280 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



remarks to apply to the whole of those medicines, but only to 

 some of them. He thought the case he had instanced of the cattle 

 plague being so complete, and being on so large a scale, he 

 having saved the whole of the animals he had taken under his 

 charge, while those in the same herd that were not treated by 

 him were sacrificed, amounted to something like proof of the 

 theory upon which the recoveries were effected. 



RELATION OF PIGMENT CELLS TO CAPILLARIES. 



The " Lancet" has called attention to some valuable researches 

 of Dr. Saviotti, which we should be sorry to omit noticing. The 

 observer was engaged in studying the inflammatory process in 

 the foot of the frog, and he first obtained a circumscribed spot of 

 inflammation by means of a drop of collodion, and after a few 

 days found the pigment cells of the irritated spot accumulated 

 around the vessels in a contracted condition, and in the course of 

 a short time that they had entirely disappeared. He immediately 

 applied himself to the question of explaining the mode of their 

 disappearance. In other frogs he excited inflammation by drop- 

 ping on the web a small quantity of a 2 per cent, solution of sul- 

 phuric acid. Again, after a few days, he saw that the pigment 

 cells had accumulated around the blood-vessels, and that, though 

 they still preserved their contractibility, their processes were less 

 branched and numerous than natural. On further examination, he 

 now observed that these processes began to penetrate the walls of 

 the adjacent capillaries and small veins, causing an obstruction to 

 the onward movement of the red corpuscles on their proximal 

 side, while a clear space was observable on their distal side, oc- 

 cupied only by serum. And now one of two things occurred: 

 either the process of the cell broke off, and was swept away by 

 the blood current, or the whole cell gradually squeezed itself 

 through the capillary wall (the part within the vessel becoming 

 greatly attenuated and elongated) until it also was carried away. 

 In the former case, the cell, shorn of part of its substance, still 

 remained outside the vessel ; in the latter, it of course disappeared 

 entirely. As regards the time occupied in these phenomena, Dr. 

 Saviotti finds that the cell processes penetrate the vessels in a 

 period varying from 3 to G hours, and that it takes about the same 

 length of time for the whole cell to follow and to be washed away 

 from the internal surface, to which it long remains adherent. 

 Science Review. 



THE ACTION OF ALCOHOL ON THE BODY. 



Dr. Parker and Dr. Wollowiez have published, in the " Pro- 

 ceedings of the Royal Society, 11 a very valuable paper, from which 

 we take the following : It appears, then, clear that any quan- 

 tity over 2 ounces of absolute alcohol daily would certainly do 

 harm to this man (the subject of the experiment) ; but whether 

 this, or even a smaller quantity, might not be hurtful, if it Avere 



