he is under the belief that he is doing exactly the opposite, and this struck us particularly while the arm was being offered and the needle presented for insertion. Exhibitions of insensibility to pain in the waking state are by no means new, for we remember that a year or so ago there was a performer in London who belonged or claimed to belong to the sect of the Aissoua. This man, after going through sundry incantations, stuck needles through his arms, a skewer through his tongue, and another under the skin of the abdomen without showing any signs of pain. Such exhibitions are as degrading as they are senseless, and the only possible object they can serve is to make prominent the morbid taste of the public who witness them. Lancet.

STREET NOISES.-The essence of good government has been defined as "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," and it is surely time to reiterate the question whether something can not be done to make life less unendurable for those who work with their heads and are compelled to live in great cities. We believe we are correct in saying that in no foreign town and in few other British towns is such license given to any one to earn a living by annoying his fellow creatures as in London. From an early hour in the morning the air is thick with the raucous yells of men and boys selling race-cards and halfpenny news-sheets. Later in the day the torment is aggravated by piano organs, so-called bands, and street singers, while at a late hour of the night it is quite common to be disturbed by hordes of ruffians with voices like foghorns roaring out imaginary and highly spiced details of a murder which has never happened or some even more unsavory subject. The police, it appears, are powerless. News vendors can not be interfered with if they move on, and they do move on-in a circle. Organs, we fancy, can only be moved from in front of the complainant's door, and, as a piano organ is perfectly audible two hundred yards away, this remedy is useless. There is only one remedy, and that is to compel any one who wishes to make a noise in the street for the purpose of getting money to pay a heavy license for the privilege of so doing. No one would object to the sale of papers if it were not accompanied by howls worthy of an eighteenth century madhouse. Rates and taxes rise with the utmost regularity every year, and it is not too much to ask that something should be done to obviate a nuisance which gets yearly worse and worse. The ringing of church bells, which, except those of St. Paul's, are always out of tune, should on no account be allowed in London except for five minutes or so before service. Every one who goes to church knows perfectly well at what time to go, and those who do not go probably do not want to know. In the ages of faith the ringing of bells drove away devils, but the latter-day fiend who. yells "Paiper" and grinds organs is proof against their power, and to ring bells is but to add one more unnecessary noise to the large number of necessary ones which already exist. We have pointed out on several occasions that there is no legal right to ring or toll a bell except before morning and

evening prayer or on the occasion of a funeral, and that the ringing of a bell previously to the celebration of the Holy Communion, which often now occurs in the early hours of the morning, is wholly illegal and unwarrantable. It is a great torture to many sick and weakly people.-Ibid.

THE SERUM TREATMENT IN TUBERCULOSIS AND SYPHILIS.-Richet (Soc. de Biol.) has resumed the experiments which he made in 1889 with Héricourt, showing that by means of injections with serum the evolution of avian tuberculosis could be retarded in rabbits. He took twenty guineapigs and divided them into five groups of four each; one group was used for purposes of control, the second received normal serum, the third microbic serum, the fourth the milk of an ass inoculated with tuberculin, and the fifth serum from an ass inoculated with tuberculin. All were then inoculated with a culture of tuberculosis. The animals of group five died very rapidly, those of group four died almost under the same conditions, those of group two died much later, while those of group three resisted for a long time, and some even altogether. Richet concludes from these experiments that the serum of an animal inoculated with tuberculin always contains toxic principles; that the milk of an animal inoculated with the same substance is almost innocuous; that normal serum retards the progress of tuberculosis; and that microbic serum can prevent its development. Héricourt began five years ago to treat a tuberculous subject, whom he cured by inoculating him with immunized dog's serum, and since that time Richet and Héricourt have had a very satisfactory result with the same serum in the case of a woman seriously ill with tuberculosis. Richet has also made some trials of the serum treatment in syphilis. He used the serum of a dog which eight days before had been inoculated with blood taken from a syphilitic patient. This serum was first inoculated in a woman who had had syphilis twenty years before, and who suffered from nervous troubles, apparently tabetic. These symptoms disappeared after the injections. More recently similar injections were used in the case of a woman who had contracted syphilis eighteen months before, and who presented extensive ulcerations on which specific treatment had had no effect. After seven injections of immunized dog's serum the area of the ulcerated surfaces had diminished by four fifths.-British Medical Journal.

THE LATE PROFESSOR Carl Vogt. - The death of Carl Vogt has deprived Switzerland of one of her most illustrious children and science of one of her most devoted and laborious followers. Vogt was a naturalist in the same sense as Linnæus, a geologist as much as a zoologist, an intelligent traveler as much as a physiologist. He was a teacher not only of professorial classes, but of a wide circle of intelligent lovers of nature. In losing him we lose almost the last of the giants whose labors have resulted in the present condition of zoological knowledge. Vogt's first work of importance. was his account of the Embryology of the Salmon, which he contributed

to Louis Agassiz's "History of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe." This was rapidly followed by his account of the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans.) Like Kölliker and Van Beneden the elder, Vogt fell into the error of supposing that developmental history might by itself form the basis of a systematic arrangement of the animal kingdom; but, on the other hand, his division of "worms" into flat, round, and ringed worms is still in its essence accepted. Vogt was one of the first to recognize the annulate affinities of the leeches. He was one of the pioneers in our knowledge of that curious modification of one of the arms of the male cuttlefishes and squids (Cephalopoda) which is known as hectocotylization, while his contributions to vertebrate morphology were considerable. But although Vogt wrote in conjunction with E. Yung a widely-used text-book of Zoology, he never lost his interest in the geology of the Alps or the early history of mankind; the modern science of microscopical petrography was another subject in which he took a deep practical interest. Of Vogt, as of Casaubon, we may say: "O doctiorum quicquid est assurgite huic tam colendo nomini.”—London Lancet.

UTERUS AND SYMPHYSIS IN LABOR AFTER PREVIOUS CESAREAN SECTION AND SYMPHYSEOTOMY.-Chrobak (Centralbl. f. Gynäk.) recently read notes of a case in which Breisky had performed cesarean section in 1888, Chrobak himself delivering after symphyseotomy in 1891. The patient was recommended to see him from time to time, but she never presented herself till autumn, 1894, when she was in labor. Circumstances led Chrobak to rely on turning alone; the child died during delivery. Version and extraction proved easy; the maternal soft parts were not damaged. The cesarean cicatrix in the uterus was found to have become considerably stretched; it was rigid and felt like a tough pad of muscular tissue. The symphysis pubis felt perfectly firm; the bones were united by a fibrous bridge not a third of an inch broad. The bones had not been sutured. The symphysis was not damaged during this third labor. The patient can now walk with On rotation of the femur slight mobility of the symphysis is noted. British Medical Journal.

ease.

DIPHTHERIA IN LONDON.-Fatal diphtheria in London still maintains itself at what seems likely to be a normal height, the deaths registered in the last two weeks being respectively 27 (2 below the corrected average for the preceding ten similar weeks) and 29 (corresponding to that average). During the four weeks of three successive months the deaths have been: In February, 121; in March, 116; and in April, 107; a continuous improvement it is true, but not of any striking character. The notifications in the four weeks ended April 27th were 562 in the whole metropolis, only reaching and exceeding 10 in two sanitary areas, the case mortality being just a fraction under 20 per cent; while in the succeeding fortnight the 300 notifications and 56 deaths yield a per case mortality of just below 19 per

cent. Thus, diphtheria would not appear to be decreasing in actual amount, even if it be not quite so fatal. Of the 300 notified attacks mentioned, only 149 were removed to hospital; and the numbers of patients remaining under isolation have in the last four weeks been respectively 435, 441, 432, and last Saturday 457. Of the 56 deaths in the last fortnight, 41 were in children aged between one and five years. In this same period there were 23 deaths registered in Greater London, including 9 in West Ham and 4 in Edmonton districts.-Lancet.

IMPORTED FROZEN MILK. The rapidly increasing importation of frozen milk from Holland, Sweden, and other places is a serious question, since so far as we can gather there is no guarantee of its being derived from an uncontaminated source. Our own centers of milk production are, of course, placed under strict sanitary regulations, so that as far as possible disease may not be disseminated by the means of so ready a carrier as milk has been proved to be. The efforts, therefore, of our sanitary authorities to prevent milk-borne diseases may, for aught we know, be seriously handicapped. We trust that the Government will make some inquiries into this important and, it may be, very serious matter. The position is absurd and is also alarming if it can be shown that, while the strictest preventive measures are taken against the importation of diseased cattle, no steps whatever are provided against the importation of milk the consumption of which may possibly be fraught with equally serious issues. The question, too, has an important bearing upon the subjects dealt with by the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, whose report we considered last week.-Ibid.

MEDICAL TESTIMONY BY A MIDWIFE. In another part of our present issue we draw attention to an inquest in which, in our opinion, medical evidence should have been called. On April 30th the County Coroner held an inquiry at the Alexandria Hotel, Moss Side, into the cause of death of a male infant whose body was found in an ash-pit. A contemporary reports that the body was examined by a midwife, who was of opinion that the infant had not breathed after it was born; and it seems that upon this evidence the jury returned a verdict of "stillbirth," since there is no mention in the report that a medical man was consulted. We can imagine no other case where it is more necessary that the most competent opinion should be taken as to the cause of death, not only to establish the fact, but in view of a possible criminal charge, whether it be of concealment of birth or the graver offense of murder. The verdict of the coroner's jury in this case practically amounts to a bar against further inquiry, since it embodied the statement that the infant had not breathed after it was born. We trust that our information is incorrect or at least partial, for otherwise we can not avoid the conclusion that a miscarriage of justice may have obtained.Ibid.

Special Notices.

IT WAS announced in these columns some twelve months ago that Messrs. Armour & Co., of Chicago, were willing to supply, gratis, samples of Desiccated Thyroid Glands of the sheep to any physician who desired to experiment in that line of treatment. The offer was largely taken advantage of, and the knowledge of what we may call the "Thyroid therapy" has thereby been unquestionably advanced. It is our pleasure to announce that while Messrs. Armour & Co. naturally value their time and the material at their disposal as highly as any one in similar circumstances would, still they are willing, in the interests of medical science, to prepare and supply to physicians desiring to experiment samples of any other animal glands. They are manufacturing a very elegant preparation of Red Bone Marrow, and we would advise our readers to communicate with Messrs. Armour & Co., if they have any cases of pernicious anæmia under treatment. Armour's Pepsin and Pancreatin have taken deservedly high rank, and this firm has in many ways given evidence of their intention and ability to make valuable additions to the materia medica. Armour's chemist is a man of ability and reputation. The material is there, the facilities are there, and the brains are there, so that, with the necessary staff and equipment, a labratory located near the abattoir seems to be appropriate and in keeping with the eternal fitness of things, and calculated to greatly promote research and improvement in the domain of physiological chemistry.

PINEOLINE IN ERYSIPELAS.-My experience with Pineoline proves that it will cure erysipelas, as well as eczema and hemorrhoids. A case of erysipelas of the face, in the case of a woman of fifty-five, was cured in one week's time. I applied the ointment well over and beyond the inflamed area and kept the part constantly protected. I can not say that the result was surprising, for one familiar with the remarkable properties of Pinus Pumilio must be prepared for surprising results. It allayed the itching and burning, prevented the formation of bullæ, and caused prompt resolution. As an antiseptic and anodyne application Pinus Pumilio (Pineoline) is unexcelled. G. H. THOMPSON, M. D.,

Prof. Materia Medica, Col. of P. & S.

CLINICAL EXPERIENCES WITH SOLUTIONS OF PYROZONE.-Dr. W. W. Bulette, in his article on Acute Otitis Media says: After the hyperæmic stage has passed and the inflammatory symptoms have begun to subside and the discharge has appeared, the ear should be syringed with hot water, first dropping into it 5 or 6 drops of a 3 per cent solution of pyrozone,-H 2 O 2 (McKesson & Robbins.) The douching should be kept up at each consultation until the epidermis of the canal assumes the appearance of 'washer-woman's hands,' after which the canal should be thoroughly dried with cotton on the end of a probe."-Medical Bulletin.

LA GRIPPE WITH SCANTY SECRETION AND RETENTION OF URINE.-Sanmetto acted very satisfactorily in a case of a lady fifty-three years of age suffering from la grippe, accompanied with scanty secretion and retention of urine. Sanmetto was given in doses of two teaspoonfuls every four hours, and within twenty-four hours her urine was passed freely and without pain. G. M. LISTON, M. D., Filley, Mo. U. S. Exam. Surg.

IMPROVEMENT IN NASAL INHALERS.-Dr. George a Thomson, of Chicago, reports that "The pyrozone inhaler permits of douching the nostrils thoroughly with pyrozone 3 per cent solution, or other fluids with scarcely any effort by the user, and with less liability of forcing fluid into the eustachian tubes that there has been with the old methods. The instrument is clean, convenient and inexpensive."