a number of cases of nephritis occurred among soldiers, and
arsenic was suggested as a possible cause. The laboratory was asked to
examine a considerable number of samples of wine and beer to see
whether traces of arsenic were present or not. None was found. A large
quantity of wine found to be diluted with ditch water, and sold to our
soldiers, was destroyed, and the vendors fined.

One day a young medical officer, so excited that he could hardly
speak, rushed into the laboratory with a lot of dead fish. After some
questioning we found that there were tens of thousands of dead fish in
the Aire-La Bassee canal and, as this ran into the German lines, he
suspected that the canal water had been poisoned by the enemy. We told
him that we thought the fish had probably died from asphyxiation as a
result of organic matter from a starch works being emptied into the
stream. He went away unconvinced, to make a further enquiry and
returned later in the day to report that the fish in the canal died
every year in the spring when a certain distillery dumped its waste
into the canal. Thus did former experience with starch mills pouring
their effluents into Ontario streams and killing fish prove of
unexpected use.

The laboratory was used a great deal by the highly trained officers of
the Indian Medical service, who were always wanting some unusual
parasite or insect identified, and made a good deal of use of our
library.

A German high explosive percussion bomb was brought in one day for us
to identify the explosive present. We did not allow the messenger even
to lay it down but besought him to hold it tight and to keep moving
towards the explosives laboratory seven miles away while we escorted
him quickly and safely from the premises. The way some of those chaps
handled bombs and shells made you tired. It would have been a great
pity if that two hundred year old building had been blown up and the
British Army compelled to pay for it.

A poor soldier up and died one day without warning or preliminary
sickness. They thought it might be poison, and his wife would have
been deprived of her pension if the man had committed suicide. We were
asked to examine the stomach contents to decide whether poison was
present. No poison was found.

We were sent a little vial containing a small amount of material and
asked to determine the nature of the contents. The bottle had been
found beside a dead German. It proved to be opium, and the owne