THE SAVILL PRIZE.
[To THZ EDITOR 07 TRH "Srsorrrort."] SIR,—It may interest some of your readers to know that a prize is to be given every year—from July 1913 forward—to students of either sex who shall pass the best viva voce examination in diseases of the nervous system, and also with a thesis on a subject approved by the examiners. The prize, which will be awarded by a committee belonging to the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, will consist of RS and a silver medal, while in the name this prize will bear lies the sincerest tribute of gratitude and recognition to the memory of the late Thomas D. Savill, M.D., whose life ended tragically (through an accident) at the age of fifty-four in Algiers only a few years ago. It was in Paris, where Dr. Sevin's genius won him many admirers as well as dis- tinguished recognition, that it became borne in on him how hampered the English student of diseases was in comparison with his French confreres, by reason of the infirmary doors being closed to him, and it was Dr. Savilrs persistent energy that altered this state of things. Indeed, in commenting on his own period of office as Medical Superintendent of the Paddington Workhouse, he was known to say that he himself had thus obtained "seven years of priceless experi- ence." For he maintained that it was in such cases as came to the infirmaries, eases apparently too slight for hospital treatment, that nevertheless might frequently be discovered and combated the early symptoms of what if not checked must inevitably lead to graver diseases, this being notably the case with diseases of the nervous system. Dr. Savill has indeed shown how, in many instances, in bad cases of nerve disorder the first symptoms had lain in some skin disease, attention having been centred on the apparent yet not the actual cause, which would therefore be left free to insidious development. —I am, Sir, &c.,
IGNOTUS.
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