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Fluoretec, a commercial kit for the rapid diagnosis by immunofluorescence of infections caused by Bacteroides spp was compared with a standard culture method. A total of 1010 specimens were tested for the presence of B fragilis group by Fluoretec F and B melaninogenicus-oralis and asaccharolytic groups by Fluoretec M. Fluoretec F was positive in 123/152 specimens culturing B fragilis group strains. Seventeen specimens were positive by Fluoretec F but negative on culture. Fluoretec M was positive in 21 of 22 specimens from which B melaninogenicus was cultured. The Fluoretec system was convenient in use, results being obtained within one hour of receipt of the specimen.

The MS-2 is an instrument for rapid automated testing of antimicrobial susceptibility. Its performance was evaluated by comparison with disc diffusion and MIC tests in a collaborative study in four European laboratories. Tests on independently isolated organisms showed the MS-2 to be in essential agreement with conventional methods in 94.8% of tests. A further series of 170 welldefined pathogens for which a reference antibiogram was available were tested by MS-2 and the manual methods in all of the participating laboratories. MS-2 results were in full accord in 90 % of tests and in essential agreement in 94 %. MS-2 results compared at least as well with the reference values as did either of the manual methods. Initial problems of false susceptibility results with erythromycin and penicillin were resolved by (1) the addition of small amounts of erythromycin which acted as an inducer and (2) by the use of a low content penicillin disc. MS-2 was found to be reliable and needed no attention following loading of the test cuvette cartridges. A print-out of the results was available 2–5 h after inception of the test.

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Clinical, haematological, biochemical, bacteriological, histological, and immuno-logical data of 100 patients with Crohn's disease have been examined with special reference to liver disease and dysfunction. Several significant points emerged from the clinical data. There was a high frequency of colonic involvement (57 per cent), and also a very high proportion of patients (48 per cent) with systemic complications, the commonest systemic complications being iritis (19 per cent) and sacro-ileitis (15 per cent). Nearly three-quarters (71 per cent) of the patients had been operated on at some time and 57 per cent had had one or more bowel resections. Local complications had occurred in 52 per cent of patients. Biochemical liver dysfunction was common, occurring in 26 (26 per cent) patients, the BSP being the test most frequently abnormal. Two patients with established chronic liver disease had considerable biochemical liver dysfunction, but about half the patients with lesser pathological changes in the liver had no biochemical liver dysfunction. Of the 39 patients who underwent liver biopsy, 19 (19 per cent) had pathological changes in the liver, the commonest changes found being pericholangitis (8 per cent), focal necrosis (6 per cent), and fatty change (4 per cent). Only two patients had chronic liver disease, one patient having chronic active hepatitis and the other portal cirrhosis associated with haemosiderosis. Culture of liver tissue for bacteria or L forms was uniformly negative. Immuno-logical studies proved unrewarding in relation to liver disease and dysfunction in patients with Crohn's disease. However, two significant differences did emerge in comparing the results of the immunological tests in ulcerative colitis with those in Crohn's disease. Positive immunofluorescence tests to human colon were found in 12·7 per cent of patients with ulcerative colitis, compared with only 2·3 per cent of patients with Crohn's disease. There was also a significant difference in IgM levels, with low values of IgM more frequent in Crohn's disease and high values more frequent in ulcerative colitis; further research will be necessary to determine the underlying reasons for this difference. The finding that the hepatic changes in Crohn's disease are remarkably similar to those in ulcerative colitis, both in frequency and in type, leads to several possible explanations. First, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease may be different manifestations of a single disease. Secondly, the liver disease and the other remote complications, which are also similar in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, may be a consequence of chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine, irrespective of its exact nature. Thirdly, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease may both be generalized diseases in which the brunt falls upon the intestinal tract. The aetiology of the hepatic lesions remains obscure but some deductions can be drawn from the present data. From clinical considerations, the overt liver disease appears to behave like a viral hepatitis which has become chronic. There is no evidence to support the view that homologous serum hepatitis from blood transfusion is the significant factor. Drugs do not appear to be of any great relevance. Immunological relationships are essentially negative. Portal bacteraemia appears to be an unlikely cause of the overt chronic liver disease encountered in the present study.

of the student of African anthropology and ethnology, there is probably no more interesting dominion in which to settle and study than the Uganda Pro? tectorate, for it gives us examples of nearly all the leading African types except the Bushman and the Berber. There are within its limits or just across its borders (and entering the Protectorate for purposes of trade or service) the Pigmies of the Congo forest, and the closely related dwarfish people of the Chagwe forest in the heart of Uganda; the aristocratic Hima caste, with what Mr. Roscoe calls " Roman " noses, with light complexions, and hair that is finer, silkier, and less tightly curled than the hair of the pure-blood negro. There are the giant, naked, long-legged Nilotic peoples on the north and east; a great variety of Sudanese types ; tribes of Masai affinities in thejElgon district; and, lastly, a large proportion that is typically Bantu in language and physical eonformation. (The Bantu type in the last particular being nothing but a more or less perfect blending of the long-legged Nilotic and the short-legged Forest negro.) Within the limits of this Protectorate we have probably the most archaic and the most profoundly interesting of the Bantu languages. The Baganda people?though, as Mr. Roscoe points out, of very varied physical type, some being Hima with Egyptian profiles, others Nilotic, others hideously negro or semi-pigmy, or just stalwart (I would add, Zulu-like) Bantu ?offer a remarkable blending of East and West, North and South Africa, in their manners and customs, their religious beliefs, their industries and folk-lore. Particularly interesting among them is the development of the totem clans, of which a description in this book is given far more amply and much more accurate than that hitherto supplied by any other writer on Uganda, This information is supplemented in an appendix by anthropometric tables of great fulness, applied to persons selected from most of the clans. This, if analyzed by some such anthropologist as Dr. F. C. Shrubsall, should perhaps throw some light on the question of whether these totems indicate originally the families derived from foreign immigrants of superior strength or culture, or whether some of them may be pariahs of aboriginal race. Mr. Roscoe seems to think that the members of a clan exhibit a distinct family likeness to each other. In many of its aspects this book is more suited for review in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, but it possesses a high geographical interest, and must therefore come within the purview of the Royal Geographical Society, to whose Fellows it is strongly recommended by the reviewer as the most com? plete and the most accurate description of the Baganda which has yet appeared; premising that it deals (after a general survey of the country) almost exclusively with the Baganda, with the people, that is to say, of mixed negro origin who speak the Luganda language. H. H. Johnston.

A fully automated technique for the rapid detection of significant bacteriuria is described. The method, which depends on the detection of bacterial adenosine triphosphate (A.T.P.) by bioluminescence, was found to have better sensitivity than a conventional cultural technique which uses a standardised loop. Results were available in 30 minutes. In the 957 urine samples tested, specificity was 84.5% relative to a pour-plate technique; results were not affected by the presence of non-bacterial elements.

NOTHING so good as this book dealing with the Negro indigenes of southern Africa has yet appeared. Mr. Dudley Kidd's work is therefore entitled to take the first rank on this subject, at any rate as far as the Bantu races of South Africa are concerned.

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1. The cleavage of sulphasalazine at the azo bond by bacterial suspensions and tissue homogenates has been studied in vitro. 2. For maximum activity the azo reductase system requires anaerobic conditions and the presence of cofactors, namely NADPH and FAD. in this respect, sulphasalazine resembles other azo dyes. 3. Under optimum conditions all the species of bacteria tested were capable of splitting sulphasalazine and there were no major differences in the degree of activity shown by different species. The enzyme system is located within the bacterial cell and does not leak out of it. 4. All the tissues tested, both human and rat, showed azo reductase activity. The liver showed a much higher activity than the other tissues.

The Berthold LB950 Automatic Luminescence Analyser was used to estimate bacterial adenosine triphosphate in urine. The system provided a rapid (15 min) and fully automated screening test for bacteriuria at the 10(5) CFU/ml level. Bioluminescence results for 1040 urines were compared with viable counts using two reference culture methods and frequency distributions of bacterial counts and adenosine triphosphate levels were calculated. With a specificity of 79% the automated method showed a sensitivity of 84% using a pour plate reference count and 91% using a standard loop reference count. When contaminated urines were excluded the sensitivity improved to 98%. The automated bioluminescence test, though expensive, was shown to work well with good quality specimens.

A fully automated method for detecting significant bacteriuria is described which uses firefly luciferin and luciferase to detect bacterial ATP in urine. The automated method was calibrated and evaluated, using 308 urine specimens, against two reference culture methods. We obtained a specificity of 0.79 and sensitivity of 0.75 using a quantitative pour plate reference test and a specificity of 0.79 and a sensitivity of 0.90 using a semiquantitative standard loop reference test. The majority of specimens negative by the automated test but positive by the pour plate reference test were specimens which grew several bacterial species. We suggest that such disagreement was most likely for urine containing around 10(5) colony-forming units per ml (the culture threshold of positivity) and that these specimens were ones contaminated by urethral or vaginal flora. We propose standard procedures for calibrating and evaluating rapid or automated methods for the detection of significant bacteriuria and have analyzed our results using these procedures. We recommend that identical analyses should be reported for other evaluations of bacteriuria detection methods.

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