MISCELLANY. 



373 



tion of the gastric juice. It excites it only 

 as any other body might, which is brought 

 into direct contact with the mucous coat of 

 the stomach. The action of bitters upon 

 the gastric secretion is, beyond doubt, a re- 

 flex action, having its point of departure in 

 the mucous membrane of the mouth. 



In the course of the discussion which 

 ensued, Dr. Hoppe Seyler observed that in 

 dogs, when fevered, the gastric juice suffers 

 a diminution of its acid, but not of its pep- 

 sin. The white of the egg, in order to be 

 dissolved, must first be transformed into 

 syntonine, which process requires a gastric 

 juice of great acidity. This fact accounts 

 for the difficulty with which albumen is re- 

 tained upon a disordered stomach. As 

 concerns the digestibility of cheese, that 

 substance is composed of different ingredi- 

 ents, and notably it contains one phosphoric 

 substance, utterly indigestible, nuclein. 



Sanitary Reform in India. Lord Mark 

 Kerr sends a communication to the (East) 

 Indian Medical Gazette, in which be relates 

 how he came to discover the cause and 

 means of prevention of what is called the 

 Delhi Boil, formerly the scourge of the den- 

 izens of Delhi, native and foreign. From 

 a comparison of the situation and surround- 

 ings of Delhi with those of other Oriental 

 cities similarly noted for the prevalence of 

 boils and sores, he was led to conclude that 

 the cause of the disorder was to be found 

 in the existence, within the walls of the 

 town, of a barren strip of land, two miles 

 in length, by 500 yards in breadth, covered 

 with foul weeds and ruined buildings, with 

 the wells and water-courses choked up. He 

 proposed to clear the water-courses and 

 plant trees and grass. This was done in 

 1864, and now the Delhi Boil has entirely 

 disappeared from the city. Lord Mark 

 Kerr desires to have his experience tested 

 throughout India, for he believes that pure 

 irrigation and draining, with judicious plant- 

 ing and gardening, would greatly tend, not 

 only to remove sores and such-like evils, 

 but to prevent the approach of more serious 

 and even fatal scourges. 



A New Anaesthetic. The Medico- Chirur- 

 gical Circular (German) calls attention to 

 a new anesthetic, which has received the 



name Aethelid Chlorid. Dr. Langenbeck has 

 employed it in six operations, and found 

 that it produced amesthesia more rapidly 

 than chloroform. He states that its use is 

 unattended with any of those unpleasant 

 effects which commonly attend the exhibi- 

 tion of chloroform. Also a new method of 

 producing anaesthesia with morphine has 

 been discovered. In this method hypoder- 

 mic injections of the chlorhydrate of mor- 

 phine are given, followed up with light in- 

 halations of .chloroform. Three cases were 

 cited where this method had been employed 

 satisfactorily. The anaesthesia, in this case, 

 is not attended by sleep, and it leaves the 

 action of the mind, the senses, and the vol- 

 untary muscles intact. 



Liebig's Extract of Meat. Liebig's pro- 

 cess of obtaining meat extract is found to 

 yield only 14 per cent, of the dry, solid 

 material of the meat. The remaining 86 

 parts are the really nutritive constituents 

 of meat, and the 14 contained in the Lie- 

 big extract are merely stimulative, not nu- 

 tritive. This is, with ingenuous candor, 

 admitted by Liebig himself. An English 

 pharmaceutist, Mr. Darby, claims to have 

 invented a process of obtaining, in con- 

 centrated, soluble form, all the constituents 

 of the meat. His process, which has been 

 patented, is this : Lean meat, finely sliced, 

 is digested with pepsin, in water previously 

 acidulated with hydrochloric acid, at a 

 temperature of from 96 to 100 Fahr., until 

 the whole of the fibrine of the meat has dis- 

 appeared. 



The liquor is then filtered, separating 

 small portions of fat, cartilage, or other in- 

 soluble matters, and neutralized by means 

 of carbonate of soda ; and finally carefully 

 evaporated to the consistence required, 

 namely, that of a soft extract. 



The resulting extract represents, in all 

 its constituents, the lean meat employed, 

 but with the fibrine, albumen, and gelatine, 

 changed into their respective peptones, or 

 soluble forms. This change is effected sole- 

 ly by the pepsin and hydrochloric acid, or 

 artificial gastric juice, without the evolution 

 or absorption of any secondary products. 



But this process, whatever care be tak- 

 en, leaves the fluid meat with a strong bitter 

 taste, which always attaches to meat digest- 



