Predominant Opinion Research Articles

Emergent, urgent, and elective admissions. Studies in a general hospital psychiatric emergency service.

THE HE number of admissions to emergency services of general hospitals has risen markedly during recent years. A study of 330 general hospitals by McCarroll and Skudder,¹for example, revealed an increase of 120% in emergency room visits between 1945 and 1958. Shortliffe et al²surveyed 90 hospitals with emergency services and reported an even larger increase in visits to emergency services. In addition, Shortliffe et al elicited opinions from the staffs of the 90 hospitals surveyed concerning the reasons for this rise. The predominant opinion was that it has become more difficult for patients to reach physicians in private practice during weekends, nights, and holidays. These findings prompted Coleman and Errera to comment: It seems that at least part of the traditional on-call responsibility of the physician in private practice is being shifted to the general hospital emergency room.^3(p1294) With this rise in admissions has come

The Commonwealth in Asia

STRONG winds are blowing all over Asia, declared Pandit Nehru at the opening of the Inter-Asian Conference at New Delhi in March 1947. Their strength and their direction cannot even now be measured at all precisely, for the driving force of Asian nationalism is assuredly not yet spent, and the social tensions, aiding nationalism in some countries, fundamentally at variance with it in others, are most certainly not yet resolved. But it is now apparent that the essential moderation in external policy, which guided predominant opinion in New Delhi in I947, remains unimpaired by the impact of rapid, even bewildering, change. Here it may be that the timeless wisdom of the East will enable Southern to survive some of the strains, inseparable from a period of revolution, more easily than Europe. If it does so, history will pay due tribute to the teaching and example of Mahatma Gandhi in the subcontinent of India and to the statesmanship of all in high office who refused to allow past memory to distort their judgement of present needs. In I947 there were many who believed that the ending of Western Imperialism should also bring to an end intimate relations with the West. Asia for the Asians was in their eyes synonymous with an exclusive continentalism. Talk of an Asian bloc was fashionable and hopes were expressed that at least Southeast and South might become a neutralised region of the world. Yet, however attractive such proposals might seem to peoples long subjected to alien rule, a closer inspection of them brought to view rivalries within which cast serious doubts upon their practicability, as well as the probability of reactions which could be only unhelpful to both West and East. Fundamentally it was the long-term maritime interests of the countries of South and Southeast which precluded any such policy of contracting out or of isolation from world affairs. Yet the fact that such thoughts were in men's minds deserves to be recalled in any review of the relations between the new Dominions of and the British Commonwealth. For, in thinking of a future association with the Common-

R. De Eötvös' law concerning the connection between the local disturbances of the magnetic force and those of gravity

1. As to the origin of the local magnetic disturbances, there are two predominant opinions: The one considers the disturbances of the earth‐currents, produced by irregularities in the structure of the Earth's crust, as the main cause; the other concept supposes that magnetization, induced in rocks by the permanent field of the Earth, is chiefly responsible for the local magnetic disturbances. In the latter concept, too, the structure of the Earth's crust is of eminent importance. The distribution of the diverse magnetizable rocks, or an abrupt change in their arrangement as, for instance, is found along with tectonic lines, may manifest themselves in local magnetic disturbances. This idea has largely been applied by Rücker and Thorpe in interpreting the disturbances disclosed by their magnetic survey of the British Isles.

XIX. Remarks, on several Parts of Scotland which exhibit Quartz Rock, and on the Nature and Connexions, of this Rock in general.

Jura As I considered that the mineralogical history of Jura had already been amply detailed, I ascended its well-known mountains rather to gratify my love of the picturesque, than with the hope of acquiring any new ideas on the subject of its structure. Yet as the predominant opinions seemed to have determined that the tract in question was composed of a granular quartz, and as it had been compared with the northern part of Scotland asserted to consist of the same rock, with the ridge of Schihallien, amply described as such by Professor Playfair, and with numerous other foreign rocks described by various authors under this designation, I had with others admitted the term, and the æra of formation which this term implied. My own researches having given me reason to differ in opinion from these authorities, I have thought it necessary to describe the appearances which I saw; the question of its rank in the great society of rocks can only be determined after all its circumstances have been fully investigated. The whole island extending to a length of 30 miles, and varying in breadth from one mile to six, is fundamentally composed of this one rock, which is also to be found extending through Scarba on its northern, and through a great portion of Isla on its southern shore. The other rocks which occur, with the exception of an important series to be immediately described, either occupy small spaces apparently subordinate to the general mass, or consist of veins