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In England NowA Running Commentary by Peripatetic CorrespondentsSOME occupations so stamp themselves on the features

and bearing that they are easily identified by even thecomparatively unobservant. Take jockeys, and indeedthe whole class of " horsey " men, in whom constantequine contemplation and society produces a mostcharacteristic facies. The Army man displays the fixedexpression imposed by discipline, but it is not so easyto explain the distinctiveness of the sailor. Is it the sea,the breezes, the life, or the way of living ? Thoughtwe know has its effect in moulding the features ; out-standing examples of this are the divine and the manot law. Is there a medical face ? I have often glancedround a gathering of doctors and have decided that thereis nothing whatever in their appearance to suggest thehealing art in all or any of its manifold ramifications.One sees what might be dashing cavalry officers, filmstars, prosperous brewers or butchers, country parsons,actors, farmers, policemen in plain clothes, and not afew like nothing on earth.

Does not our special education and training imposea single characteristic mark ? A recent experience,stimulated by a paragraph in the journals, has throwna little light on the problem. In the New EnglandJournal of Medicine for March 23 (p. 430), quoted inThe Lancet of April 15, one reads " The internist is recog-nisable by his preoccupied look, as a man wrestling withdifficulties... considering every organ as a potential villain.The surgeon cuts more of a figure.... He exudes optimismand radiates confidence. The burden of accumulateduncertainty that weighs on the shoulders of the internistnever bends the surgeon’s erect structure." The ConjointFinals were on and I took the opportunity to substitutefor a haphazard collection of medical men the segregationin the examiners of physicians, surgeons, gynaecologists,and pathologists, and it seemed to me that the physiciansdid exhibit a sort of family resemblance distinct fromtheir colleagues in the other specialties, whether or nothis was attributable to the cause alleged.

I pondered as I left Queen Square, for other mundaneexplanations seemed at least feasible. As I turned intoSouthampton Row I ran into George, a middle-agedG.P. in practice in Bloomsbury. " Is there a typicalmedical face ? " I asked him. " Of course there is,"replied George with some bitterness,

" it is unmistakable-a composite resulting from poverty-stricken senilityand duodenal ulceration." _-

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In Germany the buds are, bursting, the birds singing,and the forsythia in full bloom ; another month andthe country roads will be bright with apple-blossom formile after mile ; only the mildest of winters separates usfrom last year’s fruit crop, and the lengthening eveningsand blue skies bring memories of last summer, andparticularly of an old university town in the south,where the deep shadows of the narrow streets seemed allthe deeper for the sun-drenched stucco of the over-

hanging gables. Here it was that I learnt what anAusflug is. I had often read of Ausfliige in Germanlessons but had never before experienced one ; thereis no precise equivalent in English, but perhaps"

expedition " is the nearest translation.The houseman at the hospital where I was staying

called at my room the evening before. " Tomorrow," he

said, " I will take you for an MSM</ ; your breakfastwill come at quarter to seven, and I will come at quarterpast." My breakfast (a fried egg, to my surprise) cameat twenty to seven, and my guide at ten past. At aquarter to eight we were sitting on the hard slatted seatsof a country train bound for Hechingen (onetime capitalof the principality of Hohenzollern), complete withrucksack full of sausage sandwiches, bottles of mineralwater, and a guidebook. The Hohenzollern castle, ourobjective, towers above the town, crowning a solitaryhill which lies off the long limestone plateau known asthe Schweibische Alb, like a ship off’ shore. Burg Hohen-zollern is an amazing sight; it caps a hill whose sidesrise at first steeply, and then almost sheer, from thesurrounding fields., An hour of steady climbing up small

paths through dense pinewoods.brought us to the summitThe castle is all that a castle should be : pointed turrets,battlements, and a succession of drawbridges leading toa courtyard on which the principal rooms open. Therehas been a castle here for a thousand years, but the presentone was built by Kaiser Wilhelm I, grandfather of" the Kaiser " of world war i. We sat in the courtyardand ate a substantial meal from the rucksack beforetouring the castle-full-blooded Gothic revival on aTeutonically thorough scale.That duty done we descended the other side of the hill,

as steep as the side we had climbed up, and after scramb-ling up the northern slope of the Schwabische Alb wererewarded with a superb view, marred by a slight mist,of the castle and the plain beyond, and, just visible tothe west, the hills of the Black Forest. We were now onthe summit of the Zellerhorn, a spur which juts outtowards Burg Honenzollern. After taking some photo-graphs we settled down to a large lunch, which at lastmade some difference to the weight of the rucksack. Itook this to be our midday meal, but I had misjudged theGerman appetite, for after another hour’s walk acrossthe rocky plateau we came to an inviting Gasthaus justover the brow. As we sat down, my companion askedcheerfully : " Well, what would you like for lunch ? Apork chop, perhaps ? " And pork chops it was, with anenormous dish of vegetables. It was as well that the restof the way lay downhill. A winding chalky road broughtus to a village called Onsmettingen, a railhead in the hills,whence we travelled over the Rhine-Danube watershed,back to Tubingen, and I had learnt the ingredients of aGerman Ausflttg-an early start, a long walk with hillsto climb, a rucksack, a guidebook, vast amounts of food,and a rendezvous with a country train to take you backwhen you’re tired. How the,princes of Hohenzollern, atiny State in the south-west corner of the country,became German Emperors is another story; but Icouldn’t help thinking of the ill-fated Kaiser Friedrich III,now remembered as the " Ninety Day Emperor," whocame to the throne in 1888 with a carcinoma of thelarynx and a palliative tracheotomy.

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Phyllis is a second-year student nurse at one of ourfamous teaching hospitals. ",How do they look afteryour health ? " I asked her; she was enthusiastic." They take great care of us there’s always a doctoron duty to see anyone who likes to go to him betweennine and half-past every morning." " Do you have toask the sister ? " " No, you just tell her you’re going."She was looking thinner than I remembered, and had adressing on her chin. At bedtime this came off and anover-ripe boil suddenly exuded about 2 c.cm. of pus." I thought you said they looked after you. What wereyou doing on the ward with that thing 9 "’ I asked." Oh well, that’s my fault. If I’d gone to the doctorI expect he’d have sent me off." As she was doing aperiod of tuberculosis nursing, and was perhaps incontact with some surgical cases, I expected so too." But why haven’t you been to him ? " " Oh well-we’re always rather busy on the ward between nine andhalf-past." .

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How well these things look on paper.* * *

When we moved into this house we took over somecoal in the basement cellar which subsequently provedto be mostly dust. Since then a succession of purveyorsof domestic help have adopted the view that lumps areintended for breaking up small, and an undue proportionof our " best " coal ration has arrived as powder ; so ourcellar has come to contain a great accumulation of dust.My Bank Holiday task was to search for buried lumps,attired in a boiler suit and gum-boots, with a theatre-mask over my nose and mouth. At the subsequentablutions my nostrils were black, and a douche producedan astonishing nasopharyngeal deposit of coal-dust. , Itis true that the mask was very dirty, but the doucheresult seemed considerably worse.

This makes me wonder whether wearing a gauze maskcan be really effective after all, or whether it is merely afetish. Surely if coal-dust can pass in one direction,organisms can pass in the other ?