Organic lesions after application of hashish in rats and rabbits (author's transl)]

Toxic lesions were found in liver, kidney and brain of rats and rabbits after oral application of hashish for 7 or 30 days. The brain tissue showed hyperemia and edema. The cerebral cortex, brain stem and cerebellum contained ganglion cells with eccentric nuclei and an icreased number of nucleoli. Different stages of cell lesions could be distinguished by nuclear vacuoles, pyknosis and karyolysis. The cytoplasma was loosened and showed numerous vacuoles. In the kidney we found, besides interstitial hemorrhage, cloudy swelling of the proximal tubules with vacuolous degeneration and nuclear pyknosis and karyolysis in all stages. The glomeruli were often enlarged with thickening of Bowman's capsule and surrounding cellular infiltration with cell fragments. The liver cells showed irregularities of nuclei and vacuolated nuclei, plasma vacuoles and cell necrosis. Infiltrations of round cells at the portal-biliary areas were usually combined with an activation of the Kupffer cells and intracellular bile stasis.     

The detection of Y chromosomes in bloodstains--a reevaluation

A method has been described for detecting Y chromosomes in the leukocytes of human bloodstains prepared on a variety of substrates. The factors that influence the proportion of chromosomes exhibiting a Y spot (the Y cell index) in a bloodstain are considered, including the subjective nature of assessment of the Y chromosome fluorescence, the substrate, and the age of bloodstain. In contrast to previous workers no decay in Y cell index with the age of the stain was observed. The results of a blind trial involving stains derived from case work, where from other evidence there was no doubt as to the sex of the donor, are presented. Sixty-five percent of the male bloodstains were correctly identified and no females were wrongly reported as male.     

Book reviews

E. Glyn Lewis, Multilingualistn in the Soviet Union: aspects of language policy and its implementation. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1971. xx+332pp. Dfl 62.

L. G. Churchward, The Soviet Intelligentsia. An essay on the social structure and roles of Soviet intellectuals during the 196os. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. xiii + 204 pp. £3.25.

Galia Golan, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia. The Dubcek Era 1968–1969. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1973. Vii + 327 pp. £5.80. $18.50.

Otto Ul?, The Judge in a Communist State. A View from Within. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP, 1972. xiv + 307 pp. $8.75.

Robert M. Slusser, The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Soviet‐American relations and the struggle for power in the Kremlin, June‐November 1961. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1973. xvi + 509 pp. $17.50. £7.90.

Edward Taborsky, Communist Penetration of the Third World. New York: Robert Speller & Sons, 1973. iii + 500 pp. $12.50.

Philip R. Pryde, Conservation in the Soviet Union. London: Cambridge UP, 1972. xv + 301 pp. £5.00.

Marshall I. Goldman, The Spoils of Progress: Environmental Pollution in the Soviet Union. Cambridge, Mass, and London: The M.I.T. Press, 1972. xi + 372 pp. $7.95. £3.60.

Robert H. McNeal, Bride of the Revolution. Krupskaya and Lenin. London: Victor Gollancz, 1973. 326 pp. £3.60.

George Katkov et al. (eds.), Russia Enters the Twentieth Century 1894–1917. London: Methuen, 1973. 352 pp. £1.50 (paperback).

Paul Craig Roberts and M. Stephenson, Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1973. 127 pp. $5.50.

W. H. Parker, The Russians: How They Live and Work. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973. 179 pp. £2.50.

Wright Miller, Who are the Russians? A History of the Russian People. London: Faber & Faber, 1973. 240 pp. £3.95.     

In search of an anatomy of African administrators

By way of welcoming one of the first—and still too few—accounts by African administrators of what it was like to have served under two masters, one British and one African, the article first reviews the chronology of the literature on and by Africa's administrators. Starting from a survey of the history of the British Colonial Administrative Service and some of the recent memoirs of its members, a milestone in the literature is signalled by the shift in emphasis of public service commissions of enquiry away from primary concern with salaries and conditions of service to concerns with the positive Africanization of the civil services. The gradual responsibility of Africans themselves for such reports is then noted, often culminating in a recommendation for the establishment of an Institute of Public Administration. While the quantity and quality of insiders' literature by Africa's civil servants still falls short of that which has characterized the writing by Indian members of the former Indian Civil Service, the position has improved since the publication of the proceedings of the Inter-African Public Administration seminars and by the noticeably less constrained comments by the bureaucracy during a period of military rule. The article concludes with a look at the Ife University project and calls for an extension of such primary research into African administration while the first, and historically unique, generation of African bureaucrats are still alive to record their memories and interpret their significance against subsequent analysis.