190 Foreign and Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



hydrophobia, but that I have cured serpents' bites always, without 

 fail, I can declare in truth.' 



Mr. Fischer then quotes Dr. Urban's practice from Hufeland's 

 German Medical Journal. He had six methods, but his most suc- 

 cessful was to apply a thick pledget, soaked in any saline solution, to 

 each wound, or to each place where the teeth had made a mark 

 without breaking the skin, and retain them there by bandages. 

 The best solution is of salt, one ounce, or one ounce and a half, to 

 a pound of plain water, and the wounds are to be kept constantly 

 moistened with it. The lint is to be renewed and soaked twice a 

 day ; the places wetted every two hours, and even washed by the 

 patient, especially if any indications of relapse, as itching or pain, 

 should manifest themselves. 



A case is then quoted from the Kent Herald, and Morning 

 Herald of July 28, 1827, as follows : * A friend of ours was some 

 years since bitten by a dog, which a few hours afterwards died 

 raving mad. Immediately upon receiving the bite, he rubbed salt 

 for some time into the wound, and, in consequence, never experi- 

 enced the least inconvenience from the bite, the saline qualities of 

 the salt having evidently neutralized the venom, and prevented, in 

 all probability, a melancholy death by hydrophobia.' 



That which induced Mr. Fischer to try the above remedy, in the 

 case of serpents, was ' a page of the late Bishop Loskiell's (with 

 whom I was personally acquainted), in his History of the Missions 

 of the Moravian Church in North America, which says, as far as I 

 recollect, that at least among some tribes, they were not at all 

 alarmed about the bites of serpents, having always in use such a 

 sure remedy as salt for the cure of them, so much so, that they 

 would suffer a bite for the sake of a glass of rum. It was this that 

 induced me to try the cure of venomous bites with salt, and the trial 

 has exceeded my expectations.' ' P. S. The advice of killing all 

 dogs is neither practicable nor necessary : apply salt to man and 

 dog, the bitten and the biter, all will be most probably well *.' &c. 



8. ON RESTORATION FROM DROWNING BY INSUFFLATION OF THE 



LUNGS. 



At the sitting of the 22d May of the Royal Academy of Medicine, 

 M. Piorry reported the results of his experiments on the insufflation 

 of the lungs of living rabbits, of the lungs of sheep, and man, after 

 death. He concluded, first, that insufflation seldom causes rupture 

 of the lungs unless too long and too violently continued ; that death 

 is caused by a mixture of air and blood in the heart, or by a double 

 hydrothorax, or by the distension of the abdomen; that this insuffla- 

 tion may cause subpleural but not interlobular emphysema; and that 

 insufflation of the digestive tube is almost as promptly mortal as 

 that of the lungs by preventing the descent of the diaphragm and 

 impeding respiration. Secondly, that crepitation always indicates 



* Me<l. Journal, v. 49. 



