appear to him to take place only in the lowest third of it, where it 
is chiefly excited by the nerves of the eighth pair. The contraction 
inereases much, and continues a long time, when the stomach is 
full, When the cesophagus is cut and detached from the diaphragm, 
the injection of tartar emetic into the veins does not produce 
vomiting : its introduction into the stomach becomes necessary. 
M. Delpech, Professor of Surgery at Montpellier, has sent a 
memoir to the Class on the hospital sore, a kind of gangrene which 
affects the sores when the wounded patients are too numerous. He 
has ascertained that this dreadful malady, of which few practitioners 
have spoken, is produced by a local contagion. _ It is propagated by 
the linen, the charpee, and the instruments. Its progress is slower 
when the patients can be exposed to a current of air. The most 
minute attention to cleanliness is necessary to prevent it from 
spreading. But the only true remedy, according to M. Delpech, 
is the application of the actual cautery to the parts affected with it. 
Some years ago M. Maunoir, surgeon in Geneva, sent a memoir 
on the advantages of the method of amputation invented in Eng- 
land, and which consists in cutting the skin lower down than the 
bone and the muscles, so as to preserve a sufficient quantity to 
cover the stump, by bringing it immediately in contact. 
__M. Roux, surgeon at Paris, has presented a memoir on the same 
subject, in which he has shown from his own experiments that this 
method diminishes the sufferings of the patient, that it prevents 
hemorrhages and suppuration, that it greatly accelerates the cure 
of the sore, and that it leaves the stump in a more convenient state, 
and subject to fewer accidents. He points out the precautions neces- 
sary to avoid some inconveniences ascribed to it by those who per- 
formed it ill, and particularly to afford the blood and pus, if any be 
formed, a sufficient passage. M. Percy, our associate, who em- 
ployed it since his youth, and who, as he informs us himself, has 
had the melancholy advantage of amputating more limbs than 
perhaps any surgeon that ever existed, expresses strongly in his 
report his wish that the memoir of M, Roux may soon render so 
useful a process general. 
Two young surgeons of Paris, MM. Lisfrand and Champenne, 
have made known their method of amputating the arm at its upper 
joint, one of the most difficult operations in the surgical art. By 
making the instrument penetrate under the two eminences of the 
omoplate, called acromion and coracoid process, they reach directly 
the capsule of the joint, and terminate the operation more quickly 
than by any of the methods employed before them. 
M. de Saissy, surgeon at Lyons, has cured several deaf people by 
injections into the cavity of the tympanum, through the tube of 
Eustachius. He has sent to the Class an account of his method, and 
the history of the cures which he has performed. 
The treatise on poisons by M. Orfila, of which we announced the 
first volume in our last year’s report, has been continued, and the. 
second yolume submitted to the Class in manuscript, It treats of 
$88 Proceedings of Philosophical Societies. ~ (Nov. 
