professor of public hygiene in the Roman School, is, weare happy to see, "keeping at" the Government for theconservation of existing woods, the replenishment ofthose so sadly thinned, and the resuscitation of such as areno more. From his seat in Parliament he has extorted

promise after promise from the Ministers of Agriculture andof Public Works that the legislation in this sense, so

thorough in theory, should become as thoroughly efficaciousin practice. Our sympathies are quite with him. Pity it

,

were that the agitation for new ironclads and destroyers "

should override the young movement for reafforesting, thatthe clamour for quick-firing guns and field batteries of anovel type should drown the appeal of Hygieia, echoed by thewail of the Hamadryad. -

PRESERVATIVES IN MILK.

THE Local Government Board for Scotland has issued tothe clerks of local authorities a letter directing their atten-tion to the subject of the addition of preservatives to milk.This matter was carefully considered by a departmentalcommittee of the Local Government Board for England. In

its report the committee stated that preservatives were

objectionable on the ground of public health and were alsounnecessary for the purposes of the milk trade. The LocalGovernment Board for Scotland accordingly suggests thatthe local authority should cause samples of milk to be

taken with a view to ascertain the presence of substances

commonly in use as preservatives-e.g., formalin and boronsubstances. When such samples are forwarded to the

analyst he should be informed of the purpose for which theyhave been ’ taken. It is suggested that the local autho-

rity should first warn milk traders that action willbe taken under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts in

instances where preservatives are reported in milk, andshould thereafter, when the presence of any added pre-servative is reported in a sample of milk, regard the caseas one for the institution of proceedings under these Acts. Insome districts in England, action under Section 6 of the Saleof Food and Drugs Act, 1875, has been frequently andsuccessfully taken in such cases, it being held that, when apurchaser asks for milk and is supplied with milk plus apreservative, he does not receive an article of the nature,substance, and quality demanded, and is prejudiced thereby,Vendors of milk may attempt to evade a prosecutionby making a declaration that the milk contains some

added preservative and the Board suggests the desirabilityof sampling in such cases. The nature of the declarationmade should in all cases be carefully recorded by the officertaking the sample and should also be reported to the analystwhen the sample is transmitted for analysis. Where pre-servatives are reported in milk thus sold the question will

arise whether, in view of the nature and quantity of thepreservatives added, it can be considered that the articlehas been rendered injurious to health, or that the pur-chaser has been prejudiced to an extent which would

justify the institution of proceedings under Section 3 or

Section 6 of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875, notwith-standing the declaration made at the time of the purchase.In this connexion the Board is advised that, as regardsformalin and boron preservatives, the presence in milk offormalin to an amount that is ascertained by examinationwithin three days of collecting the sample to exceed part in40,000 (1 part of formic aldehyde in 100,000) raises a strongpresumption that the article has been rendered injurious tohealth and that the purchaser has been prejudiced in theabove sense. Similar presumption is raised where boron

preservatives are present in milk to an amount exceeding57 parts of boric acid per 100,000, or 40 grains of boric acidper gallon. It is also suggested that the addition of pre-servatives to skimmed milk, separated milk, and condensedmilk should be watched and controlled on similar lines. A

similar letter was issued by the Local Government Boardfor England in July last and was referred to in an

annotation in THE LANCET of July 21st, p. 178.

PHLEGMONOUS ENTERITIS.

PHLEGMONOUS gastritis is a very rare disease but phleg-monous enteritis is still rarer ; only seven cases appear tohave been recorded. In the Johns Hopkins HospitalBll.lletin for August Professor W. G. MacCallum has

reviewed the literature of the subject and reported thefollowing case. A negro, aged 75 years, was taken to hos.pital complaining of pain in the abdomen and vomiting.Three weeks before he was struck by a car in the street andtaken to hospital with a scalp wound. For a week heremained in hospital and complained of considerable abdo-minal pain. He returned home and appeared to be quitewell until the day before his second admission, when heawoke with pain in the abdomen. On admission he indi-cated the site of pain as the right lower ribs, the epi.gastrium, and the left flank. Every few minutes he regurgi-tated without effort yellowish bile-stained fluid of a foul,faintly fascal odour. He looked ill, the tongue was moist,and the lips were dry. The abdomen was full but not dis-tended and there was bulging in the flanks. On deeppalpation there was general tenderness which appeared to beslightly greater below the umbilicus. There was relativedulness in the left flank. Peristalsis was visible over theabdomen. The temperature was 100° F., the leucocytes were24,000, and the urine contained albumin and numerous

granular casts. Because of the signs of obstruction laparo-tomy was performed. On the left side of the abdomen was a

slight excess of turbid fluid. The beginning of the jejunumwas markedly thickened, had a brawny appearance, and wasa little darker than the surrounding bowel. On palpationmuch enlarged rugæ could be felt. The serous covering wasslightly injected, had lost some of its gloss, and showed afew fine flakes of fibrin. Death occurred on the followingmorning. At the necropsy the mucosa of the stomach wasfound everywhere thickened, studded with mushroom-like

polypoid masses, and covered with thick mucus, and itshowed abundant ecchymoses. Just below the pyloric ringwere one or two small, irregular, punched-out ulcers. Theintestine was greatly enlarged from a point about five centi-metres below the pylorus for a distance of 30 or 35 centi.metres. Its walls were much thickened so that it stood outas a stout rigid tube which abruptly was continuous withnormal collapsed intestine. The lumen of the affectedntestine was filled with a soft, yellowish-white, pasty,granular material. The mucosa was very pale and

greyish white and showed a few minute heamorrhages.