564 Proceedings of the 



the chain of the Andes at that spot, until two Colombian engineers, 

 MM. Lloyd and Falmarck, made a geometrical survey, by order 

 of General Bolivar. It results from their labours that the chain is 

 so much lowered here as not to exceed ninety- five toises in height, 

 which perfectly coincides with the opinion formerly expressed by 

 M. de Humboldt, that, judging from the vegetable productions on 

 the summit, the height must be between five and six hundred feet. 

 M. de Humboldt then entered into an elaborate geological disserta- 

 tion on the raising of the chain of the Andes, and its ramifications, 

 and clusters in the form of feeders (filons) ; he described the ridges 

 or sills which, stretching across plains, unite the apparently insulated 

 mountains of Lake Parimee with the Andes of Timana, and the 

 chain of Brazil with the mountains of Cochabambo. The pre- 

 tended chain of mountains which has been represented as uniting 

 the Oural and the Altai, in the north of Asia, is in fact only a ridge 

 serving as a line of division between the waters which fall into the 

 Obi, and those which flow to the lake Azal. 



MEDICAL SCIENCE. 



Twisting of the Arteries. On the 3 1st January, M. Amussat 

 presented to the Academy four individuals on whom his principle 

 of twisting (torsion) of the arteries after amputation had been suc- 

 cessfully tried. In no case had any secondary hemorrhage oc- 

 curred. He stated the advantages of this system over that of the 

 ligature to be, that it could be carried into effect by one operator 

 without assistance, that it is never followed by consecutive 

 hemorrhages, and allows the immediate re-union of the parts in the 

 full force of the term. The system has been successfully adopted by 

 MM. Waust and Anciause, at Liege ; Friecke and Schreuder, at 

 Hamburgh ; and Dieffembach and Rust, at Berlin. 



Lithotrity. On the 24th January, Dr. Civiale communicated to 

 the Academy a report of the cases oflithotrity recently placed under 

 his observation. He attributes the failure of the process, in most 

 cases in which failure has occurred, to the imperfection of the in- 

 strument employed. By his method of treatment he state that 

 lithotrity has been successfully resorted to in 163 cases, 152 of 

 which were operated on by himself. 



Galvanic Application. On the 7th February, Dr. Andrieux 

 announced to the Academy that he had invented an apparatus, by 

 means of which the action of galvanism on patients can be so 

 graduated as to allow it to be applied daily either in the same de- 

 gree or with a gradual increase of intensity. He attributes the 

 small advantages hitherto derived from the application of galvanism 

 in medicine, to the fact of the apparatus not having been so disposed 

 as to allow of comparative results being obtained. 



