B. M. A.

The meeting which the British Medical Association conducted in London last fortnight was that body's 100th. But save for a "pilgrimage" to Worcester where a group unveiled a memorial window in Worcester Cathedral and a plaque on the home of the late Sir Charles Hastings, B. M. A. founder, speakers in the main refrained from historical palaver. Professor Julian Sorell Huxley told about the "Biology of Human Nature.'' The Prince of Wales attended the Centenary Dinner in Albert Hall, sat close to his personal physician Bertrand Dawson Lord Dawson of Penn, incoming B. M. A. president.

Health Hostels. Lord Dawson called attention to a much neglected type of sick man. His doctor may have prescribed for his defects. But, noted Lord Dawson, "the mere giving of medicines will often accomplish but little. What the patient wants is regimen and re-education in methods of living; treatment, it may be by diet, physicotherapy. and relaxation under controlled observation. Such treatment or education of the man and his tissues might take several weeks, and in most instances it would be advantageous for such patients to continue their ordinary avocations. We need a new type of institution--distinct from hospital provision--namely, a Health Hotel.

"Examples flow from any physician's experience. Overweight--the man of 40 getting a fat body and a fat head, who avows himself a small eater yet is clogged with his own metabolic products; the man becoming set about the neck and waist, who turns his body slowly rather than his head and eyes quickly, or who is bluish and breathless, losing his rib movements and wants to 'stay put.' Then the various gastrointestinal victims who need to be taught how to eat. how to digest, and to regulate their bowels, and perhaps to be cured of their 'conscious abdomens.' Then again the patient in the early diabetic stage where not only himself but his wife needs instruction in food calories and cooking, and it may be in the administration of insulin. All such and many mere need for a space a designed environment; they require education but under the conditions of their working life."

School Doctors Flayed. Headmaster Cuthbert Harold Blakiston of Lancing College flayed the Public School Boy of today (see p. 15). Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller. honorary director of the Institute of Medical Psychology, flayed Public School doctors. "School teachers--I refer to those who hold teaching certificates-- have at least had some training in psychology, whereas we doctors have not. Any knowledge of the subject that the school medical officer may possess he has acquired since graduation. It follows, therefore, that in dealing with such problems as persistent stealing or homosexuality the teacher is more likely than the doctor to have insight into the motivation, and in consequence is less,likely to treat the incident on the purely objective plane of social delinquency. It is true that in some of our boarding schools for boys, including certain very ancient foundations, there is no such advantage on either side, as neither master nor doctor has any psychological insight beyond that which may come to him by the light of nature. The situation is one which entirely satisfies the complacency of our racial traditionalism. It is not one, however, that can be regarded as satisfactory in the light of modern knowledge and of educational ideals outside these islands."

Vocational Guidance. "Unhappiness and ill-health at work may be due to the fact that the employer or supervisor, not the worker himself, is a misfit. Vocational guidance must not be confined to the children of the laboring classes. In this country a limited amount of work has already been done in the guidance of public and secondary school pupils, with results which are distinctly promising. An extension of this work is greatly to be desired."--Dr. Angus Macrae, London.

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