Abstract
IN part iv. of vol. x. of Biometrika, Mr. H. Waite publishes an interesting study, based on two thousand complete sets of finger-prints of adult males, part of a series in the biometric laboratory, University College, London. It appears that the various types of finger-print are not scattered at random over the fingers; certain types are more or less peculiar to v-certain fingers, and the appearance of one type is associated with that of another. In this respect certain fingers are more closely related to each other than to any third finger, and the distribution of this relationship is in general similar to that of the correlations of the bones of the same fingers. In the same number, Dr. Alice Lee discusses the influence of segregation on tuberculosis, a question to which much attention has been devoted of recent years. No method of measuring the extent of segregation is, however, found satisfactory, and the various methods used, for example, by Dr. Newsholme, lead, when examined by more stringent methods, to contradictory and inconclusive results. Whether there is any really substantial relation between the prevalence of phthisis and institutional segregation may remain an open question, but Dr. Lee is of opinion that no such relation has been demonstrated. Miss Elderton and Prof. Pearson similarly fail to find any evidence that isolation reduces the attack-rate from diphtheria; no appreciable influence on the attack-rate is found in certain data placed at their disposal by the medical officer of health for Coventry, though the death-rate may be lowered.
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Biometrics and Man. Nature 95, 658 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095658a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095658a0