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SCIENCE, 



[Vol. XVII. No. 426 



HEALTH MATTERS. 

 Suicide among German Children. 



A CUKIOUS I'eturn has been made concerning some 289 instances 

 of suicide V)y schoolchildren in the German Empire during the 

 sis years 1883 to 1888 inclusive, as we learn from the Lancet of 

 Jan. 31. The interest of the return centres in the motives as- 

 signed for these extraordinary acts. Among the cases which 

 could be so explained, the largest proi^ortion appear to have been 

 attributable to fear of punishment. This, perhaps, might have 

 been expected ; nor is it altogether surprising that such extreme 

 terror should be chiefly exhibited among pupils of the elementary 

 schools. The fact that twenty per cent of all the collected cases 

 fall into this particular class should, however, afford food for 

 reflection. It is certain that undue severity has been 

 practised, or at least undue apprehension has been aroused, in 

 every one of these instances, seeing that the little victims 

 were so far thrown off their balance by it as to be driven to 

 the extremity of suicide. It would be unjust to assume that for 

 these exaggerated fears the teachers are wholly or even mainly 

 responsible; but, on the other band, no really efficient teacher 

 would ever leave upon ■x child's mind an impression so horrible as 

 to precipitate sucli a crisis as this. The child who takes his own 

 life rather than face an angry teacher must believe, rightly or 

 wrongly, in the ferocity of the teacher; and it is much to be 

 feared that children of tender years, even when they are not so 

 terror-stricken as this, are apt to nurse a suspicion that most 

 strangers and some friends, the teacher in particular among the 

 latter, are human wolves. To eradicate this mischievous misap- 

 prehension ought to be one of the first tasks of a successful pre- 

 ceptor. Among the high-school pupils the suicides are almost 

 exclusively boys, and here the most common motive is dread or 

 disappointment in connection with examinations. Mental de- 

 rangement and thwarted ambition come next in order, while pre- 

 cocious sentiment claims its share to the extent of four hoys 

 and one girl, whose unhappiness is recorded as due to une affaire 

 de coeur. It is some satisfaction to be able to add that these emo- 

 tional young people were all past the elementary school stage. 



In the British Medical Journal, Oct. 11, 1890, the following 

 additional data are given: — 



Of the 289 cases of suicide among scbool-children in Prussia, 

 240 of them were boys, and 49 girls. The cases are apportioned 

 among the different years as follows: in 188B there were 58 sui- 

 cides; in 1834.41; in 1885, 40; in-18-6. 44; in 1887,50; and in 1888, 

 56. In 86, or 29.8 per cent, of the cases, the motive of the deed is 

 unknown; but in 80 the causes were fear of punishuient; in 19, 

 disappointed ambition; in 16, fear of examination; and in 28, 

 insanity and melancholia ; 5 of the suicides are attributed to love: 

 and 7 are believed to have been half unintentional. 



The Action of Koch's Liquid on the Monkey. 



The effects of Kochs liquid on a quadrumanous animal so vul- 

 nerable to the invasion of the bacillus as the monkey have been 

 investigated recently by Henocque at the College de France, says 

 the Lancet of March 7. M. Henocque states that when his mon- 

 key entered the laboratory (Dec. 21, 1890), auscultation yielded 

 no physical signs denoting phthisis. Two days after the first in- 

 jection a few rales and impaired resonance were noted at the right 

 apex. The third injection determined dulness still more marked, 

 and, in addition, slight dulness at the left apex. From this 

 moment all the symptoms of acute phthisis manifested themselves 

 (cough, anorexia, debility, intense fever) ; and eight days later 

 the animal died, having lost a tenth of his weight. At the ne- 

 cropsy four tubercular masses of the size of a big pea were dis- 

 covered in the right lung, the left organ in two-thirds of its 

 extent being the seat of caseous pneumonia. Surroundmg the 

 lesions there were zones of i-ed hepatization, with marked exuda- 

 tion of red blood-corpuscles. 'J'wo guinea-pigs have been inocu- 

 lated with portions of the pneumonic tissue, and both animals 

 now present signs of cutaneous and glandular infection. The 

 total quantity of fluid received by the monkey was six milligrams, 

 — a quantity apparently quite capable of determining the onset 

 of acute phthisis. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 

 The facts derived from the study of soil-absorption at the 

 Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station, Lafayette, 

 Ind., lead to the same conclusion as the results of the latest ex- 

 periments on the use of fertilizers, — that, in a system of farming 

 having in view large crops and permanent improvement of the 

 land, phosphoric acid and potash should be used in considerably 

 greater amounts than the crops required, while nitrogen com- 

 pounds should be used in amounts not greatly in excess of the 

 needs of the crop. 



— Professor Ogata of Tokio reports a case of cholera occurring 

 in a dog. The dog had been vomiting and purging for some time, 

 according to the Medical Record of March 28, and was brought to 

 Dr. Ogata's laboratory by a police-surgeon. After the death of 

 th' animal, several plate-cultures were made of the contents of the 

 small intestine, from which comma bacilli were obtained in almost 

 pure culture. Examination under the microscope, of a thin piece 

 of the small intestine, which had been kept in alcohol and stained 

 with gentian violet and alkaline methyl blue, showed the presence 

 of the comma baciUi, not only on the surface of the mucous mem- 

 brane, but also within Lieberkuhn's glands. 



— The habits of Brachytrypus, the huge desert cricket of the 

 Mediterranean region, have only recently been studied by A. 

 Forel, although, excepting the mole crickets, it is the largest 

 known European form. The reason appears, as we learn from 

 Psyche for April, in the fact that it is a nocturnal insect, remain- 

 ing in its burrows by day, and even closing the entrance to the 

 same (although it is three or four centimeti'es in diameter) to an 

 extent of sever-al centimetres, leaving only a little sand-heap to 

 mark its place. Dr. Forel discovered them by marking the spot 

 where he saw and heard them chirping lustily in the dusk, and 

 tlie next morning detected the heaps, carefully removing which, 

 the burrows were found. These extended for over a metre in 

 length, and half as much in depth ; and digging the creature out 

 was a thankless task. Dr. Forel obtained some by drowning 

 them out, and others in a way characteristic of a myrmecologist. 

 He secured a bag of ants, a species of Acantholepis, and, setting 

 them loose before the burrow, they entered it, and soon ousted 

 the occupant. 



— In the Lancet of Feb. 14, Mr. J. A Wanklyn. in a note on alde- 

 palraitic acid, says that it has long been known that the acids arising 

 from the saponification of butter include small proportions of butyr- 

 ic, caproic, caprylic, and rutic acids. The larger proportion of the 

 acids has, up to the present, been held to consist of palmitic, oleic, 

 and stearic acids, which are non-volatile, and insoluble in water. 

 In the course of investigations with which he has been engaged for 

 a number of years, Mr. Wanklyn states that he has arrived at the 

 very unexpected result that the main acid is not palmitic acid, but 

 an acid quite distinct from palmitic acid, both in composition and 

 properties. On the 19th of January he had the honor of reading 

 a paper on the subject before the Society of Chemical Industry, 

 and in due time the details will doubtless be published. In the 

 mean time it may be of interest to mention that the new acid, 

 which is so abundant as to amount to about half of the weight of 

 the dry butter, differs from palmitic acid by containing less hy- 

 drogen, and that its formula is (CisHj^Os)}!.. The melting-point 

 of the new acid is about 50" C, whereas palmitic acid melts at 

 62" C. The new acid possesses the extraordinary property of con- 

 solidating or gelatinizing alcohol. At temperatures below 5" C it 

 gelatinizes more than five times its weight of alcohol. Part of 

 the alcohol is held mechanically by a sponge-like action, and part 

 is retained in chemical combinatiou. Palmitic acid possesses no 

 such property : indeed, no other substance does. 



— The following is an abstract of a bulletin of the Ohio Experi- 

 ment Station, now awaiting publication by the State printer The 

 oat-crop of Ohio for 1890 was one of the poorest on record : it was 

 quite the poorest at the experiment station, owing to the attack 

 of a peculiar disease which caused the blades to turn yellow when 

 the oat-plants were about six inches high, and stunted their growth 

 throughout the season. Only four out of the fifty- four differently 

 named sorts tested by the station in 1890 yielded so much as 

 thirty- three bushels per acre. Generally, five to eight pecks of 



