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BURNS AND SCALDS—BUTCHER

to be too conservative even by some members of the Unionist party, and early in 1914 he was promoted to the Presidency of the Board of Trade. He held this office only six months, as in the following Aug. he could not bring himself to accept the necessity of war. He resigned without making any public statement of his reasons, and took no further active part in Parliament. At the general election of 1918 he desired to stand again for Bat- tersea; but the local labour men required him, as a condition of their support, to become a member of the Labour party, sign its constitution, and accept its programme and whips. He refused to comply. " I do not believe," he wrote, " in political indentured labour. A war against militarism must not end in conscript members of Parliament." Accordingly he with- drew his candidature, and continued in private life.


BURNS AND SCALDS (see 4.860). During the World War a large number of burns were encountered in British medical practice, in the army and the navy and in munition works. The ordinary methods of treatment were adopted, but in addition the use of hot paraffin applications was tried with very marked success. This treatment indeed is stated by its supporters to give better results than any other hitherto employed. The burn is first of all washed with normal saline or with an antiseptic such as flavine or proflavine (1-1,000): it is then dried with gauze or an electric dryer. A layer of paraffin is applied at temperature 55-6oC. A thin layer of wool is placed over the first layer of paraffin and then a second layer of hot paraffin painted over the wool. A dressing of wool and bandage is then applied and this is changed every 24 hours. The layer of paraffin must be of suf- ficient thickness. It may be sprayed on instead of painted. The temperature is thus important, for if it is too high the paraf- fin will run.

The effect of the paraffin is largely to act as a protection, and it is claimed by some that the addition of antiseptics to the paraffin is very advantageous. Lieut.-Col. A. J. Hull of the R.A.M.C. emphasized this in a communication to the jour- nal of the Corps and recommended that the aniline antisep- tics, brilliant green or flavine, should be employed. These antiseptics owe their wide use to the work of Professor C. H. Browning, who first introduced them.

The preparation of the paraffin is thus described by Colonel Hull:

" Take J gramme of brilliant green or 2 grammes of scarlet red or flavine and 40 grammes of lanoline, rub up the coloured material with the adeps lanae hydrosus until a. highly coloured smooth paste is obtained which contains no undisintegrated particles of the dye; using about j oz. of water assists the solution of the dyes. Melt the paraffin durum (678 grammes) and add 210 grammes of paraffin molle and 50 c.c. of olive oil. Let the temperature of the resulting mixture sink to at least 65 C. ; then stir in the previously prepared lanoline paste, stirring until thoroughly mixed. At about 55 C, add 20 c.c. of eucalyptus oil ; stir and allow to solidify."

The scarlet is said to form the least satisfactory suspension, but its therapeutic value has caused it to be continued in use. It acts as a stimulus to healing after the burns are clean. The flavine paraffin seems to answer best for recent burns. (R. M. Wl.)


BURROUGHS, JOHN (1837-1921), American naturalist and writer (see 4.863), continued to instruct and entertain a wide public with frequent essays on out-of-door life, some of which were assembled in the following volumes: Time and Change (1912); The Summit of the Years (1913); The Breath of Life (1915); Under the Apple Trees (1916), and Field and Study (1919). Yale conferred upon him the degree of Litt.D. (1910), and Colgate the degree of L.H.D. (1911). He died on a train near Kingsville, O., March 29 1921, while returning from Cali- fornia to his country home in New York state.


BURROWS, RONALD MONTAGU (1867-1920), English classical scholar and archaeologist, was born at Rugby Aug. 16 1867 and educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford. From 1891 to 1898 he was assistant to Mr. Gilbert Murray, then professor of Greek at Glasgow, and from 1898 to 1908 he was professor of Greek at University College, Cardiff. In 1908 he was transferred to the corresponding chair at the Victoria University of Manchester. He conducted excavations at Pylos and Sphacteria in 1895-6, and at Rhitsona in Boeotia in 1907. In 1913 he became principal of King's College, London, and held that post till his death in London May 14 1920. He published Recent Discoveries in Crete (1907) and various papers on archaeological subjects. All his life he was a fervent Philhellene. During the World War he was in active cooperation with the efforts of M. Venizelos to protect the interests of Greece and to secure Greek adherence to the Allies, and he took a leading part, by lectures and articles, in making the problems of the Near East familiar to the public.


BURT, THOMAS (1837- ), British Labour politician, was born at Murton Row, near North Shields, Northumberland, Nov. 12 1837. He was the son of a miner, and himself started working in the pits when ten years of age, his edu- cation being scanty. In 1865 he was elected secretary of the Northumberland Miners' Mutual Provident Association, a post which he held until 1913, and in 1874 successfully contested Morpeth in the Labour interest, being thus (along with Alexan- der Macdonald) the first of the Labour members in the House of Commons. He took part in many industrial conferences, and in 1890 was one of the British representatives at the Berlin Labour congress of that year. In 1891 he was president of the trade union congress at Newcastle, and in 1892 entered the Liberal ministry as parliamentary secretary of the Board of Trade, holding this post until 1895. In 1906 he was created a privy councillor, and in 1918 resigned his seat in Parliament.

See A. Watson, A Great Labour Leader (1908). >


BUTCHER, SAMUEL HENRY (1850-1910), English classical scholar, was the eldest son of Samuel Butcher, classical tutor and lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently Bishop of Meath. Born in Dublin April 16 1850, he went to Marlborough in 1864 and won an open scholarship for classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1869. In 1870 he won the Bell scholarship at Cambridge, in 1871 the Waddington scholarship, and in 1871 and 1872 the Powis medal. In 1873 he graduated as senior classic and won a Chancellor's medal. He took an assistant mastership at Eton for a year, but returned to Trinity, Cambridge, as fellow and lecturer in classics. On his marriage in 1876 to Rose, daughter of Archbishop Trench of Dublin, he had to resign his Trinity fellowship, and was then elected tutor and " married fellow " at University College, Oxford. In 1882 he succeeded Professor Blackie as professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh. During his tenure of this chair he became widely known, not only as a scholar, but as a judicious administrator and educational reformer. He was a member of the royal commission which was appointed after the passing of the Scottish Universities bill in 1889 to reform the whole academical system in Scotland, and which reported in April 1900. In 1902 Mrs. Butcher died, and two years later he resigned his professorship and went to reside in London. He had been a member of the royal commission of 1901 on University Education in Ireland, which produced an abortive report with eight reservations in 1903; and he was also included on the royal commission of 1906. In the latter year, on the death of Sir Richard Jebb, he was chosen as a Unionist to represent the university of Cambridge in Parliament, -where his brother J. G. Butcher (b. 1853; created a baronet in 1918), a well-known barrister, had sat for many years as Unionist member for York ; he made an effective maiden speech on the Irish University bill and frequently took a valuable part in debate. His grave and thoughtful style and gift of natural eloquence were combined with a charm and sincerity which won him universal respect and affection, no less in public than in private life. He was however, above all, a fine Greek scholar, full of the true spirit of classical learning, with a remarkable power of literary expression, shown especially in such publications as some Aspects of the Greek Genius (1891); Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (1895); Greek Idealism in the Common Things of Life (1901); Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects (1904) and his prose translation (with Andrew Lang) of the Odyssey (1879). In 1907 he was president of the English Classical Association, of which he had been one of the principal founders in 1903. He was also the first president of the Irish Classical