Volume 66 · Issue 02 · 1948

Typhosus-meningitis is a very rare disease. Chien and Chen (1) in 1944 reported 3 adult cases in Chungking. The disease is even rarely in children, only one case was found from all the data we could gather in Kweichow.

Systemic fungus infections are comparatively rare and difficult to diagnose. Two cases are reported to draw the attention of both clinicians and bacteriologists to the occurrence of such infections in China.

Focal or oblique illumination fro eye examination was first extensively used by Karl Himly (1806). According to Duke-Elder, Mackenzie and Purkinje also knew about it, but was not generally applied until the time of von Helmholtz and von Graefe.

Periostitis of the os calcis, until recently listed under the misnomer of gonorrheal spur, is a common disease of young Chinese males. Its importance generally has been under-estimated, largely because of a lack of understanding of the true nature of the disease. The literature concerning this subject is scarce and most of the papers which have been published deal with some form of local therapy and give little consideration to the systemic character of the malady. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that treatment has not proved satisfactory and more radical types of therapy have been devised.

Experimental studies showed that intravenous inoculation of Salmonella typhi is followed by the deposition and proliferation of these organisms in the liver, spleen, lymph nodes. and bone marrow (4, 5). In the bone marrow they may persist, multiply and sulosequently reinfect the blood stream (5, 6). This experimental knowledge was not clinically applied untiI we (1) showed on the, yToasis of simultaneous serial determinations of marrow, blood, urine and stool cultures on 38 patients with typhoid and paratyphoid fevers that: (a) medulloculture gives a distinctly higher percentage of positive growth, equally valuable in all stages of disease and may even be positive during convalescence; and (b) medulloculture yields a more rapid and luxuriant growth than hemoculture.

As far as we are aware, there is no record concerning typhus fever in Northwest China. This report describes some of the epidemiological and clinical features of the disease as seen in Lanchow, capital of Kansu province.

We are all familiar with the fact that no two individuals of the same race, or even of the same family, are exactly alike. Subconsciously too we all are aware that the degrees of variability which lie within what we call the "normal" spread over a wide range, but in our thinking we have so easily adopted the average as our guide and explored too little the range over which this "normal" varies.

The recent of article of Kulcsar (1) on Chinese pelvic measurements, and Professor H. S. D. Garven's timely editorial in this issue prompted the writing of these few lines embodying in outline a project which has been brewing in the mind of the writer for the past ten years or more-- a plan for a systematic and cooperative study on the physical and physiological "standards" or "range of normal" of the Cantonese living under different environments.

In October, 1938, after many months of repeated air-raids, the Japanese forces finally made landing and began to rapidly advance toward Canton.

Fifty years ago physicians in America and Europe turned their attention to the prevention and cure of tuberculosis-the Great White Plague. Much was accomplished.