July 30, 1886.] 



SCIEJ^CE. 



95 



expression is that of a man of high blood, grave, 

 and full of will. The head is rather small ; the 

 hair white and rather thin, especially in front. 

 The jaw is very strong : there are no teeth in the 

 mouth. The hands are very elegant, and are yet 

 reddened by the henne, which was used for the 

 body's last toilet. 



Two other corpses have been found. One was 

 in the sarcophagus containing the remains of 

 Ramses II. The body was not as well preserved. 

 It is beheved to be one of the sisters or daughters 

 of Ramses. The other corpse is that of Ramses 

 III. The face is that of an intelligent and refined 

 man, but the expression of power and will is less 

 pronounced. The mouth is very large, and the 

 teeth are all in good order. M. Maspero intends 

 to have these royal corpses renovated and set in 

 good order : they will then be exposed in the 

 Boulaq museum, where everybody can look and 

 wonder. 



Apropos of the recent census of Paris, the full 

 results of which I have not yet seen, some papers 

 have recalled some peculiarities of the last census, 

 taken in 1881. At that time there was one mar- 

 ried man of seventeen, one married woman of 

 fourteen, three widowers of eighteen, and two 

 widows of sixteen. Instances of old age were 

 pretty frequent : 6,386 persons were aged over 80 

 years ; 2,747, over 85 ; 640, over 90 ; 138, over 95, 

 There were twenty centenarians, — four bachelors, 

 one married man, six widowers, one unmarried 

 woman, one married one, and seven widows. It 

 seems that conjugal life is not very favorable to 

 old age : misanthropes, or rather misogyns, may 

 take a hint, and philosophers may moralize on 

 this statistical fact. Although the full results of 

 the 1886 census are not known, it is certain that 

 the population of Paris has increased by a hundred 

 thousand persons since 1881. Artists of all sorts 

 are very abundantly represented in Paris ; the 

 number being 42,626, of whom over 20,000 are 

 women. 



A surgeon of Tours, Dr. Thomas, has recently 

 communicated a very interesting fact concerning 

 the surgery of the fingers. A man, while passing 

 over a gate, lost the whole skin of one of his 

 fingers ; a ring around one of them having got 

 caught between the gate and an iron bar, and the 

 weight of the man while jumping having forcibly 

 dragged the finger through the ring. The ring and 

 the skin remained an entire hour on the gate. Dr. 

 Thomas secured both, and reintroduced the scalped 

 finger into its normal envelope. Although the 

 whole skin did not adhere, a good part of it was 

 restored to life ; and it is possible, that, if the opera- 

 tion could have been performed earlier, the result 

 might have been quite satisfactory. 



M. Grancher, professor in the medical school of 

 Paris, and medical assistant of M. Pasteur, espe- 

 cially in anti-rabid inoculations, — Pasteur not 

 being legaUy qualified for medical practice, — 

 recently gave a very interesting lecture at the 

 Paris exhibition for hygiene, on rabies. He di- 

 vides the persons who apply to Pasteur for treat- 

 ment into three classes, — 1°, those who have 

 been bitten by dogs positively rabid, which have 

 communicated rabies to other dogs, or from whoso 

 nervous system rabbits have been rendered rabid ; 

 2°, those bitten by dogs pronounced rabid during 

 life or after death by veterinarians ; 3°, those 

 bitten by dogs of which nothing is known. Put- 

 ting aside persons bitten recently, and whose fate 

 is yet uncertain, M. Grancher says that the total 

 of persons coming under the three preceding classes 

 is 1,335, As to the first category, according to a 

 very severe and strict statistical review by M. Le- 

 blanc, the usual death-rate of persons bitten and 

 not inoculated is 16 per cent. When Pasteur's 

 method is employed, this death-rate is only 1.04 

 per cent. In the second category, with Pasteur's 

 treatment, it is only 0.46 per cent. No account is 

 taken of the third category, for reasons easily 

 understood. Now, if account is taken only of the 

 persons that have been bitten in the face or on the 

 hands, it is known, on the authority of Brouardel, 

 that the usual death-rate is 80 per cent. With 

 Pasteur's method, the death-rate becomes 1.80 

 per cent for the first category, and 0.75 per cent 

 for the second. As to wolf rabies, the preventive 

 inoculations seem to exert a very powerful and 

 useful influence. The normal death-rate is 66 per 

 cent ; on inoculated persons it is only 14 per cent. 



Upon the whole, the more time advances, the 

 more Pasteur's method seems to be a really useful 

 one, and one of which much is to be expected in 

 the future as well as in the present. But this 

 success must also be a very forcible incentive to 

 the study of the manner in which other parasitical 

 diseases may be prevented. Rabies is certainly a 

 very terrible disease ; but it must be said, that, 

 although very deadly, it is not an important cause 

 of death. It would be much more useful for man- 

 kind to be able to cure tuberculosis, diphtheria, 

 cholera, or the yellow-fever ; and it is to be hoped 

 that Pasteiir and others will give their attention 

 to the subject. Pasteur's splendid success is well 

 fitted to give an impulse to new studies and re- 

 searches, and we sincerely hope that it will. Much 

 is done, certainly, by Jenner's and Pasteur's work, 

 but much more remains to be done. The only 

 difference is, that future experimenters are in 

 possession of a method of study which had hither- 

 to been totally wanting. From a theoretical point 

 of view, there is no a priori reason against the 



