FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



science and humanity had sustained through 

 the deaths of Huxley and Pasteur. 



Pasteur's Successor. We take the fol- 

 lowing note from the Practitioner : M. Emile 

 Duclaux, who has just been appointed Di- 

 rector of the Pasteur Institute, in succession 

 to M. Pasteur, was his former chief's oldest 

 collaborator, and had held the post of sub- 

 director under him since the foundation of the 

 institute. He was born at Aurillac in 1840, and 

 was Pasteur's assistant in the Ecole Normale 

 from 1862 to 1865. After teaching for a 

 time in the Tours Lycee in 1865-'66, he was 

 appointed Professor of Chemistry at Cler- 

 mont in 1866, and afterward of Physics in 

 the Lyons Faculty of Sciences in 1873. In 

 1878 he came back to Paris as Professor of 

 Physics and Meteorology in the Institute 

 Agronomique, and in 1888 he was appointed 

 Professor of Biological Chemistry in the 

 Faculty of Science. M. Duclaux took the 

 degree of Doctor of Science in 1862 ; but, 

 like Pasteur himself, he is not a member of 

 the medical profession, although in 1894 he 

 was elected a member of the Academy of 

 Medicine. He is the editor of the Annales 

 de 1'Institut Pasteur. Apart from his con- 

 tributions to chemistry, silkworm culture, 

 the phylloxera, etc., he has done valuable 

 work on ferments and their relation to dis- 

 ease, digestion, milk, and microbiology. 



The Feeding of Infants. The time when 

 a bottle-fed baby was a rare thing is within 

 the memory of all of the older physicians ; 

 but now it is the exception rather than the 

 rule for a mother to suckle her child. Many 

 a mother who really wants to nurse her baby, 

 but because of her small supply of milk is 

 prevented, might, by a little judicious advice 

 as to diet and proper habits, be rendered 

 perfectly competent. Instead of this, that 

 convenient bottle is adopted, which is thus 

 graphically described by Dr. Mary A. Wil- 

 lard: u When the poor, pinched, blue, weaz- 

 ened little creatures were brought to me in 

 the dispensary in New York, where they used 

 to come by the dozen, I would call for their 

 nursing-bottles, take a whiff of their sour, 

 putrid contents, swarming with bacteria, pull 

 off the rubber nipple and the ivory guard, 

 rip up the long tube with my penknife, and 

 scrape off the green, poisonous matter, tyro- 



toxicon, and spread it out on my palm before 

 the astonished mother." Combine with such 

 a state of affairs in the bottle some one of 

 the dry milk foods, or a diluted condensed 

 milk, and the babies' chances are pretty 

 slim. The dry milk powders, including malt- 

 ed milk, are, from their nature, deficient in 

 fats and contain a large excess of sugar, 

 which is harmful because of the readiness 

 with which it undergoes fermentation. As 

 for the condensed milks, during a recent ex- 

 amination of the milk supply of London, 

 seventeen brands were examined ; fourteen 

 of these were found to have been prepared 

 entirely from skimmed milk, and showed 

 an average of only 0*72 per cent of fat. 

 Genuine full-cream brands of condensed milk 

 contain from ten to twelve per cent of fat. 

 Considering the far-reaching and deplorable 

 effects which reliance upon such foods must 

 lead to, it is of the utmost importance that 

 physicians and parents should understand 

 the dangers of prepared-milk feeding. 



Examinations. From a recent address 

 delivered by Jonathan Hutchinson, and pub- 

 lished in the Lancet, we quote the follow- 

 ing very pertinent passages : " Examinations 

 should be made as little distasteful as possi- 

 ble. The candidate ought to feel throughout 

 his studies that in presenting himself to an 

 examiner he does that which is equivalent to 

 placing himself on a weighing machine, and 

 that the verdict recorded will be in exact re- 

 lation to his deserts. . . . The personal ele- 

 ment, that of the examiner, should be elimi- 

 nated as far as possible. To this end viva- 

 voce examinations should, as far as prac- 

 ticable, be avoided. I have heard a self- 

 confident examiner allege that he could tell 

 better what was in a man in five minutes' 

 conversation than by reading any number of 

 his written papers, and I did not doubt that 

 he thought so. This judgment of men, as 

 it were, by personal inspection is often most 

 fallacious, and should be permitted only with 

 the utmost circumspection. It by no means 

 follows that the disuse of the viva voce 

 would throw us back wholly on set verbal 

 questions. There remains the extensive field 

 of objective examination. . . . This kind of 

 examination it is which conduces most of all 

 to sound matter-of-fact objective teaching. 

 It is perhaps the most important of all modes, 



