Jeffries: An accident between Helsingfors and Tavastehus, July, 1876. "It was caused by a color-blind switch-tender showing a green instead of a red light to the approaching train." (4) A railway collision due, according to his mate, to the color blindness of an engine driver. (5) A railway collision in consequence of a train over-running a signal. The driver was colorblind and "believed that his sight was the cause of the accident." railway accident due to the engine driver's inability to distinguish the red light. The last case was one of acquired color defect, and Case 2 was diagnosed as one of tobacco amblyopia.

(6) A

Captain Abney, in his recently published Tyndall Lectures on Color Vision, says, with regard to the loss of life owing to color blindness: “The evidence is, as a rule, merely negative, though there are cases extant where great losses which have occurred can be traced to a deficiency in color perception." The cases quoted prove, I think, that there is positive evidence of the disastrous results which may arise from defects for colors. Possibly there are degrees of deficient color perception quite compatible with safety in those whose duty require them to recognize colored signals, but where the boundary between "safe" and "dangerous" lies must be a most difficult problem to solve.- Walter W. Sinclair, M. B., in London Lancet.

HYPNOTISM AND CRIME.-The newspapers announce that the Supreme Court of Kansas has rendered a decision in which hypnotism is recognized, both as a defense and as a ground for conviction of crime. The case passed on came up from the County District Court. Thomas McDonald, without apparent provocation, shot and killed Thomas Patton near his home, in Winfield, May 5, 1894. He was arrested, charged with murder, and set up a defense that he was under the hypnotic influence of Anderson Gray, and was neither legally nor morally responsible for the deed. He was acquitted, and then Gray was put under arrest and tried for the murder. He was found guilty of murder in the first degree, notwithstanding the fact that he was not present when the crime was committed, the evidence for the State only going to show that he caused McDonald to commit the murder through hypnotic influence. An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court, and in an opinion rendered the ruling of the lower court was sustained.

If the above represents the truth about the case we should feel that the decision was entirely premature and unwarranted by our present knowledge of hypnotism. There are several problems which would have to be solved before an intelligent court could render the decision which it did. First, it would have to define hypnotism and its degrees; next, it would have to furnish some indisputable evidence that a particular individual was hypnotized, and finally, it would have to show that a person otherwise not criminally disposed could be made to do a murderous act while in this bypnotic state. To us it seems practically impossible that a court of laymen could solve these problems, and as a matter of fact we believe that the element of hypnotism played a very small part in the determination of the

judicial opinion. It was rather a case of very undue influence exercised by a person of strong character upon one who was intellectually and morally weak.-Medical Record.

THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.-Article II of the Constitution of the American Medical Association provides that delegates to that body shall receive their appointment from State Medical Societies, and such County and District Societies as have representation in their respective State Societies. It is provided also that those Societies only which have adopted the Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association as a part of their constitution shall be entitled to representation.

Article III, Sections 1, 4, 11, 12, and 13, of the Constitution of the Kentucky State Medical Society provide for representation of all local Societies adopting the Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association. All local Societies in the State of Kentucky organized upon this basis may send delegates both to the State Society and to the National body.

All members of such local Societies, properly certified to me, become members of the State Society upon the payment of annual dues of $3, and may become members of the American Medical Association, and receive regularly the Weekly Journal, on payment of $5 to the treasurer, Dr. Henry P. Newman, Chicago, Ill. STEELE BAILEY, M .D.

Permanent Secretary Kentucky State Medical Society.

REPORT FROM AN EARLY CASE OF TUBERCULIN INJECTION.-In a recent number of the Philadelphia Polyclinic the following statements are made:

"We have just learned through his physician, Dr. George W. Free, of Harrisburg, formerly of Laramie, Wyoming Territory, that the young man, a patient of Dr. J. Solis-Cohen, with tuberculosis of the lungs and larynx, upon whom, through the courtesy of Police-Surgeon Dr. Angney, the first injection of tuberculin was made in Philadelphia, December 17, 1890, at Jefferson Medical College Hospital, in the presence of Drs. Henry Hearn, Harris, and others, is alive and well, with a strong voice, vigorous, and without any evidence of disease.

"In this case subsequent injections were made on the 19th and 30th of December, and on January 6th, 9th, 11th, and 14th, after which the previous hygienic and medicinal treatment was resumed."

It is a matter of considerable interest to have a definite report, after the lapse of over four years, of one of the cases originally treated with tuberculin. One case of course proves nothing, and the apparent cure may perfectly well have been due to other agencies than the tuberculin injections; nevertheless, evidence even of so uncertain a character has its decided value.-Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

BARRED OUT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY.-The Massachusetts Medical Society has voted to debar from its membership all graduates from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Boston.

Special Notices.

DISSOLVED in the Wine of Cod-Liver Oil (Stearns') are the active principles of codliver oil to the exclusion of the oil itself a statement which a somewhat extended examination has to some extent confirmed. Thus on extracting the wine with ether and carefully treating the ethereal extract (which is an oily, brown, resinous body, having a peculiar fishy smell) with a strong sulphuric acid solution of glucose, the beautiful purple reaction characteristic of biliary constituents is obtained. The same reaction is effected when the extract used in the preparation of the wine is similarly tested, but to a more marked degree. Recent investigation has led to the isolation of several distinct bodies in cod-liver oil, notable amongst which are the alkaloids aseline and morrhuine, in association probably with morrhuic, formic, butyric, and phosphoric acids. These principles have been tested clinically, and the results formed the subject of an exhaustive report by Gautier and Mourgues in the Journal de Pharmacie, March, 1890, who concluded that the combined active principles of cod-liver oil act as powerful stimulants of nutrition and assimilation, and show definitely the nature of the principles to which the oil to some extent owes its valuable medicinal properties. The wine evinces an acid reaction, is alcoholic, and contains also peptonate of iron. The Lancet, London, Eng., July 7, 1894.

VISCERAL STEATOSIS TREATED WITH POKEBERRY.-In the summer of 1894, having a case of emphysema in a very corpulent subject to whom I had been giving morphine and digitalis with some relief, I concluded to try the pokeberry and see if it reduced the amount of superabundant fat upon the pathological condition present. The following is a true report of the case: In May, T. S. B., aged forty-eight, native, came and complained of the usual symptoms of emphysema and cardiac weakness. Treatment: Morphine Sulphate, gr. %, three or four times a day. Result: Some relief but not satisfactory to patient, who still complained. His weight was at this time 230 pounds. In early July I put him on Phytoline, M. x, half hour before and one hour after meals. In three weeks he experienced much relief from the shortness of breath, and had lost in weight, ten pounds. Then I weaned him away from the morphine and stopped the digitalis, but continued with the Phytoline. In six weeks he had lost thirty pounds, and had no aggravation of the emphysematous symptoms; in fact, he said that he hardly had any trouble at all, and although his breathing was still a little short, the distress had entirely disappeared. In three months the weight was 180 pounds, and in October the Phytoline was rapidly increased until, a week later, the remedy was entirely discontinued. His weight to date remains the same (180 pounds), and no recurrence of emphysematous or cardiac trouble has taken place. (Extract from an article by W. W. Baxter, M. D.)

LACTOPHENIN.-Strauss (Therap. Monatshefte, September, 1894,) reports his experiments with lactophenin as an antipyretic. In seven cases of typhoid fever in which he administered the drug, while the sedative effects were not so constantly observed as in Von Jaksch's cases, it never gave rise to unpleasant symptoms. The dose was seven to fifteen grains, and never exceeded forty-five grains a day. The antipyretic action of the drug was pronounced. The writer regards lactophenin as a good substitute for perfect hydro-therapy. In four out of five cases of facial erysipelas it lowered the temperature; in the remaining case other antipyretics also failed. In two cases of diphtheria (one septic) the temperature fell nearly 2° C. within five hours. In three cases of pneumonia its antipyretic action was noticeable. In one of two cases of scarlet fever it failed to act. In five cases of phthisis it lowered the temperature and caused profuse diaphoresis, but produced no unpleasant effects. In one or two instances its use was accompanied with a diffuse rash.-Univ. Med. Magazine.

Certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than any thing else.-RUSKIN.

Original Articles.

THE BORDERLAND OF SANITY AND INSANITY, INCLUDING NORMAL AND ABNORMAL MAN.

BY T. B. GREENLEY, M. D.

When we take into consideration the various phases of insanity in its mildest forms of melancholia, on the one hand, and the mental vagaries and eccentricities on the other, we must conclude that it is not an easy task to trace properly in all cases the true division line.

There has long existed a wide difference between the legal and medical opinion in regard to the culpability of so-called criminals who have labored under mental alienation at the time of committing the crimes. But this difference has become greatly diminished within the last few years, and I have no doubt will become proximately less as time advances. This opinion is based on the ground that the courts will finally become convinced that all mental ailments depend upon disease of the brain or its appendages, interfering in a greater or less degree with will power. The French code lays down the principle, "That there is no crime or misdemeanor when the accused was in a state of dementia at the time of the act, or when he has been under the compulsion of a force he was unable to resist." In laying down. this principle we of course do not aim to include those who for private or malicious purposes temporarily craze themselves by drink in order to bolster their courage sufficiently to commit crime. Such persons might be classed as cowardly fiends, and deserve no sympathy. In this

connection, however, I would remark that chronic inebriety is a disease due to want of healthy cerebral ganglion cell action.

Notwithstanding the near approach between the views of legal and medical men respecting the culpability of the insane within the last few years, an English judge lately remarked that insane murderers should be hanged so as to check criminal acts of this character. Perhaps he meant to say that the execution of insane criminals would prevent insanity. This would be a fair inference.

The great difference between the intellectual power of the cultivated man and that of the uneducated man is strikingly palpable to the most common observer; yet we must not think the latter mentally deficient on account of his unfavorable comparison with the former. It may be that his mental capacity for the acquirement of knowledge is equal to the other. But at the same time we must acknowledge that there exists a great difference in the mental power of individuals to acquire knowledge. The variations in this respect are perhaps as great as the different degrees or phases of mental alienation from imbecility to actual mania.

In our conclusions as to the sanity or insanity of an individual we can not always be governed by comparison between what we may term normal and abnormal man. We might cite the names of some of the greatest intellects of ancient and modern times, who really were abnormal in some particulars, owing to the fact of their being so far superior to their fellows.*

But some authors claim that great genius in some persons is closely allied to insanity, and contend they possess to some extent the insane temperament. Maudsley is of this opinion. "They oscillate," says Kraft-Ebing, "between the extremes of genius and mental disease. Such men show peculiarities in thought, feeling, and action. Clouston says there is a number of examples of insane temperaments ranging from inspired idiots to inspired geniuses; that De Quincey, Cooper, Turner, Shelley, Tasso, Lamb, and Goldsmith may be reckoned as having had, in some degree, the insane temperament. Some are original, but in the highest degree impracticable and unwise in the conversational sense of the term.

Another form of this temperament is sometimes illustrated in spiritualism, thought-reading, clairvoyance, and hypnotism.

"The pseudo-genius or mattoid is, then, one who has the insane temperament with originality and particular talents in certain lines, and

*See McDonald's Essay on Abnormal Man.