272 



DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. 



DISSECTION. 



Railway : summary for the month, total number of 

 accidents 145, killed*38, injured 179. 



December 5. Railway : collision near Detroit, 10 in- 

 jured (5 fatally). 



6. Shipwreck : British steamer Hartlepoole, at 

 Egersund, Norway, 17 lives lost. 



8. Fire : steam ferry-boat Maryland, with a number 

 of passenger cars on board, burned at New York. 



11. Explosion in a grain-mill at Chicago, 3 killed, 

 several injured. 



12. Fire: Chicago Opera House partly burned, loss 

 $50,000. 



13. Explosion of a gun on a French man-of-war, 

 6 killed. 



19. Destructive storm in eastern Canada. 



23. Fire : steamboat Kate Adams burned on the 

 Mississippi, between 30 and 40 lives lost. 



24. Fire : steamboat John J. Hanna burned near 

 Plaquemine, on the lower Mississippi, more than 30 

 lives lost. Explosion of powder at Mount Pleasant, 

 Ohio, 1 killed, many injured. 



25. Fires : at Marblehcad, Mass., and at Cincinnati, 

 Ohio, estimated losses $800,000 and $200,000 re- 

 spectively. 



28. Explosion of a shell at Messina, Sicily, 16 sol- 

 diers killed. Earthquake shock felt in England. 



30. Fire : steamer Bristol burned at her wharf, 

 Newport, R. I. 



Railway : summary of the month, total number of 

 accidents 142, killed' 37, injured 163. 



DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. The "Year-Book" 

 of the Disciples of Christ for 1888 gives the 

 number of churches as 6,437, with 620,000 

 communicants ; and of Sunday-schools as 4,500, 

 with which are connected 33,340 officers and 

 teachers, and 318,000 pupils. The number of 

 preachers is 3,262; value of church property, 

 $10,368,361. The estimated annual increase 

 of members is 47,600. Twenty-nine institu- 

 tions of learning including 5 universities, 19 

 colleges, and 5 institutes are represented in 

 the " Year-Book " ; besides which several are 

 mentioned from which no report had been re- 

 .ceived. The Annual Missionary Conventions 

 of the Disciples of Christ, including the con- 

 ventions of the General Christian Missionary 

 Society, the Foreign Christian Missionary So- 

 ciety, and the Christian "Woman's Board of 

 Missions, were held in Springfield, Ohio, Octo- 

 ber 23 to 26. The first of these bodies pro- 

 motes the extension and work of domestic 

 missions and church extension in the United 

 States and Territories, and besides applying its 

 own special funds and directing its own work- 

 ing organization, co-operates with the various 

 State boards, which represent in the aggregate 

 a scale of operations much larger than its own. 

 Its receipts for the year had been $28,384. be- 

 sides which it had a balance from the previous 

 year of $1,371. Its expenditures had been 

 $25,766. The receipts for the church exten- 

 sion fund had been $7,028 in cash and $20,321 

 in pledges. Pledges were also made during 

 the meeting of the convention to the amount 

 of $60,281. Loans are made from the fund 

 for no longer period than five years, for no 

 larger an amount than $500, to churches whose 

 building shall not cost more than $5,000. It 

 was decided to establish a branch Board of 

 Chnrch Extension at Kansas City, Mo. The 

 society had employed during the year 35 labor- 



ers, under whose efforts 107 churches had been 

 visited and assisted, 51 new and unorganized 

 places visited, 10 churches organized, and 308 

 persons baptized. 



The State boards had altogether employed 

 in 1887, 200 missionaries, who had organized 

 123 churches, assisted 63 places in building, 

 visited and assisted 1,878 churches, visited 326 

 new and unorganized places, and who returned 

 8,970 baptisms. 



A committee that had been appointed in the 

 previous year to confer with a committee of 

 the Free-Will Baptist Church with reference 

 to union, reported that union would involve 

 four fundamental points: The adoption of a 

 name honoring Christ as the sole head of the 

 Church ; the creed basis that Jesus Christ is 

 the Son of God ; conformity of the work to 

 the model of the New Testament ; and recog- 

 nition of the independence of the congregations 

 in local affairs The committee recommended 

 co-operative local union, so far as practicable, 

 to begin at once. A committee was appointed 

 to continue the correspondence. 



The income of the Foreign Christian Mis- 

 sionary Society for the year had been $62,767. 

 The receipts had increased regularly each year, 

 except one, from the first, and the increase in 

 the last six years had been fivefold. The so- 

 ciety sustained 24 mission stations in England, 

 Scandinavia, Turkey, India, Japan, and China, 

 with which were connected 37 missionaries and 

 22 helpers, 2,473 converts, 2,689 children in 

 Sunday-schools, and 380 in day-schools, and in 

 which 798 additions of members were returned. 



The Christian Woman's Board of Missions 

 comprised 1,161 auxiliary societies in the local 

 churches, having 14,000 members, and had re- 

 ceived, in contributions obtained by their as- 

 sistance, $22,334. It sustained home missions, 

 a mission in India, and missions in Jamaica, 

 which last returned 17 stations, 1,251 mem- 

 bers, and 700 pupils in the schools. The chil- 

 dren's bands, of which there were 415, 117 

 having been organized during the year, had 

 contributed $4,068 to the funds of the society. 



DISSECTION, an operation by which the 

 different parts of a body are exposed for study 

 of their structure and arrangement. Various 

 names are given to dissection, depending upon 

 the purpose and the organ concerned in the 

 operation. Osteotomy has for its purpose the 

 exposure of bones ; neurotomy, the laying bare 

 of nerves; angiotomy, the exhibition of blood- 

 vessels ; and desmotomy, the disclosure of lig- 

 aments. The history of dissection is blended 

 with that of anatomy. Its value in the study 

 of medicine was recognized by the ancients, 

 and five centuries before the Christian era 

 Democritus and Hippocrates are said to have 

 examined the bodies of the inferior animals. 

 Aristotle, Syennesis of Cyprus, and Diogenes 

 of Appollonia are among the eminent men of 

 science who dissected the lower animals for 

 anatomical purposes. Alexandria was the seat 

 of the first dissection of the human body. 



