INTER-GOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE ON BIOLOGICAL

Delegates:

STANDARDIZATION

(Geneva, Switzerland, October 1-4, 1935)

George W. McCoy, of Pennsylvania, Director, National Institute of Health, United States Public Health Service;

E. Fullerton Cook, Pharm.D., Chairman, United States Pharmacopoeia, Revision Committee, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.1

Thirty-three delegates from 23 countries attended the Conference. In addition to Switzerland and the United States of America, the following countries sent official delegations to the Conference: Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. On the agenda of the Conference were the following items:

(1) Election of the president;

(2) Address by Dr. Th. Madsen, Chairman of the Permanent Commission on Biological Standardization, followed by

statements, by Dr. P. Hartley and Dr. C. Jensen on the methods of preparing and distributing the international standards;

(3) Consideration of reports submitted by representatives of different countries as to the arrangements by which the international standards are applied and rendered available;

(4) Appointment of two committees to review the international
standards established for-

(a) Serums and bacterial products, and
(b) Drugs, vitamins, and hormones;

(5) Desirability of establishing in each country a national dis-
tributing center for all international standards;

(6) Possibility of national standards being set up for certain standardized preparations;

(7) Maintenance of free supply of international standards by Copenhagen and Hampstead Institutes to national distributing centers;

(8) Adoption of recommendations;

(9) Miscellaneous items.

'Did not attend.

Pursuant to item 4 of the agenda the Conference was organized into two committees:

(1) Committee on serums and bacterial products;
(2) Committee on drugs, vitamins, and hormones.

Each committee reported back to the General Conference.
The Conference adopted the following principal vœux:

(1) The hope that the international standards adopted by the
Permanent Commission on Biological Standardization of
the Health Organization will be accepted and made effec-
tive by the competent government authorities of all
countries;

(2) The desire that each country should have a recognized national center to take charge of the international and national standards for biologically tested substances, and that every such center should have an adequately qualified expert staff to control the application of the international standards in its own country and thus serve as the recognized national scientific authority in this field.

The American delegate called attention to the fact that, in the standardization of members of the arsphenamine group, the experience in the United States of America has been that it was not necessary to utilize a standard preparation but that toxicity requirements were readily met by fixing standards for toxicity, and that tests of therapeutic activity based on trypanocidal activity were unnecessary and possibly fallacious.

Sir Henry Dale, of Great Britain, agreed that, with the excellent system of control of the arsphenamine preparations in vogue in the United States of America, such standard preparations were not necessary but that in countries where control similar to that exercised in the United States was not practicable, standard preparations served a useful purpose.

The Conference recommended that similar meetings be held every two or three years.

Delegates:

SEVENTH PAN AMERICAN CHILD CONGRESS

(Mexico City, Mexico, October 12-19, 1935)

Grace Abbott, LL.D., School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Chairman of the Delegation;

C. C. Carstens, Ph.D., Executive Director, Child Welfare League of America, New York, New York.1

H. E. Chamberlain, M.D., Bobs Roberts Memorial Hospital for Children, University Clinics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois;

Ethel C. Dunham, M.D., of Connecticut, Director, Division of Research in Child Development, Children's Bureau, Department of Labor;

Elizabeth Shirley Enochs, of Virginia, Children's Bureau, Department of Labor, Secretary of the Delegation;

Bess Goodykoontz, of Iowa, Assistant Commissioner, Office of Education, Department of the Interior;

William E. Howard, M.D., Dallas, Texas;

Jacob Kepecs, Superintendent, Jewish Home Finding Society of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois;

William P. Lucas, M.D., Chief of the Pediatric Department, University of California Medical School, San Francisco, California; 1 George M. Lyon, M.D., Huntington, West Virginia; 1

1

H. T. Manuel, Ph.D., School of Education, University of Texas, Austin, Texas;

Mary E. Murphy, Director, Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, Chicago, Illinois;

1

Katherine M. Turner, President, California Parent-Teacher Association, Redondo Beach, California; 1

1

Felix Underwood, M.D., Executive Officer, Mississippi State Board of Health, Jackson, Mississippi;

Florence Warner, Ph.D., Secretary, State Department of Public Welfare, Phoenix, Arizona; 1

Elizabeth L. Woods, Ph.D., Supervisor, City School System, Los Angeles, California.

In addition to the United States of America, the following countries were represented at the Congress: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The Congress was divided into the following three sections: child health; education; and social legislation. A committee on resolutions was appointed for each section. Fifty-one resolutions, following the same general lines as those of previous Conferences, were finally adopted. It was unanimously decided to hold the Eighth Pan American Child Congress at Managua, Nicaragua.

Many of the papers read at the Congress and the Acta General, containing the text of the resolutions adopted, have been published in the Bulletin of the International American Institute for the Protection of Children, volume IX, no. 3, which may be obtained from the office of the Institute in Montevideo, Uruguay.

SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PAN AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 1

Delegates:

1

(Washington, D.C., October 14-19, 1935)

Clarence Henry Haring, Ph.D., Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Chairman of the Delegation;

Claude H. Birdseye, Ph.D., of Ohio, Chief, Division of Engraving and Printing, Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, Vice Chairman of the Delegation;

Arthur Scott Aiton, Ph.D., Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan;

Wallace Walter Atwood, Ph.D., President, Clark University, and President, Pan American Institute of Geography and History, Worcester, Massachusetts;

S. W. Boggs, of New Jersey, Geographer, Department of State; William Bowie, Sc.D., of Maryland, Chief, Division of Geodesy, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Department of Commerce;

Gilbert Grosvenor, Ph.D., President, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.;

A. V. Kidder, Ph.D., Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.;

Lawrence Martin, Ph.D., of Massachusetts, Chief, Division of Maps, and Geographer, Library of Congress;

John Campbell Merriam, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D., President, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.;

Hunter Miller, D.C.L., of New York, Historical Adviser, Department of State;

Lowell J. Ragatz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.;

J. Fred Rippy, Ph.D., Professor of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina;

James Alexander Robertson, Ph.D., Managing Editor, Hispanic American Historical Review, Takoma Park, Maryland;

Alfred M. Tozzer, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts;

1 For an account of the origin and functions of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, see p. 125 of this publication.

Frank E. Williams, Ph.D., Professor of Geography, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Eighteen countries were officially represented at this meeting, as well as approximately 72 institutions and scientific societies.

Following the organization of the Assembly, the Director of the Institute presented a report on the activities of the Institute during the three-year period following the last meeting at Rio de Janeiro in 1932.

At subsequent sessions papers on various phases of the history and geography of the Western Hemisphere were presented and discussed.

Among the more important resolutions adopted by the Assembly at this meeting were:

(1) A resolution to recommend to the governments of the several nations of America that natural features containing exceptional human values distinctive of the region in which they occur be selected, and that such areas be set aside for protection by the governments or placed by them under the control of such institutions as are in a position to furnish adequate protection;

(2) A resolution to recommend to the governments of those
countries which have groups of indigenous population
that they proceed as soon as possible to establish scientific
institutes for the purpose of studying the Indian races
from the anthropological, ethnographic, linguistic, arch-
eological, and historical points of view;

(3) A resolution to recommend to the member countries that
they make every endeavor to have published geographi-
cal maps of their territory, sufficiently detailed to serve
the various purposes for which they may be destined;
(4) A resolution to express its appreciation of the value in
many fields of research of the "one-to-one-million-scale
map" of Latin America thus far so successfully completed
by the American Geographical Society, and to express
the hope that this map will be completed and published
under its present sponsorship and research management,
for all America.

The official Proceedings of the Second General Assembly are in process of printing by the Department of State and may be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C.