Volume 48 · Issue 12 · 1934

It is the purpose of this paper to report certain intracellular changes observed in red blood cells during the stages of their maturation. While in the main the observations herein reported have to do with reticular and granular structures in the cytoplasm, certain of them however bear specifically on the problem of the fate of the nucleus.

Flainman (1916) in his brief description of the relation of the brain to the skull in an Australian aboriginal woman says "Into the almost illimitable haze, which deepens as we gaze back towards the beginnings of our race, the increasingly powerful searchlights of human knowledge have been turned, and have discovered to a few adventurous spirits, the ruins of a path strewn with scanty human skulls of a complexity which diminishes as the path recedes into the gloom. With this picture of many phylogenetic tracks, bordered by these impassive masks, the question is stimulated - do these bones contain evidence which will enable us to reconstruct and, in imagination restore to its ancient home, the organ of thought and feeling - from the bony markings can we deduce the special characters of the brain which lived within?"

In 1929 the late Professor Davidson Black suggested that the collection of human embryos at the Peiping Union Medical College provided a rare opportunity for me to study racial embryology. Inspired by this suggestion, I have endeavoured to enter into this wide field of investigation. The present paper which represents only one of the itema along this line is written in grateful memory of Professor Black.

Before describing my own observation I want to make some general remarks about the formation of the peIvis in different races. Since precise examinations have been recorded, it is possible to speak of racial types of pelves. The magnitude of the various pelvic measurements as well as the sizes of the various bones and their relation to each other is characteristic of the various races.

Variations in the distribution of the cutaneous nerves on the dorsum of the foot are of interest to anatomists from several viewppoints. During the past few years, during routing gross dissections by medical students and in the course of several of the writer's personal dissections, the frequent occuerrence of an increased distribution of the sural nerve on the dorsum of the Chinese foot has been observed.

The blood supply of the heart has been a subject of systematic anatomical research since the middle of the sixteenth century. Individual variations and periodical age changes present problems of considerable interest and importance not only on account of their morphological interest and importance not only on account of their morphological interest and importance not only on account of their morphological interest, but also on account of their functional significance.

Davidson Black, not great in stature but a giant in cerebration, was a ruan who penetrated the esse of a thing and faithfully and accurately recorded it. His work will ever remain a permanent and paramount standard for future savants. To have the privilege of contributing an article in a memorial number for Dr. Black is an honour quite undeserved by the authors.

This study is made from two series of skulls. The first series consist of 100 crania preserved in the department of anatomy of the Peiping Union Medical College. This Department was for many years headed by the late Professor Davidson Black under whom I had the great pleasure to work in the year 1922.

While giving physical examinations recently to the students of Chosen Christian College, advantage was taken of the opportunity thus afforded for making a series of anthropometric measurements on a representative group of Korean men. Four hundred were examined; ages 17 to 29 (only one 16), the ages being revised according to the table for converting Chinese ages to their foreign equivalents, given by Drs. Stevenson and P'an (1). All of the thirteen provinces of Korea are represented. The number is small but a beginning has been made the results of which are presented herewith. It is desirable to call attention to the possibilities of such work even with meagre facilities, and to express the hope that a program may be developed for a co-operative investigation of the present day physical characteristics of the Koreans. Only when data are gathered from all classes of the people, and all districts of the country will a comparative racial study of real value be possible.

It is the purpose of this paper to discuss certain phases of the problem of nutritional assessment. Particular attention will be directed to(1) the reasons for failure of the commonly used height-weight relationship to provide an adequate basis for nutritional appraisal, (2) the importance of the stem-length (sitting-height) in relation to weight, and the peculiar merits of von Pirquet's pelidisi index based on this relationship, (3) certain fundamental principles of biometric and statistical analyses upon which the correct interpretation and application of such indices depend, and (4) the necessity of combining both clinical and biometric methods of nutritional appraisal in the interests of arriving at the most adequate nutritional assessment possible in specific cases.

Under the care of Dr. Paul H. Stevenson and with the kind permission of the Editors of this Journal, a number of articles have been collected in this issue in honor of the late Davidson Black, Professor of Anatomy, Peiping Union Medical College. These articles are on a variety of subjects and this very well reflects the wide range of Dr. Black's own studies.

Of the various associations of science, the most intimate is that the name of Davidson Black with concerned with the discovery and study of the fossil hominid Sinanthropus pekinensis. No better summary of the events leading up to and including the discoveries made until shortly before his death is to be found than that left by Dr. Black himself in the introductory paragraphs of his last major publication, that of the Croonian Lecture delivered by him before the Royal Society of London on December 8, 1932.