Aijg-> 1931.]
EDITORIALS.
449
Lastly, it has been shown that the pneumococci existing as harmless saprophytes in the mouths and throats of healthy people belong in the vast majority of cases to the heterogeneous group
Indian Medical Gazette.
IV. In addition to its importance as- the key to these interesting epidemiological findings the serological subdivision of the pneumococci suggested that a new weapon had naturally the specific treatment of lobar been placed in our hands in the struggle against PNEUMONIA. pneumonia. A number of large-scale experiments on the therapeutic use of type-specific in cases of lobar pneumonia have been antisera an a Lobar pneumonia is carried out during the past fifteen years, partigreat ^ , disease of the lungs Qr gtreptoc cularly in America, but the results have been, ^ an of cases, by the pneumo It soon became on the whole, disappointing. disease, ^ Vneumonice. It is a c0 evident that effective antisera could be prestatistics prominence in the ?01 u 0{ our pared against types I and II only. Type III r At di countries is the direct ^ ^ although they are highly virulent and strains, ^ | b inability to deal effective y a ^aS been large amount of soluble specific subpossess ?r al?? times the pneumonia act very feebly in stimulating the protiffi0ny stance, W1 as app< purged or poisoned duction of type-specific antibodies. Group IV ?e described and the results can only is a heterogeneous collection of biologically lino!. of different strains, numbering anything from ten to twenty, for which no polyvalent serum has yet been prepared. The additional observation that very large doses of serum had to be given in order to produce any beneficial results, and that that all strains of pneumo 1 that, in consequence, undesirable side-effects ^ but into a as had hitherto been suppofrom serum-sickness were common, led many ^ethods are divisible by serological ^ American I workers at this stage to abandon this line of 1 number of types or gro mQgt common ' treatment. classification, which is yP g x, H> an The next advance of definite value was the adopted, recognises three 'eactions, a? discovery by Felton in America that the antiimmunity with characteristic ^ consisting body in pneumococcus immune serum is assofourth type or, more ciated with the water-insoluble-globulin fraction n' ?0f pneumcw of a heterogeneous colic antiseraof the serum. Felton devised a method of which fail to react with th y _,i followed 3 off and concentrating the antibodyseparating i rapi were important findings by workers containing fraction thus enabling the specific large number of obse,r,va re\ative antibody to be given in a concentrated form. viru different countries on the -cg the It is usual to employ the sera obtained by imth the types in different epidem relation of munising horses against a large number of s of the various types, an different biologic strains of pneumococci and to n nasophaiy pool the concentrated antibody from these sera. pathogenic types to the sa commonly found in the The resulting product is known as Felton's con-a of ; healthy people. observations centrated refined polyvalent antipneumococcus Prom these accumul Its content of + or polyvalent antibody. have gi.a serum, number of very instructive is roughly ten times that of unconinter alia> antibody v emerged. It has been centrated serum and it is freed from many usethe the types represented, and and possibly antagonistic, substances prewarily less, ? ne Of their occurrence, are not t times. sent in the latter. The designation polyvalent at in different to this preparation is not, at the moment, places or 0{ pneumo applied jn_ m the example, accurate, for in addition to a very low strictly P ag of type III antibody there is a concentration occurring in cases of lobar ^ve years B and burgh at present is type complete absence of antibody effective against was type I. Pooled the heterogeneous group IV. lpncV figures show that the fi'eCl \0bar Pn?u Aided ' by these advances in the preparation of the different strains in ca?? 33.0, typ and by the develop0 X, f pneumococcus antibody, is " " roughly as follows: 03 0. The 5 ment of more rapid methods of typing pneulV' 20 0 aSain +?ttt inn tn-oup is, 20.0 mococci from patients, a number of American percentage for the resp^--- 50 in
AUGUST.
inflammatory
,
^
cause^
(^s^MPVCnt
,
V
l?a^e* .
,
oplefbtthetof^^ert' ag
^rnotWe^ ?
'
i
..
^lC
*reqU?nCipnce
-pathogenic
,
?tive
?
-
J
predominant yPneUinonia
-
^m
,
percentage
t{
}
?
-
roughly, 25.0, 33.0, 45.0,
history of English literature in this connect1 we have looked up a few of the older w?r^s' g/ both medical and other writers. In peare's day no uniformity whatsoever i11 matter of initial capitals was observed; and compositors appeared to use them, freely and indiscriminately. In the nipu j writings of the 17th and 18th centuries capitals are still to be found scattered but in the 19th century a tendency to limit ^ The practice has use begins to show itself. very much subject to fashion, and the pre? ag day tendency is to avoid the use of cap^ Lt far as possible. Whenever a practice is su to fashion, extremes will always be found, in certain publications, in which the 0f modern effect is attempted, the ordinary the initial capital for proper names has departed from; fortunately, this practice > not yet found a place in medical journa that it does not concern us. Of the two errors, the use of capitals to ^ ^ they should not be used and the failure them where they should be used, the for10 ollr by far the more common. Speaking frorD to ^jjiS own experience of the manuscripts sent " " journal, for every lower-case letter the printer's technical term for the to letter ") that we alter to a capital, we alter at least 10 capitals to lower-case *e geg, Leaving out of consideration its obvioUg per such as at the beginning of a sentence, i*1 P names, and in book titles and headlines, say that the main function of the initial is to indicate that a word is used in a SP
w^lCjg
s^l0ll0^ ,
beca1^
Sha^ .
lJJ1ejy,
.
f-uejr ,
,
n^een
^
kapsCteCj^l;
k
EDITORIALS.
Aug., 1931.] ~
and not in
a
sense.
general,
it does
^ all caSeS it used, and
n
generalisation; mus in which initial capitals ^gcation for as tire J mon usage be well quoted might wner used. capitals in certain cases shou to the has indicated that they referring ie w used Initial capitals are nron0un means ? or official Deity, directly or byfor person ^ pathology, His influence),
broad
.
Eleme Tropical Diseases, Lancet,
of ^ames and
Probability), in the drugs {e.g., Stovarsol, Luminal),or
of
' but the post of Medical Officer in charge, Simla Mental Hospital, was vacant'. About the next few groups there should be little ques' tion ; the words veterinary college' are printed with small letters unless a specific college is referred to; northern India is not a political 'division and is therefore given a small ' n '; unless a specific government or society is referred to the word is spelt with a small letter; ' ' ' the capital L in Liberal' is only used when the word is meant to indicate a person holding certain political opinions or is used as an adjective with' a parallel meaning; in such senIt is in Manson-Bahr's book on tences as ' tropical diseases' and Finally, in the last chapter, the elementary theory of probability is well described ', capitals are not used. With the proprietary names of drugs difficulties again ' ' be absurd to write aspirin with arise; it would ' other and there are a capital many proA', ' prietary names, such as, salvarsan ', that have the initial come into such constant use that capital is usually dropped. This is a matter in which no hard and fast rules can be made; what is correct to-day may not be correct to-morrow. Each case should be judged on its merits, but the writer of a scientific paper should attempt to be consistent, at any rate throughout that paper. Finally, generic names, such as ancylostoma, bacterium, bacillus, are not given initial capitals except in the associations referred to above.
in',
ver^
a
This is
451
higher
(< tozoon in the names of genera Our classification of the instances in which a orders when referred to as such (e.g., ) of the family an initial capital letter should be used is not, Ancyiostoma of course, comprehensive but it does, we hope, scientific name is given {c.g-, initialinclude the majority of the instances likely to duodenale, Bacterium typhosum). andbe encountered in medical writings. There are It should, however, be p P certain words which do not seem to fall under articles, to words. capital is not given cap the word ' Nature' with any heading, for example conjunctions associated ?+nrices in ' the when used in the sense pupae are seldom For each of the warning ' ' N is the common A '. Nature in found capital mdi , ( g|10U\c\ ' ' which an initial capital is words the figure ', graph wore Again practice. The note must be given. ' an initiai table' wherever they occur in the text are ?our_ not in every instance be spei an initial capital in many journals, but g , given referri ^he ^ capital,' as for example in of his this is seldom necessary, and in many instances mand who makes a god difficulties to the text. For example, it is ' ^g. ' very disfiguring next group presents very consi to the reference in graph below ', in details ( and in many cases it is impos tna ^ wag by or even in are given in the following table (vi) ', matic. There is little doubt ' ^ Bengal we cannot see seen in figure hi will be it other appointed Professor of Pathology that by obtruding of there is' much to' be' gained ' Medical College' is correct, professorthe ' G' and T and it will be seen w capitals He hand we should write uniVersities in Fig. Ill' is definitely jarring. (However, we Pathology at' one of the Americ ; can( aiways to have their own frequently t he words medicai in thisallow contributors medical practitione matter.) way be written without capitals, sjiv. Prinso' of very worst offenders in the matter of officer' cannot be dismissed tment The of capitals are writers of annual an the over-use ,[, li does not cipal Medical Officer is of public health reports; not especially prou reports, which the holder is often anything do to offend any of their Medical fear they only hke to see himself referred officers might Health Visitors, Sanitary Nurses, his Officers, juni but initial capitals, and algQ given we Inspectors, and even Mosquito Gangs by treatwrong resent the distinction if they QUite 1 , ing them as they would ordinary doctors, solia similar capitals honour; nevertheless citors, and plumbers, but they also seldom fail to give the words ' medical may to For though give capitals to all diseases, more especially to whenever they appear, at any time assume those which may to is called used when a specific post was o ' example, the railway medical
botany
Trypanosoma^?
noted.Repositions ,
above-mentionw^n^ ,
1
.
..
'
italics. The inevitable conclusion to which ?? is driven by a writer who frequently n5 large portions of his text is that the rest of article is probably not worth reading.
italic^*
EDITORIALS.
449
Lastly, it has been shown that the pneumococci existing as harmless saprophytes in the mouths and throats of healthy people belong in the vast majority of cases to the heterogeneous group
Indian Medical Gazette.
IV. In addition to its importance as- the key to these interesting epidemiological findings the serological subdivision of the pneumococci suggested that a new weapon had naturally the specific treatment of lobar been placed in our hands in the struggle against PNEUMONIA. pneumonia. A number of large-scale experiments on the therapeutic use of type-specific in cases of lobar pneumonia have been antisera an a Lobar pneumonia is carried out during the past fifteen years, partigreat ^ , disease of the lungs Qr gtreptoc cularly in America, but the results have been, ^ an of cases, by the pneumo It soon became on the whole, disappointing. disease, ^ Vneumonice. It is a c0 evident that effective antisera could be prestatistics prominence in the ?01 u 0{ our pared against types I and II only. Type III r At di countries is the direct ^ ^ although they are highly virulent and strains, ^ | b inability to deal effective y a ^aS been large amount of soluble specific subpossess ?r al?? times the pneumonia act very feebly in stimulating the protiffi0ny stance, W1 as app< purged or poisoned duction of type-specific antibodies. Group IV ?e described and the results can only is a heterogeneous collection of biologically lino!. of different strains, numbering anything from ten to twenty, for which no polyvalent serum has yet been prepared. The additional observation that very large doses of serum had to be given in order to produce any beneficial results, and that that all strains of pneumo 1 that, in consequence, undesirable side-effects ^ but into a as had hitherto been suppofrom serum-sickness were common, led many ^ethods are divisible by serological ^ American I workers at this stage to abandon this line of 1 number of types or gro mQgt common ' treatment. classification, which is yP g x, H> an The next advance of definite value was the adopted, recognises three 'eactions, a? discovery by Felton in America that the antiimmunity with characteristic ^ consisting body in pneumococcus immune serum is assofourth type or, more ciated with the water-insoluble-globulin fraction n' ?0f pneumcw of a heterogeneous colic antiseraof the serum. Felton devised a method of which fail to react with th y _,i followed 3 off and concentrating the antibodyseparating i rapi were important findings by workers containing fraction thus enabling the specific large number of obse,r,va re\ative antibody to be given in a concentrated form. viru different countries on the -cg the It is usual to employ the sera obtained by imth the types in different epidem relation of munising horses against a large number of s of the various types, an different biologic strains of pneumococci and to n nasophaiy pool the concentrated antibody from these sera. pathogenic types to the sa commonly found in the The resulting product is known as Felton's con-a of ; healthy people. observations centrated refined polyvalent antipneumococcus Prom these accumul Its content of + or polyvalent antibody. have gi.a serum, number of very instructive is roughly ten times that of unconinter alia> antibody v emerged. It has been centrated serum and it is freed from many usethe the types represented, and and possibly antagonistic, substances prewarily less, ? ne Of their occurrence, are not t times. sent in the latter. The designation polyvalent at in different to this preparation is not, at the moment, places or 0{ pneumo applied jn_ m the example, accurate, for in addition to a very low strictly P ag of type III antibody there is a concentration occurring in cases of lobar ^ve years B and burgh at present is type complete absence of antibody effective against was type I. Pooled the heterogeneous group IV. lpncV figures show that the fi'eCl \0bar Pn?u Aided ' by these advances in the preparation of the different strains in ca?? 33.0, typ and by the develop0 X, f pneumococcus antibody, is " " roughly as follows: 03 0. The 5 ment of more rapid methods of typing pneulV' 20 0 aSain +?ttt inn tn-oup is, 20.0 mococci from patients, a number of American percentage for the resp^--- 50 in
AUGUST.
inflammatory
,
^
cause^
(^s^MPVCnt
,
V
l?a^e* .
,
oplefbtthetof^^ert' ag
^rnotWe^ ?
'
i
..
^lC
*reqU?nCipnce
-pathogenic
,
?tive
?
-
J
predominant yPneUinonia
-
^m
,
percentage
t{
}
?
-
roughly, 25.0, 33.0, 45.0,
history of English literature in this connect1 we have looked up a few of the older w?r^s' g/ both medical and other writers. In peare's day no uniformity whatsoever i11 matter of initial capitals was observed; and compositors appeared to use them, freely and indiscriminately. In the nipu j writings of the 17th and 18th centuries capitals are still to be found scattered but in the 19th century a tendency to limit ^ The practice has use begins to show itself. very much subject to fashion, and the pre? ag day tendency is to avoid the use of cap^ Lt far as possible. Whenever a practice is su to fashion, extremes will always be found, in certain publications, in which the 0f modern effect is attempted, the ordinary the initial capital for proper names has departed from; fortunately, this practice > not yet found a place in medical journa that it does not concern us. Of the two errors, the use of capitals to ^ ^ they should not be used and the failure them where they should be used, the for10 ollr by far the more common. Speaking frorD to ^jjiS own experience of the manuscripts sent " " journal, for every lower-case letter the printer's technical term for the to letter ") that we alter to a capital, we alter at least 10 capitals to lower-case *e geg, Leaving out of consideration its obvioUg per such as at the beginning of a sentence, i*1 P names, and in book titles and headlines, say that the main function of the initial is to indicate that a word is used in a SP
w^lCjg
s^l0ll0^ ,
beca1^
Sha^ .
lJJ1ejy,
.
f-uejr ,
,
n^een
^
kapsCteCj^l;
k
EDITORIALS.
Aug., 1931.] ~
and not in
a
sense.
general,
it does
^ all caSeS it used, and
n
generalisation; mus in which initial capitals ^gcation for as tire J mon usage be well quoted might wner used. capitals in certain cases shou to the has indicated that they referring ie w used Initial capitals are nron0un means ? or official Deity, directly or byfor person ^ pathology, His influence),
broad
.
Eleme Tropical Diseases, Lancet,
of ^ames and
Probability), in the drugs {e.g., Stovarsol, Luminal),or
of
' but the post of Medical Officer in charge, Simla Mental Hospital, was vacant'. About the next few groups there should be little ques' tion ; the words veterinary college' are printed with small letters unless a specific college is referred to; northern India is not a political 'division and is therefore given a small ' n '; unless a specific government or society is referred to the word is spelt with a small letter; ' ' ' the capital L in Liberal' is only used when the word is meant to indicate a person holding certain political opinions or is used as an adjective with' a parallel meaning; in such senIt is in Manson-Bahr's book on tences as ' tropical diseases' and Finally, in the last chapter, the elementary theory of probability is well described ', capitals are not used. With the proprietary names of drugs difficulties again ' ' be absurd to write aspirin with arise; it would ' other and there are a capital many proA', ' prietary names, such as, salvarsan ', that have the initial come into such constant use that capital is usually dropped. This is a matter in which no hard and fast rules can be made; what is correct to-day may not be correct to-morrow. Each case should be judged on its merits, but the writer of a scientific paper should attempt to be consistent, at any rate throughout that paper. Finally, generic names, such as ancylostoma, bacterium, bacillus, are not given initial capitals except in the associations referred to above.
in',
ver^
a
This is
451
higher
(< tozoon in the names of genera Our classification of the instances in which a orders when referred to as such (e.g., ) of the family an initial capital letter should be used is not, Ancyiostoma of course, comprehensive but it does, we hope, scientific name is given {c.g-, initialinclude the majority of the instances likely to duodenale, Bacterium typhosum). andbe encountered in medical writings. There are It should, however, be p P certain words which do not seem to fall under articles, to words. capital is not given cap the word ' Nature' with any heading, for example conjunctions associated ?+nrices in ' the when used in the sense pupae are seldom For each of the warning ' ' N is the common A '. Nature in found capital mdi , ( g|10U\c\ ' ' which an initial capital is words the figure ', graph wore Again practice. The note must be given. ' an initiai table' wherever they occur in the text are ?our_ not in every instance be spei an initial capital in many journals, but g , given referri ^he ^ capital,' as for example in of his this is seldom necessary, and in many instances mand who makes a god difficulties to the text. For example, it is ' ^g. ' very disfiguring next group presents very consi to the reference in graph below ', in details ( and in many cases it is impos tna ^ wag by or even in are given in the following table (vi) ', matic. There is little doubt ' ^ Bengal we cannot see seen in figure hi will be it other appointed Professor of Pathology that by obtruding of there is' much to' be' gained ' Medical College' is correct, professorthe ' G' and T and it will be seen w capitals He hand we should write uniVersities in Fig. Ill' is definitely jarring. (However, we Pathology at' one of the Americ ; can( aiways to have their own frequently t he words medicai in thisallow contributors medical practitione matter.) way be written without capitals, sjiv. Prinso' of very worst offenders in the matter of officer' cannot be dismissed tment The of capitals are writers of annual an the over-use ,[, li does not cipal Medical Officer is of public health reports; not especially prou reports, which the holder is often anything do to offend any of their Medical fear they only hke to see himself referred officers might Health Visitors, Sanitary Nurses, his Officers, juni but initial capitals, and algQ given we Inspectors, and even Mosquito Gangs by treatwrong resent the distinction if they QUite 1 , ing them as they would ordinary doctors, solia similar capitals honour; nevertheless citors, and plumbers, but they also seldom fail to give the words ' medical may to For though give capitals to all diseases, more especially to whenever they appear, at any time assume those which may to is called used when a specific post was o ' example, the railway medical
botany
Trypanosoma^?
noted.Repositions ,
above-mentionw^n^ ,
1
.
..
'
italics. The inevitable conclusion to which ?? is driven by a writer who frequently n5 large portions of his text is that the rest of article is probably not worth reading.
italic^*
