TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14974, 22 May 1914, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

"Accidental" Murder. Can murder be held to be accidental? At first sight it would seem not, for deliberation enters into murder, and what is done by design cannot, one would think, bo accidental. However, the highest court in Great Britain :s of the contrary opinion. This was the way of it. A master in an Irish school detected ono of his pupils in a theft and prevented others from playing in a certain shed. Tho aggrieved boys, to "get even" with him, arranged to attack him, and two of them assaulted him so violently that his skull was fractured, and ho died tho samo day. The question then arose: Did he meet his death by "accident," "arising out of and in tho course of his employment"? If the answer was "Yes," his mother was entitled to compensation under tho Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906. The County Court Judge said "Yes," and so did the Irish Court of Appeal, but tho caso went up to tho House of Lords. That tribunal upheld the findings of the lower "Courts, hut only by the narrowest of margins. The four Ayes were the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Loreburn (ex-Lord Chancellor), and Lord Shaw, and tho three Noes wero Lord Dunedin, Lord Atkinson, and Lord Parker—also great lawyers. Lord Dunedin contended that "accident" was the very antithesis of design, and that as the schoolmaster was murdered he could not bo considered to have met with an accident, but tho majority regarded as an accident for the purposes of the statute any injury not expected or designed by tho employee. Lord Loreburn put the case for the Ayes in a way that will appeal to many laymen. "Suppose some ruffian laid a log on the rails and wrecked a train, was the guard who had been injured excluded from the Act? Was a gamekeeper who was shot by, poachers excluded from tho Act? There was design enough in either case, and of the worst kind. In either case he would have thought, if the nature of the man's employment was looked at, it might be said ho was injured by what was accident in that employment." And do not many teachers take the risk—infinitesimal, though it may be—of injury from a criminally-minded pupil?

Surgery of the Ancients. So many surprising archaeological discoveries are being made just now that it is becoming roally dangerous to boast about the modernity of anything, and we shall probably soon be driven definitely to tho conclusion that thoro is, all, "nothing new under the sun." The science of surgery has been claimed to' be an exclusively modern development; medicine, ib was admitted, had its -rEsculapius and its Galen, but surgery was a nineteenth century product. Unfortunately for this theory, a set of thirty-seven very remarkable Greek surgical instruments has just been unearthed near the site of Kolophon, in lonia. The date of the find is somewhat uncertain, but is paced about the first or second century of the present era, if not before. Among the collection, which anticipates a number of supposed modern discoveries, theie is to be noted a pair of polypus forceps for . removing growths, another for extracting arrow and lance heads, a tenacula or sharp hook, similar to those in every-day use, a number of catheters of beautiful workmanship, a cautery for burning wounds, some cupping-vessels, a couple of probes just like the modern ones, two spatula: or spoons, and perhaps most interesting of all, a "drill-bow" for operating a skull trephine, and an i elevator for raising pieces of depressed bone. These two last-named ducoveries show that brain surgery is far from being tho recent development it is supposed to be, and that, in fact, ' trephining or trepanning is a very ancient operation. In classic times, however, this operation -was not undertaken, as now, to relievo the pressure from an abscess or effusion of blood, but to allow exit to an evil spirit supposed to be troubling an insane or epileptic patient. One interesting fact about the collection is tho use of bronze. Tho blades of tho knives were originally of steel, but this metal has been almost completely destroyed in every caso by oxidation. The custom of using bronze (or stone) for knives and other implements is said to have been followed, not because iron was unknown, but because that metal was held in superstitious awe. Even the use, of anaesthetics .was not unknown to the Greek and Roman

surgeons. mandragora juice. ' and atropin being used by them for this purpose. Antiseptics were apparently not used by them, hue it is thought that the purity of the atmosphero in which they work rendered these unnecessary.