196 abstracts: medicine 



ANTHROPOLOGY.— T'Ae distribution of animals and its bearing on 

 the peopling of America. Austin Hobart Clark. American 

 Anthropologist, 14: 23-30. 1912. 

 The land connections between North and South America, and Asia, 

 Africa and Australia, as deduced from a study of zoogeography, are indi- 

 cated, and the conclusion is stated that the connection between Alaska 

 and northeastern Asia persisted until after man inhabited that region 

 and therefore indicates the path by which the first men reached America. 

 The connection between Africa and the mid-American region was dis- 

 rupted so far as the zoological evidence shows, in the Cretaceous, 

 the connection between the Australian region and southern South Amer- 

 ica was broken at a later epoch, but still too early to have formed path 

 for human migration. A. H. C. 



MEDICINE. — An ingenious method of causing death employed by the 

 Obeah men of the West Indies. Austin H. Clark. American An- 

 thropologist, 14: 572-574. 1912. 

 The West Indian Obeah man of the more advanced type has learned 

 that, on account of the high class of local medical practice, it is no longer 

 safe to employ the common mineral and vegetable poisons which in 

 former days served him so well. He has therefore devised a scheme of 

 infecting flies with streptococci and then liberating them in the houses 

 of his victims. Owing to the habits of the people, especially to their 

 sleeping naked but with the bed clothes (if they possess them) over their 

 heads, to guard against "jumbies" (the local species of ghost), infec- 

 tion is very easily brought about. A . H. C. 



