other lower forms of life that have lain imprisoned in clay or rock for centuries or kiliads, and have been found still living when their prison houses were broken by the miners. The truth of these statements has been wisely questioned; but, if they be true, they give no help to the argument for the immortality of the soul, and, with greater force be it said, absolutely no support to the hypothesis of a resurrection of the physical body. It is strange that any man in possession of the truth, and with at mind capable of reasoning upon the truth, should parade any such analogical rubbish before an audience of cultivated men and women! For such arguments can have no weight till the fable of the Phoenix rising from his own ashes and the resurrection of a dead tree from the decaying compost of roots and branches can be scientifically demonstrated. 'Tis not worth while to argue such questions, since there can be no analogy between a resurrection of a body out of grave mold and the development of a plant or animal from an impregnated seed or egg. One is only a case of delayed development, while the other can be nothing less than the reconstruction of dead and disintegrated elements. "Out of what grew all these flowers?" says the learned preacher. "Out of mold and earth. Resurrected. Resurrected." And we say obstetrically, Out of what grew all these babies? Out of the wombs of their mothers. Resurrected. Resurrected. And the statement is just as scientifically correct in one case as the other. Life can only come from life, and the earth, the womb of the vegetable kingdom, was as barren as the womb of Hannah till the Creator put into it the impregnated seeds. The analogy of the caterpillar coming from the worm through the chrysalis to the butterfly was Thomas Paine's conceit, and may have some little suggestive force. As for the hypothesis that there is in the body an indestructible germ that will resist death, and on resurrection day reconstruct the body, there is nothing in all the realm of anatomy and physiology to support it. It is an ancient conceit, and has far less significance than the fable of the Phoenix. And to say that this hypothesis gains any support from the fact that there are in the body some organs whose function is not fully understood is absolute nonsense. Dr. Gilbert asks Dr. Talmage to look at the decayed and tissue-stripped wrecks at the end of a season of dissection. We would invite him to look at the ashes and caput mortuum after a cremation, and find the elements out of which the old body of the subject is to be reconstructed. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam," Mr. Talmage; your specialty we believe is theology, not anatomy and physiology. There be men in this world, and among them are some of the most eminent scientific savants living, who hold the immortality of the soul to be a fact, to be taken upon demonstration not upon faith. Whether these teachers be correct or in error we can not tell, but we must allow that their statements are the poetry of logic and science and sense compared to the analogical arguments brought forward every Easter by certain preachers to prove the resurrection of the physical body of man. The higher philosophy does in truth give support to the hypothesis of an immortal soul, but the hypothesis of the resurrection of the physical body can find no support in either science or philosophy. If it is to be received as truth, let it be taken on faith as a fact of revealed religion; but do not let us make it ridiculous by trying to support it upon far-fetched facts and impossible analogies. Notes and Queries. TWO CASES OF Extensive DESTRUCTION OF THE INTEGUMENT CURED BY TRANSPLANTING LARGE FLAPS.-Dr. William B. Hopkins presented the following cases: John J., aged thirty-two years, had been admitted into the Episcopal Hospital on November 9, 1888, with an extensive laceration of the elbow, involving the skin and the superficial and deep fasciæ. The injury had been caused by a centrifugal drier in a sugar refinery. A month later, December 7th, an ulcer, occupying the entire circumference of the elbow, consequent upon the original loss and subsequent sloughing of integument, remained. It extended from the middle of the forearm to the middle of the arm, or about ninety-six square inches in area. The following operation had then been performed: A vertical flap five inches wide and nine inches long, consisting of skin and superficial fascia, the base of which occupied the upper left pectoral region, and the edges of which were nearly parallel, had been lifted from the chest and sutured around the elbow, the limb being retained in the Velpeau posture. Approximation of the enormous chest wound, though not complete, had been materially facilitated by the emaciation following so severe an injury, and consequent relaxation of integment of the chest. At the end of four days the flap had been severed from its basic attachment to the chest, and the arm had been released from its constrained position. There had been been epidermal sloughing of the flap after its severance, which had caused considerable anxiety, but its deeper layers had soon been found to have formed a firm attachment. The patient had remained in the hospital two hundred and seventy-nine days. The limb would be seen to have healed perfectly, and to be amply covered with a soft, pliable integument permitting of complete flexion and extension, pronation and supination; indeed, although it was not quite so strong as the right arm, its functions had been entirely restored. Case 2. Anton D., thirty-three years of age, a fireman, had been brought to the Episcopal Hospital on October 25, 1892, with a railroad injury of his left foot. The extremity had been so caught beneath the wheel that it had been completely flayed, but, as none of the integument had been lost, it had been brought together by sutures. Sloughing, however, of the entire skin of the foot and ankle had occurred. On December 4th a flap two inches wide had been dissected from the sound limb, from the lower portion of the thigh to the lower third of the leg, a distance of fourteen inches, its base being left attached at the lower part. Carrying the lower portion along the outer side of the foot from before backward, the flap had been reflected upon itself around the heel, and its remaining portion carried forward on the inner side of the foot to the toes. It had been retained in this position by sutures carried deeply enough through granulation tissue to take a firm hold and through the reflected lower borders of the flap occupying the sole of the foot. With a Y-shaped splint ingeniously devised by Dr. Ferguson, which had kept the injured foot in a state of absolute fixation to the calf of the leg on the sound side, the patient, with remarkable fortitude, had kept his limb in this constrained position for over three weeks (twenty-two days), when the base of the flap had been detached, the latter having become firmly adherent to the foot. Advantage had been taken of this opportunity to gain a little more integument by dissecting the flap farther down the leg instead of cutting it off square at the root. The patient had remained in the hospital six hundred and fifty-seven days, at the end of which period he had walked without a cane and with a foot whose function had been sufficiently restored to enable him to resume his laborious occupation of fireman on a vessel. The foot would be seen to be a very useful one, its plantar aspect being covered entirely by leg skin, as shown by the growth of hair upon it. It would be observed in both these cases that there was a singular freedom from the constriction of a tightly drawn peripheral cicatrix, edema, impairment of function, and other evidences of impeded return circulation. This factor alone placed this method of closing large circumferential ulcers far in advance of the method by skin-grafting. Though the method of Thiersch and others, of allowing the flaps before severance at one or both extremities to become granulated, would have been applicable in the first case, it was very doubtful if so long a flap as that transplanted in the other case would retain its vitality throughout its length, even if left attached at both ends. New York Medical Journal. BLISTERING BY SUGGESTION.-As early as 1840 Dr. Lewis Prejlalmini with magnetized" paper produced the effect of cantharides. As Bjornstrom remarks, suggestion not "magnetized" paper caused the blistering. Bjornstrom demonstrates that, by suggestion, congestion may be produced, carried to raised swelling of the skin, to a blister like that of cantharides, to bloody transudation and even to complete formation of a wound. Charcot and his pupils thus produced all the phenomena of burns. Beaunis hypnotized a susceptible subject, told her that upon awakening she would have a red spot under her forearm which he tapped slightly but so as to avoid redness from pressure. Ten minutes after awakening there was evident redness at the place touched which increased in size, was visible about twenty minutes and then gradually disappeared. By suggestion Beaunis could cause the mark to remain forty-eight hours. Facachon informed a hypnotized susceptible subject that a topoalgic spot would be blistered by cantharides. The next morning pain had vanished and blebs full of serum were present. He cured a right clavicular topoalgia in the same subject by suggestion, during hypnotization, of an actual cautery with the seeming result of a burn. The experiments of Charcot and his pupils in the same direction have had almost identical results. Beaunis made several experiments on Facachon's subject. May 12, 1885, she was hypnotized at II A. M.; on her back at a point unreachable by her hands, a strip of eight gummed stamps was fastened. A similar strip had been eighteen hours on another arm without effect. Over these a compress was placed and the subject thrice told that cantharides had been used. She was closely watched during the day and hypnotized at night with instructions to awake at 7 A. M. 8 A. M. Facachon removed the compress in presence of Bernheim, Leibault, Leigeois, Beaunis and others. When the stamps were removed the underlying skin over about five centimeters was thicker, yellowish, white, and inflamed but without blistering. Half a centimeter of surrounding skin was intensely red and swollen. The spot was covered with a dry compress; three hours later the spot had the same appearance and was photographed one hour thereafter. The photograph showed about five blisters. They increased, screted serum and later suppurated. Later, the arm of the same subject was blistered in like manner. Another subject suffered greatly from topoalgia. Facachon blistered her by suggestion, below the left ear and on the left temple. Facachon made cantharides inactive in the first subject by suggestion. Having by experiments on a second person, determined that his cantharides blister was active, he used two of the three parts of the same blister on his subject. The third part had been applied with due effect upon a patient needing counterirritation. The subject was hypnotized; one piece of the same plaster placed on the left arm and the other on the right. The subject was told that the left arm would not blister, while the right would. Nine hours later when the bandages were removed, the left arm was normal, the right blistered. My own case occurred in an hysteric in whom the neuropathic element was partly the result of environment. One evening a cutting from a roll of belladonna plaster was placed over a topoalgic spot on the neck. The same roll of plaster had been used on other patients without dermic effect. A decided blister, however, appeared under the plaster. At the outset, while the possibility of untoward effects was taken into consideration, it was thought more probable that the blister was due to auto-suggestion, as the patient believed that the object of the plaster was to blister. The blister healed rapidly under lanolin dressing and suggestion. A control experiment was made. Cantharides was applied about 9 P. M., on a new topoalgic spot of which the patient complained without effect; the patient having been assured that it was simply a pain-curing plaster. The spot remained free from redness until about 9 A. M. the next morning, when an incautious remark of the nurse led the patient to surmise that a real blister had been applied, and in an hour, wheals followed by vesicles appeared and disappeared. The patient had been meanwhile informed that the nurse had unadvisedly used the term, blister. The cantharides plaster was carefully tested before being used. The chief value of the present case lies in its control experiments. The patient, while obviously in a condition extremely susceptible to suggestion, at no time was in the true hypnotic state. These cases and those in which bleeding occurs at written points in dermographic subjects, explain the cases of stigmatization which from time to time appear in religious communities and of which the latest case was reported by Dr. M. F. Coomes as having occurred in Kentucky. In many of these cases the influence of suggestion is evident, from the fact that the side wound of Christ occurred on the right side in lieu of the left, because of the ignorance of the stigmatized subject.-H. C. B. Alexander, M. D., Chicago, in The Journal of the American Medical Association. TO SPIT OR NOT TO SPIT.-A correspondent asks whether to spit is useful or injurious to smokers. We should be glad to be able to say that it is injurious, but unfortunately it is more likely to be harmful to others than to the smoker himself. On the other hand, spitting may be a means of getting rid of any poisonous substances that may find their way into the smoker's mouth. Recent researches have shown that nicotine, of which Calverley sings, how One or two at most is not, as used to be supposed, the most dangerous principle, but pyridine and collodine. Nicotine is the product of the cigar and cigarette; pyridine, which is three or four times more poisonous, comes out of the pipe. It would be well both for the devotees of tobacco and their neighbors if they took care always to have the smoke filtered through cotton wool or other absorbent material before it is allowed to pass the "barrier of the teeth." Smokers might also take a lesson from the unspeakable Turk, who never smokes a |