78 



NA TURE 



[May 28, 1896 



cholera) ; and irioculation with them or their toxins inures 

 the individual so treated to resist the attacks of micro-organisms 

 of the same species and of the normal degree of virulence. One 

 way of attenuating or rendering less virulent the toxins is to 

 inject them into an animal that does not easily perish of them 

 (e.g. horse, as regards diphtheria), when they undergo partial 

 intracellular digestion within his tissues. His blood serum then 

 contains altered toxins (the so-called anti-toxins), experience of 

 which inures the cells of an animal of a more susceptible species 

 (e.g. man) to resist the attack of virulent micro-organisms with 

 unaltered toxins. It is noteworthy that when toxins and anti- 

 toxins are mixed the latter may inure the cells to the former 

 before death occurs, for the reason that these do not under 

 normal conditions cause immediate death. For this reason 

 animals are able to withstand much more than a fatal dose of 

 a toxin when it is mixed with the appropriate anti-toxin, and 

 sometimes even to recover from a disease which would otherwise 

 be fatal if during the course of it the anti-toxin is injected. But 

 toxins and anti-toxins are not retained within the system. They 

 are digested by the cells and excreted, and therefore enduring 

 immunity is not conferred by their presence, but by the fact {in 

 some diseases at least) that when the cells are once inured they 

 remain so. 



It is clear that the serum treatment can be useful only in dis- 

 eases against which immunity may be acquired, if only for a 

 short time. In other diseases {e.g. tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy) 

 against which immunity cannot be acquired, which do not run a 

 pretty definite course of limited duration, of which one attack 

 does not protect against subsequent attacks, it is useless ; for here 

 training does not benefit the cells, or if in some cases it does 

 benefit them, this benefit is of such limited duration as to be 

 practically useless. 



After this, from want of space, very dogmatic statement of 

 the rationale of serum-therapeutics, let us inquire what may be 

 hoped from the ceremony of blood-brotherhood in its medical 

 aspects. Clearly nothing. It will not, of course, endow the 

 traveller with his blood-brother's powers of resisting hardship 

 (heat, cold, hunger, &c. ); it will not confer immunity or 

 increased powers of resistance against that class (the most death- 

 dealing class) of diseases against which immunity cannot be 

 acquired ; and lastly, it will not confer immunity or increased 

 powers of resistance against that class of diseases against which 

 immunity can be acquired, unless there is present in the blood- 

 brother this or that micro-organism in an attenuated form, or 

 unless antitoxins are present in him to an inconceivable degree 

 of concentration — very remote possibilities, or rather impossi- 

 bilities, on which the traveller were wise not to count. On the 

 other hand the blood-brother may communicate actual virulent 

 disease, for instance syphilis and malaria. 



G. Archdai.i. Reid. 



Remarkable Sounds. 



In a Japanese work, " Hokuetsu Kidan," by Tachibana no 

 Mochiyo (published circa 1800, tom. ii., fol. 5, seijij.), I have 

 found some remarkable sounds described. Among the details 

 given therein of the " Seven Marvels of the Province of 

 Echigo," we read: "The fifth marvel, the Donari [literally 

 Body Sounds, or Temple Sounds], is a noise certain to be heard 

 in the autumnal days, just before a fine weather turns to stormy, 

 it being sounded as if the thunder falls from the cloud, or the 

 snow slides down a mountain. Where it originates is quite 

 uncertain, as there are in the counties several mountains assigned 

 therefor. The sounds are heard of same intensity in variously 

 distant places." Further, the author recites a folk-tale current 

 in his time among the villagers of Kurotori, in Co. Kambara, 

 which attributes these sounds to the head and body of a hero, 

 Kurotori Hyoe [killed in 1062?]; separately interred under a 

 .Shintoist temple in this village, they ever strive to unite once 

 more. " The marvel, it is said, is now seldom met with ; still 

 it occurs frequently within two or three miles of the village, 

 proceeding doubtless from the precinct of the temple. And 

 the fact is more wonderful that the inhabitants of Kurotori 

 themselves never hear the sounds unless they go out of the 

 village." Concluding the narrative, the author, from his per- 

 sonal observation, argues the action of the tide-waves upon the 

 earth to be the real cause of these curious sounds. 



May iS. KuMAGUsu Minakata. 



NO. 1387. VOL. 54] 



BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA AND DAL.MATIA. 

 'X'HE progress of prehistoric archcfology, the youngest 



-*■ of the inductive sciences, is one of the more im- 

 portant facts in the history of the intellectual dexelop- 

 ment of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Up to 

 1870, attention was chiefly directed to the antiquity of 

 man and his place in the geological record, and to the 

 classification of his advance in the Neolithic, Bronze, and 

 Iron ages in Europe. Man was proved to have lived in a 

 remote past, not to be measured by years and under 

 climatal and geographical conditions totally different to 

 those now met with in Europe. The next ten years were 

 chiefly spent in elaborating the details as to the range of 

 Pakeolithic man, and in working out the sequence of 

 events, separating the Pleistocene period from the dawn 

 of history. The Neolithic, Bronze, and Prehistoric Iron 

 ages of human progress were traced far and wide o\'er 

 nearly the whole of the old and the greater part of the 

 new worlds. In the last decade the centre of archiuo- 

 logical interest has shifted slowly in the direction of the 

 frontier of history. On the one hand the researches of 

 Flinders Petrie have revealed the close connection of 

 ancient Egypt with the nations of the Mediterranean long 

 before the rise of the Greeks, and have rendered it 

 possible for us to use the Egyptian chronology as the 

 standard to fix the date of prehistoric events in Southern 

 Europe and in Asia Minor. On the other, ni these 

 latter areas, inany workers, among whom Schlie- 

 man stands foremost, have revealed the manners and 

 customs, the daily life, the modes of warfare, the 

 habitations, fortresses and tombs of the very peoples who 

 were in touch with Egypt. We even know, thanks to 

 Arthur Evans, that there was a system of writing in 

 the .-Egean area long before the introduction of the 

 Phoenician alphabet, and we may look forward to his 

 future researches to make it intelligible. 



A valuable book ' on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dal- 

 matia is the last contribution to the subject. Under 

 the modest title of " Rambles and Studies," it might 

 very well be taken for the usual book of travels in a land 

 of wonderful beauty, till now practically closed to the 

 ordinary traveller. Under the .Austro-Hungarian do- 

 minion, now some twenty years old, good roads have 

 replaced the old tracks, and law and order reign instead 

 of the brigandage of the past. New lines of railway and 

 of steamers connect the chief centres, manufactures are 

 encouraged, and schools for the education of both 

 Christian and Moslem are in full swing. There are 

 luxurious hotels in place of the old caravanserais, and 

 the records of the past are being carefully preserved in 

 museums, under the charge of competent scientific men, 

 instead of being ruthlessly destroyed, as they were under 

 the old regime. There are snow-covered mountains, 

 great rivers and waterfalls, like those at Ottawa, and 

 lakes embosomed in trees. There are ravines, like 

 those of Miller's Dale, only larger, and caverns, and all 

 the characteristic scenery of the limestone forms the 

 surface of the country. The interest, however, chiefly 

 centres in the inhabitants. The present phase of tran- 

 sition from Eastern to Western ideas is of special value 

 at this time, when the cry of oppressed lands is ringing 

 in the ears of the Western nations, because it shows with 

 what extraordinary rapidity a people ground down to 

 the dust for centuries by the Turk, may become happy 

 and prosperous under a good system of local self- 

 government. What the Austro-Hungarians have done 

 in the Bosnia-Herzegovina, may be done by the Powers 

 in Asia Minor and in the islands of the .-Egean Sea. 

 From this point of view Dr Munro's well-written book 

 is worthy of the attention of our rulers. Dr. Munro has 

 dealt with all these things with a light and pleasant 



1 " Rambles and Studies in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia." By 

 Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.E. 8vo. (Blackwood, 1895.) 



