Action to protect the public against the damage done to so many of them by cigarette smoking would have more effect upon public health than anything else that could now be done in the whole field of preventive medicine." So begins the latest report on smoking from the Royal College of Physicians, a report which contains nothing to brighhten the rapidly shortening lives of the world's smokers.

WHEN IT COMES to the weather, people's memories seem to let them down badly. Right now, while the geneeral public suffers under the illusion that this is the worst summer since the Flood, the Meteorological Office is calmly churning out statistics to prove us all wrong.