Volume 47 · Issue 02 · 1933

In the interests of historical accuracy we feel it is necessary to draw the attention of the medical profession, both at home and abroad to the distortion of facts by the Japanese regarding medical work in WIanchuria. Not content with misleading the world in their relentless campaign of subjugating China through Manchuria, Shanghai and Jehol, the Japanese Government and their propaganda machine have enlisted the help of even the medical profession in running down the praiseworthy efforts of Chinese and missionary organisations in that region.

Our attention has been drawn by a foreign physician who has practised in China over thirty years to a communication recently received by him from Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, in which occurred the following passage: "Scientific medicine is probably doing more to ad ance the interests of the Chinese people than all of the governmental conferences and political manipulations in which some of our leading nations indulge."

Tuberculosis is the greatest single carise of death in China. This is only an opinion; yet it is hardly probable that anyone would care to question it. Fifty years ago it was true for almost the whole world. Then 500 deaths annually from tuberculosis per 100,000 people was no unusual rate, and is probably. Not far from the actual rate for China today. In those countries where efforts have been made to combat it by methods in harmony with knowledge of its etiology, epidemiology and treatment, there has been a consistent fall in the death rate. It is now reasonable to expect a death rate of 75 0r under. One statistician expresses the hope that within a decade it will be under 40. In New Zealand it is already below that figure.

The subject of this paper may be divided into two main groups: I. Tuberculosis as a public health and social problem, and II. Tuberculosis as an individual problem.

The so-called mixed tumors of the salivary glands have been studied carefully by many workers during recent years, but attention has not been called previousIy to their common occurrence among the Chinese. Interest in the unusual nature of these neoplasms, their habits of behavior and the problem of their surgical treatment, led to this study of the clinical and pathologic findings in forty-five cases seen at the Peiping Union Medical College Hospital between the years 1921 and 1930. All of the patients were Chinese. Of the forty-five cases, twenty-eight occurred in the parotid region, nine in the sub-maxillary region and eight in the palate. All tumors have been excluded which were primarily malignant but those have been retained in which there was evidence that a malignant metamorphosis of a simple mixed tumor had taken place. Although the number of cases is limited,it is not negligible and should be of value for comparison with similar series of cases compiled elsewhere.

Weil, Felix and Mitzenmacher (1) and Weil and Felix (2) have .shown that the typhoid-paratyphoid group of organisms possesses a "double receptor structure" based upon the presence of a heat labile or "H" antigen and a heat stabile or "O" antigen; the "H" antigen producing "H" agglutinin and forming a large flocculant type of agglutination, and the "O" antigen producing "O" agglutinin and forming a granular type of agglutination. In this group the heat labile antigen is type specific while the heat stabile antigen is common to the organisms of this group. Felix (3) described the working of the double receptor analysis method in enteric diseases. He found that in a certain number of cases the ordinary or "H" agglutination is negative while the "O" agglutination is positive and that the agglutination due to prophylactic vaccination is entirely of the flocculant type. He, therefore, recommended the use of an "O" antigen as a helpful procedure in the differentiation of agglutinins due to an active enteric disease and those due to previous inoculation: This work in the main has been confirmed by various authors.

Colon bacillus, a life-tong lodger of man and animal, finds its access into the body of the host soon after the birth of the latter. Although the significance of its presence is frequently questioned,it has generally been considered as being harmless in so far as it is confined to the proper places which nature asigns to it. However, if the balance between the resistance of the host on one hand and the virulence of the parasite on the other is disturbed, disease may supervene.

Since the demonstration of the common household "brown" mosquito by Manson (1878) as intermediate host of Wuchereria bancrofti in Amoy no other observation has been made along this line on this island. The mosquitoes rsed in Manson's experiment, though considered by many to be Culex pipiens, are considered by Edwards (1922) to have been Culex fatigans because of the fact that the former does not occur in South China. This opinion is now generally held by most authorities. The possibility, however, of culicine mosquitoes other than Culex fatigans, which may commonly occur in houses in Amoy and which may easily be mistaken for Culex fatigans should also be borne in mind.

This study in the pelvic measurements of Chinese women has had for its major objective the addition of new material to that already collected in the hope that we may evolve a standard on which to base our judgment in individual cases as to the probable course of labor from the point of view of disproportion. The patients were a fair cross-section of the Chinese race, for Shanghai has a mixed population made up of people from all parts of the country. It is probable that the proportion of northerners is slightly low, for they are more conservative, and less apt to leave their own part of the country than the somewhat more aggressive southerner. This fact would make all our figures a little low possibly, for the northern Chinese is definitely taller and of larger frame than the southern. The pelvic measurements reported were all made by the writer, in order to avoid individual variations in the taking of the dimensions.

The third regular meeting of the Chinese Ophthalmological Society was held on Friday, October 28, 1932 in the Peiping Union Medical College, when the following demonstrations and papers were presented.