332 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 354 



the greater depth at which the mines will have to be worked, and 

 the increased cost of coal-mining. Reference was then made to 

 the great expansion of coal-mining in America, and the author 

 agreed with the late Professor Jevons that future British manufac- 

 turers must not expect to derive any help from the import of coal 

 from the United States when coal shall have become dear or scarce 

 at home. 



A good discussion followed the reading of this paper. Mr. 

 Bourne pointed out that the opening of the Canadian route to the 

 East would ease the demand on English product, as coal had been 

 discovered in the Dominion. Thus the Peninsular and Oriental 

 ships, instead of filling with English coal at foreign stations, would 

 probably be running from Vancouver to China and Japan, and use 

 Canadian coal. The speaker looked to petroleum to lessen the de- 

 mand for coal in many instances, as it had already done in many 

 cases. He did not consider the electric light had done much in 

 this direction, but, if water-power could be more largely used, some 

 relief might be hoped for in that direction. 



Mr. G. W. Hastings, M.P., spoke on the aspect of the question 

 from the political economist's standpoint, and pointed out that 

 coal-owners had been making very little profit from their ex- 

 ports. 



Mr. John Marley, president of the Northern Institute of Mining 

 and Mechanical Engineers (Darlington), said it would be well if 

 Professor Hull had taken into consideration one or two facts in con- 

 nection with the coal-trade. One was that thirty years ago the 

 amount of coal required for the production of eyery ton of pig-iron 

 and its detailed manufacture was double the quantity it is now. 

 That would, therefore, form an element in future calculations. 

 Also the manufacture of steel only required about half the number 

 of tons of coal which was required for each ton of manufactured 

 iron. Another point which the professor had named was his 

 differing from the Royal Coal Commission in not taking into ac- 

 count the coal-seams between 12 inches and 24 inches in thickness. 

 The professor evidently thought that these seams will not come 

 into play so much as he (Mr. Marley) would venture to sub- 

 mit they will, on account of the great depth to which shafts 

 will have to be sunk to work them. He would call Professor 

 Hull's attention to the fact that these shafts have to be sunk, 

 and are sunk, to the thicker seams ; and when these thicker 

 seams are exhausted, then the thin «eams, between i foot and 2 

 feet in thickness, come into play. He spoke of what^was an actual 

 fact, for he knew many instances where seams of 14, 16, and 18 

 inches were at this moment being worked profitably in the county 

 of Durham from shafts sunk from the thicker seams. Professor 

 Hull would therefore see that his objection to the expensive shafts 

 for these thin seams did not really apply. 



Professor Hull, in reply, did not anticipate that petroleum, how- 

 ever largely it was likely to come into use in England, would make 

 very much difference in the demand for coal. As to Mr. Marley's 

 remarks on the greater economy of fuel in the manufacture of iron, 

 he himself could remember when eight tons of coal were required 

 in the Midlands for the production of one ton of iron, while now only 

 ij tons of coke were required in Cleveland per ton of pig-iron. At 

 the same time, the economy in the use of coal was more than coun- 

 terbalanced by the enormous increase in the production of iron. 



HEALTH MATTERS. 



if I include the cases of anassthesia, it is probably considerably 

 smaller. 



" Dr. Denis, in his book on this subject, says, ' En nioyenne, on 

 observe 2.5 cas d'alienation mentale sur 100 operations.' But if 

 this had .been the case, all of us engaged in active operating prac- 

 tice would have felt the influence of the fact long ago. Personally 

 I have been struck by the occurrence of insanity after operations 

 as being like the occurrence of tetanus, — something to be met 

 with occasionally, but not a matter to calculate upon. If I saw an 

 insanity rate of 2.5 in my operations, it would be more striking 

 than any death-rate in every thing but my hysterectomies, and in 

 that class I have already said I have never seen insanity follow in 

 a single instance ; and Dr. Bantock's experience amounts to prac- 

 tically the same result, for his exception cannot really be called one 

 of insanity following an operation. As a. per contra, I can point to 

 at least thirteen cases where operations have cured insanity." 



Transplantation of Skin from a Corpse to a Living 

 Person. — Dr. Bartens has successfully transplanted the skin of a 

 corpse to a living person who had been severely burned. His 

 method of procedure, as described in the Brooklyn Medical Jour- 

 nal, was as follows : On Dec. 13 a lunatic died in the hospital of 

 pyaemia following a compound fracture of the arm, and about 

 twenty minutes after his death two large, good-conditioned flaps 

 were removed from the legs of the corpse. These were laid in 

 warm water to which a little salt had been added, and then were 

 taken to the division of the hospital (two or three hundred yards 

 away) in which the scalded boy lay. These flaps were then care- 

 fully washed, and cleansed of their subjacent fatty pannus ; that 

 done, they were divided into smaller pieces of from one centimetre 

 wide to about one to two centimetres long (the ulcerated surfaces 

 of the boy's legs had been cleansed in the same manner as the 

 flaps in the mean time) ; then these pieces were laid on to fit as 

 nearly as might be, dusted over with iodoform and covered with 

 batting, and compresses applied. This whole proceeding took 

 about one hour and a half from the time of the death of the old 

 man. There were twenty-eight pieces applied in all ; as it hap- 

 pened, too, fourteen on each limb. On the 19th of December the 

 bandages were removed for the first time, and it was found that 

 there was union of twenty-four of these grafts. 



Cocaine Hallucinations. — MM. Magnan and Saury report 

 three cases of hallucination due to the cocaine habit. According 

 to the British Medical Journal, one patient was always scraping 

 his tongue, and thought he was extracting from it little black 

 worms ; another made his skin raw in the endeavor to draw out 

 cholera microbes ; and a third, a physician, is perpetually looking 

 for cocaine crystals under his skin. Two patients suffered from 

 epileptic attacks, and a third from cramps. It is important to 

 notice that two of these patients were persons who had resorted to 

 cocaine in the hope of being able to cure themselves thereby of the 

 morphine habit, — an expectation which had been disappointed. 

 For more than a year they had daily injected from one to two 

 grams of cocaine under the skin ; without, however, giving up the 

 morphine injections, which were only reduced in quantity. The 

 possibility of substituting cocainism in the endeavor to cure mor- 

 phinomania is a danger, therefore, which must be carefully held m 

 view. 



Insanity following Surgical Operations. 



In a recent letter to the British Medical Jourtial, Dr. Tait 

 writes, — 



" I have now performed, so far as I can estimate, between seven 

 thousand and eight thousand operations requiring the use of an- 

 sesthetics, and 1 have had anesthetics administered in my practice 

 for purposes not involving traumatism probably in three thousand 

 more instances, and I know of seven cases of sequent — not neces- 

 rarily consequent — insanity. Of course, there may have been 

 others not known to me, and 1 shall say fourteen cases to cover 

 that margin of error. My own practice, therefore, does not yield a 

 proportion of cases of insanity following operations larger than the 

 general proportion of insanity in the adult female population ; and. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The officers for the coming year of the Society for the Promo- 

 tion of Agricultural Science are Professor C. E. Bessey of the Uni- 

 versity of Nebraska, for president ; Professor W. R. Lazenby of 

 Ohio University, for secretary and treasurer ; and professor T. J. 

 Burrill of Illinois University, for third member of the council. 



— The thirty-third annual convention of the Association of Col- 

 lege Presidents in New England began Nov. 7, in New Haven,. 

 Conn., at the residence of President Dwight. Delegates were 

 present from eleven colleges, including President Eliot of Harvard, 

 President Warren of the University of Boston, Professor Richard- 

 son of Dartmouth, President Smith of Trinity, President Carter of 



