POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



425 



do human beings. Mrs. Mary Treat, in the 

 " American Naturalist," thus describes a 

 contest which she witnessed between slave- 

 making ants and black ants : The former 

 were the aggressors, and victorious. The 

 two colonies were one hundred and twenty 

 feet apart. An idea of the numbers consti- 

 tuting the ranks of the slave-makers may 

 be gathered from the fact that on the war- 

 path, one hundred and twenty feet in length 

 and a foot wide, they " were not thinly scat- 

 tered, but a vast moving phalanx." The 

 blacks, a grand army on their own territory, 

 would not flee. The battle-field was about 

 twenty-five feet in circumference. A roar 

 announcing the beginning of hostilities last- 

 ed for five minutes, " whereas the battle 

 lasted four or five hours before the reds 

 gained possession of the vast nurseries of 

 the blacks," and it took two days to carry 

 the pupae and prisoners to their own do- 

 minions. 



Epidemics. Sir Joseph Fayrer, in his 

 address delivered before the Epidemiologi- 

 cal Society of London, on the subject of 

 epidemics, gives some interesting facts re- 

 garding typhoid fever and cholera in India. 

 It is well known that typhoid fever is a 

 prolific cause of mortality among European 

 soldiers there, and questions of great prac- 

 tical importance arise in regard to the age, 

 time, and seasons for sending men to the 

 army in India. It appears from the statis- 

 tics that this disease tells most severely up- 

 on the young men during their first year of 

 service ; and Dr. Fayrer raises the question 

 as to whether this fever, so prevalent in 

 India, is identical with the disease which 

 might be contracted in London, New York, 

 or Dublin, from water-closet, drain, sewer, or 

 well. He is of the opinion that these fevers 

 arc often the same, but that more frequent- 

 ly they are not, and that in hot, malarious 

 countries climatic causes give rise to fevers 

 identical with the others, except that they 

 can not be traced to filth or other specific 

 cause. But, while recognizing that but little 

 is known of the nature of epidemics of this 

 class, he asserts that the past twenty years 

 show great progress in ability to success- 

 fully cope with them. He says, " Science 

 that has enabled us to reduce the death-rate 

 among our troops from 17'9 to 8'56 per 



1,000 in Europe, and from 69 to 17'62 per 

 1,000 in India, speaks for itself, and, were 

 there no other results, this alone is a tri- 

 umph such as has not been achieved by 

 other departments of knowledge." As a 

 result of better sanitary conditions among 

 European troops the following alteration 

 in the death-rate is shown: from 1S61 to 

 1865, 9-02 per 1,000; 1865 to 1870, 6-98; 

 1870 to 1875, 3-23; 1875 to 1876, 2-3; 

 1876 to 1877, "84. In allusion to the his- 

 tory and treatment of cholera the doctor 

 says : " All serves to show that it is the same 

 now as formerly, and that, though we have 

 gained much knowledge of its natural his- 

 tory of late years, yet we are as ignorant as 

 our predecessors of its real nature. We 

 have, thanks to sanitary measures, disarmed 

 it of some of its terrors, and have dimin- 

 ished the mortality it caused; but as to 

 treatment we have gained but little, though 

 the empiricism of to-day is more scientific 

 than it was in former days. We do not 

 now burn our patients on the soles of the 

 feet, tie ligatures round their limbs, or have 

 recourse to other senseless barbarities ; for 

 we find that simpler and more rational 

 methods are of greater avail, more or less 

 according to the period of the epidemic at- 

 tack, and the promptitude with which the 

 remedies are applied. But we have learned 

 that local causes have a potent influence, 

 and that cleanliness, good air, pure water, 

 and free ventilation, are all powerful oppo- 

 nents of cholera." 



Danger of the nypodennic Tse of Mor- 

 phia. The danger of using morphia in hy- 

 podermic injections has been again forced 

 into notice by the recent death of the Italian 

 Consul at Bombay, India. His physician 

 had prescribed two " grana " of morphia as 

 a remedy for a pain in his leg from which 

 he was suffering. The chemist mistook the 

 word " grana " for " grammes " and gave 

 fifteen times as much morphia as was in- 

 tended. The mistake was discovered at 

 once and remedies were applied, but the 

 patient sank rapidly and died the same 

 evening. The peculiar risks of the hypo- 

 dermic use of morphia arise from the facts 

 that an overdose once administered can not 

 be recalled, and that no means exist of as- 

 certaining how large a dose the patient can 



