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NATURE 



[July 14, i: 



The doctors of Portugal are evidently very much in earnest 

 about the medical and sanitary well-being of their country, as is 

 shown by the number of resolutions carried by them at the close 

 of the recently held National Congress of Medicine at Lisbon 

 on various subjects which, in their opinion, are of pressing 

 public importance. One resolution called on the Government 

 to give effect to the vote of the Chamber of Deputies, that 

 vaccination should be made compulsory in Portugal. Another 

 series of resolutions had reference to the repression of tubercu- 

 losis. The Congress urged that permanent committees should 

 be appointed for the purpose of diffusing a knowledge of the 

 means of prophylaxis against that scourge. It further recom- 

 mended that all tuberculous patients admitted to general 

 hospitals should be placed in special wards. It was also decided 

 to appoint a committee to study the question of the establish- 

 ment of sanatoria for the treatment of tuberculosis in Portugal. 

 With regard to leprosy, the Congress called upon the Govern- 

 ment to organise a system of careful study of the disease, and 

 regular teaching of the means of dealing with it ; to take a 

 census of the population ; to establish agricultural colonies of 

 lepers, in connection with each of which there should be places 

 where all the means of combating the disease should be taught ; 

 to place legal hindrances in the way of marriages between lepers 

 and the descendants of lepers ; and to educate the poor to 

 correct notions as to the hereditary and contagiousness of the 

 disease. 



The Times of Saturday last contained a report of an 

 address delivered on Thursday before the German Society for 

 Public Hygiene by Prof. Koch on the subject of the plague, 

 in which he dealt especially with his discovery of a plague centre 

 in the Hinterland of German East Africa, whither the disease 

 had been introduced from Uganda. After referring to the 

 plague centres of Hu-nan, Tibet, and the west coast of Arabia, 

 in the vicinity of Mecca, the lecturer went on to lay claim to 

 a fourth centre in Equatorial Africa. It had been found that a 

 devastating disease prevailed at Kissiba, in the extreme north- 

 west corner of German East Africa, close to the Victoria Nyanza. 

 Suspecting that it was the plague. Prof. Koch proceeded from 

 India to East Africa in order to make investigations. With the 

 help of Dr. Zupitza, who made a special expedition to Kissiba, 

 he had been enabled to identify the disease as the bubonic 

 plague. In the case of five persons who had died from the 

 disease anatomical preparations were obtained, and the blood 

 and lymphatic glands of plague-stricken patients were bacteri- 

 ologically examined. All the ordinary features of the bubonic 

 plague were present. Nine out of ten of those who were in- 

 fected died. The disease was communicated to rats and to 

 monkeys. It was found that an outbreak of the plague among 

 rats frequently preceded a human epidemic, and, in fact, the 

 rat plague might always be regarded as a warning. A further 

 observation had been made, which was of importance. The 

 inhabitants of Kissiba lived almost entirely on bananas. The 

 banana groves were so thick that they admitted neither light 

 nor air, and were perfect breeding places of the bacillus. It 

 would be most interesting if physiologists could investigate the 

 processes of nourishment and metabolic change which attended 

 an almost exclusive diet of bananas. It had been discovered, 

 however, that Kissiba was not an original plague centre, but 

 that the disease had been introduced from Uganda, as the re- 

 ports of missionaries who resided there showed. It had existed 

 for a long time in Uganda, but it had recently moved in the 

 direction of Budu. Its introduction to Kissiba had been traced 

 to a native who had visited a friend in Uganda. He returned 

 home and died of the plague, and of a large number of natives 

 who attended his funeral many were infected and perished. It 

 was a favourable circumstance that for the present Kissiba lay 

 somewhat out of the ordinary caravan route. 

 NO. 1498, VOL. 58] 



Dr. Ca.mpbell McClure, of Glasgow, describes in the 

 Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift a bacillus which he dis- 

 covered while making examinations of milk in the laboratory of 

 Dr. Piorkowski in Berlin. In the agar plate cultures it formed 

 brown granular colonies, which also grew well in glycerine agar 

 at 37° C, presenting a white appearance, confluent in the 

 middle and punctate at the margins, and becoming yellow and 

 slimy in three or four days. Milk treated with the bacillus and 

 kept at 37° C. for 48 hours was coagulated and had a strongly 

 acid reaction and an acetous smell. The appearance of a 

 bouillon culture kept for 24 hours at 37° C. was constant and 

 typical, the fluid being slightly turpid with a considerable 

 flocculent deposit on the bottom and sides of the tube. The 

 bacillus could be stained with the ordinary aniline colours, but 

 not with Gram's solution. Cover-glass preparations stained 

 with methylene blue showed a great similarity to the diphtheria 

 bacillus and the pseudo-diphtheria bacillus of Loffler and von 

 Hofmann respectively. 



The current number of the Lancet has a note interesting to 

 the vast army of cyclists. After a " spin " along a more or less 

 dusty road the cyclist sometimes experiences a dry and sub- 

 sequently sore and inflamed throat. Headache and depression 

 often follow, and the symptoms generally simulate poisoning of 

 some kind. When the bacteriology of road dust is considered, 

 these effects are hardly to be wondered at. Hundreds of mil- 

 lions of bacteria, according to the nature of the locality, are 

 found in a gramme weight of dust, and the species isolated have 

 included well-known pathogenic organisms. Indeed, there can 

 be no reason for doubting the infective power of dust when it is 

 known that amongst the microbes encountered in it are the 

 microbes of pus, malignant oedema, tetanus, tubercle, and 

 septicremia. The mischief to riders as well as to pedestrians 

 would probably be largely averted if, as nature intended, the 

 respirations were rigidly confined to the nasal passages, and the 

 mouth kept comfortably though firmly shut. As investigators 

 have shown, the microbes in the air seldom pass beyond the 

 extreme end of the nasal passage, and consequently never to 

 the larynx or bronchial surfaces. A useful precaution, there- 

 fore, in addition to exclusively breathing through the nostrils, 

 would be to douche the nasal cavity, after a dusty run or walk, 

 with a weak and slightly warm solution of some harmless 

 antiseptic. 



The Berlin correspondent of the British Medical Journal 

 calls attention to the prevalence of trachoma in the eastern 

 provinces of Prussia, where it often assumes an epidemic char- 

 acter, especially among children in the lower schools. The 

 authorities are at last fully alive to the gravity of the matter, 

 and have determined to spare neither pains nor expense in 

 order to stamp out the disease effectually. Thus the city 

 of Konigsberg has for the last six months employed ten 

 ophthalmic surgeons especially for the purpose, and the report 

 of their work just published is most satisfactory and hopeful, 

 showing as it does by figures the results already accomplished. 

 In October 1897, of 17,553 school children examined, 5568 

 were found to be suffering from trachoma ; of these, 1763 — 10 

 per cent, of those examined— were serious cases. These latter 

 were treated, some in the hospital, some in their own homes, 

 and some in special trachoma classes. By the middle of 

 February the number of cases had gone down to 1218, of 

 which 345 were serious in character. At the date to which 

 the report extends— that is, the end of April— there were only 

 826 cases, with 223 serious ones. The number of special 

 oculists has therefore been reduced to six. 



The Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom was 

 held at Glasgow last week, and we are glad to find, from the 

 report of its proceedings in the British Journal of Photography, 



