In torrid regions, thermal environment is of very great importance as regards comfort and certainly influences the health and efficiency of white men. The human race may have arisen under the influence of climates similar to those now prevailing in the Tropics where indigenous peoples sojourn in an almost natural state with little protection against either heat or cold. The European brings with him his native conventions as regards houses and clothing, developed, in the case of Britons, in quite northern regions, where the human race requires protection against cold. These may be more or less unsuitable for tropical heat but, being conventions, they cannot be lightly thrown aside. European clothes afford protection against disease-carrying insects, poisonous stings and bites, and the question arises as to the best way to modify them to suit the hot climate. In any case, the northern European in the Tropics is in an abnormal climatic environment and, though he may survive a long time, there can be little doubt that he rarely enjoys his natural robustness of health with the result that even trivial ailments assume serious aspects. It appears that there is a much narrower margin of health stability, and proportionately greater care is required if the system is to be kept within the limits. Mr Elsworth Huntingdon1 has adduced evidence suggesting that white races, even if they are able to survive within the torrid zone, undergo deterioration.

With regard to the influence of malarial infection on the Wassermann test some controversy prevails:

Wassermann and Lange (1913) refer to Meyer and Bonfiglio who, working in Italy, obtained a positive reaction in 80 per cent. of the cases where the blood contained parasites; in some of their cases positive reactions were obtainable for several months after the disappearance of fever and parasites. For this reason Wassermann and Lange advise to put every case, coming from a malaria-infected country and showing a positive reaction, under quinine treatment and to repeat the test after a lapse of six weeks.

1. There are fats which are indispensable for children because they contain specific bodies, essential for normal growth.

2. If these lipoid bodies, termed “fat soluble A bodies” by McCollum, are absent from the food for a long time, an inhibition of growth will occur and the conditions which I have termed Dystrophia alipogenetica will finally appear. This condition involves a great susceptibility and lowered resistance to all infections and often leads to xerosis of the conjunctivae and corneae associated with night blindness. The xerosis has a great tendency to result in keratomalacia. In its first stage xerophthalmia resembles a slight conjunctivitis; the children develop photophobia, their eyes are red and there is a slight secretion.

3. Xerophthalmia generally occurs in spring, the time when growth is at its maximum.

4. The disease is most frequent amongst the children of the poorest country folk and is always due to an unsuitable artificial diet, generally the replacing of whole milk partly or completely by centrifuged milk, butter milk or concoctions of flour. It may appear in children who have received whole milk and cream, but in that case the milk and cream have been boiled for too long a time or have been subjected to other kinds of drastic treatment which have destroyed the specific lipoid bodies.

5. Xerophthalmia is easily when recognised in time. The best treatment is cod liver oil, but whole milk and probably cream, butter, eggs and other fats containing the specific lipoid bodies are also curative. It is important to remember that these foods should only be subjected to the ordinary short boiling.

6. The disease is fairly common in Denmark, apparently more so than in other countries. It is, for instance, practically unknown in Sweden and Norway. According to Mori's statistics it used to be rare in Germany. The reason for its being so frequent in Denmark is probably partly due to the fact that this country exports most of its dairy produce, especially butter.

7. Many of the cases of blindness and leucoma attributed to eye complaints during infancy, are perhaps due to xerophthalmia. Of late it has been said that blindness amongst children in Denmark is increasing while gonorrhoeal ophthalmia in new born infants at the maternity hospital is decreasing. Ophthalmo-blenorrhoea has been the cause of blindness in very few of the recent admissions to the blind institute, all of which supports my contention that xerophthalmia is the actual cause of the large number of blind children in Denmark.

The provision of an epidemiologically safe water supply to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, as it fought its way across the Sinai Desert to deliver Palestine from the hand of the Turk, will long be remembered as one of the most remarkable achievements of the war.

This paper presents the results of a preliminary study of conditions affecting the movement of leucocytes. It demonstrates experimental facts which confirm the assumptions that osmotic force present in aqueous solutions and the permeability of leucocytes for water are the factors responsible for the movement of these cells from place to place.

(1) The study of the meteorological circumstances prevailing in the United Kingdom confirms the conclusions reached in India that the combined influence of temperature and humidity plays an important part in determining the conditions necessary for the transmission of malaria.

(2) The part assigned to temperature and humidity points to the conclusion that the period of active infection in England is ordinarily limited to the months of July and August.

(3) The part attributed to temperature accounts for the geographical distribution of the endemic area of malaria in the British Isles and explains its limitation to certain parts of England.

(4) The combined influence of temperature and humidity appears to afford an explanation of the precise location of the endemic centres of malaria within the above area.

(5) The part assigned to temperature and humidity elucidates certain points in connexion with the endemiology of malaria in England, and it offers an explanation of the conditions known as “Malaria sine Paludism” and “Paludism sine Malaria.”

(6) The part played by the meteorological factors throws light on the past history of malaria in England and it helps to explain its gradual decline.