December 12, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



33^ 



Fall" of the emptre, a young man of foreign appearance, about 

 five in the evening, was seen to be making the round of the sev- 

 eral chapels. Suddenly he stopped before the altar of St. Francis 

 of Assisi, and remained in rapt attention before the picture of the 

 saint. More than an hour elapsed, and he was still seen standing, 

 perfectly motionless, his eyes Bxed on the well-known painting. 

 At last the eustode, as it was time to close the church, told him 

 that he must withdraw. The stranger seemed not to hear, and 

 moved neither a foot nor a muscle, still gazing as if in ecstasy at 

 the picture. The eustode shook him, and urged him to go, but in 

 vain, till at length the Municipal Guard were called in, and the 

 young man was lifted bodily from the pavement, and taken first 

 to the station-house, and then to the Ospedale della Consolazione. 

 The guard had tried to bring him to consciousness by dashing 

 , water in his face and shaking him; but, finding these measures 

 inefEectual, — the man remaining with his eyes fixed on some in- 

 visible object above, and not a muscle of his bodj' stirring, — they 

 brought him to the medical waiting-room of the Consolazione. 

 There the physicians immediately pronounced the case to be one 

 of hypnotism, and, after various remedies had been tried without 

 success, they at last succeeded in bringing him to consciousness 

 by hypodermic injections of ether. On coming to himself, the 

 patient turned out to be a Bavarian; and one of the attaches of 

 the German Embassy, who had been summoned, identified him as 

 a young, recently graduated physician of Munich, who had been 

 subject to hypnotic fits for some time past. Thanking all the 

 officials— medical, municipal, and diplomatic — for the care and 

 kindness he had experienced at their hands, he returned to bis 

 hotel. The Roman press, commenting on the occurrence, remarks 

 that two or three centuries ago the same phenomenon would have 

 been regarded as treasure-trove by the church, and the chapel of 

 St. Francis of Assisi, in the Ara Coeli, would have attracted 

 crowds of pilgrims eager to come under the direct influence of 

 the saint. Medical science, however, may now say, "Nous avons 

 change tout cela." 



The Protection from Diphtheria and Tetanus by Inoculation. 



The Berlin correspondent of the Medical Record has cabled to 

 that journal under date of Dec. 4 that he has received advanced 

 proofs of an article on the prevention of diphtheria and tetanus 

 in animals, based upon experiments in the Hygienic Institute at 

 Berlin, made by Dr. Behring, assistant in the institute, and Dr. 

 Katasato of Tokio. He states that after long experimentation, 

 these observers claim to have cured animals suffering from either 

 of these diseases — diphtheria and tetanus — by the inoculation of 

 the serum from the blood of animals already infected. It is 

 claimed by a large number of experiments, first, that the blood of 

 rabbits protected from tetanus possesses the property of destroying 

 the tetanus poison ; second, that this property is possessed by the 

 non-cellular serum obtained from the blood; third, that this prop- 

 erty is of so constant a nature that it also remains active in the 

 organism of other animals, so that notable therapeutic effects 

 are produced by the transfusion of blood or serum; fourth, that 

 the property of destroying the tetanus virus is absent in the blood 

 of those animals which are not protected against tetanus, and, if 

 the tetanus virus is injected into non-protected animals, it can be 

 so demonstrated, even after the death of the animals, in the blood 

 and in the other fluids of the body. 



The Curability of Galloping Consumption. 



The announcement by so well-known a physician as Dr. McCall 

 Anderson that acute phthisis, or galloping consumption, is curable, 

 excites a good deal of surprise and quite as much incredulity; yet 

 the Medical Record states that Dr. Anderson reports seven cases 

 of this character, of which five recovered. 



Cancer Mortality among the Jews. 



An English paper (quoted by the Medical Record) states that 

 one of the lecturers at Owens College, Manchester, has put 

 forward the assertions (1) " that no Jew or Jewess has ever been 

 known to suffer from cancer;" and (2) that " the immunity of 

 the Hebrew race from this frightful scourge was attributed to 

 their abstinence from swine's flesh." 



The Micro-Organisms of Standing Water. 



Drs. Scala and Alessi, according to La Rivista Internazionale 

 d'Igiene for August, have completed a series of experiments 

 demonstrating that micro-organisms multiply in standing water 

 at the expense of the organic matter liberated in the water, this- 

 multiplication being but slightly influenced by a temperature a 

 little above zero. They note the fact that micro-organisms 

 diminish in water charged with carbonic acid. After demon- 

 strating that light, movement, pressure, and cold have no influ- 

 ence on these micro-organisms, they experimented directly witb 

 carbonic acid, their experiments resulting in the proof of the- 

 lethal action of carbonic acid on the micro-organisms of water. 

 This action they consider analogous to that by which other fer- 

 ments die in liquids produced by themselves. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. Tlie zvriter's name- 

 is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character 

 of the Journal. 



On request^ twenty copies of the number containing his connmunication wiU 

 be furnished free to any correspondent. 



Right-Handedness . 



Anent the articles in Science upon right-handedness and effort,, 

 by Professors James and Baldwin, it may not be amiss to call at- 

 tention to the anatomical and physiological conditions that offer 

 at least one explanation of right-handedness in most persons. 



That one cerebral hemisphere stands in dominant relation with 

 the opposite side of the body is so well known that it is only men- 

 tioned as a reminder ; but it may not be generally known that the 

 left cerebral hemisphere is larger than the right, its inner face (at 

 the great longitudinal fissure) coming very near to the middle- 

 line, while the cowesponding inner edge of the right hemisphere- 

 is well to the right of the median line. The existence, then, of 

 greater nutrition and greater functionating ability in the left 

 hemisphere might well be assumed. But that there is a reason 

 for the greater size, deyelopment, etc., of the left hemisphere, is- 

 evidenced by a study of the conditions of blood-supply to the two 

 hemispheres. The left carotid artery ascends almost perpendicu- 

 larly so as to form, as it were, an elongation of the ascending: 

 aorta, while the right carotid is given oS from the arteria in- 

 nominata. The right vertebral artery is given off by the subcla- 

 vian after the latter has described its arch and become horizontal,, 

 but the left vertebral arises from the apex of the subclavian'* 

 curve. There is thus the distinct advantage to the left hemi- 

 sphere of a better blood-supply because of the much straighter 

 course taken by the great channels carrying it. On the other 

 hand, this greater directness of communication between the heart 

 and left hemisphere explains the greater readiness with which the 

 latter is subjected to certain forms of disease. A clot of fibrine 

 whipped off a diseased valve is carried much more readily be- 

 cause of the direct route (via the carotid) to the left hemisphere v 

 and in conditions of degenerative weakness of the arteries in gen- 

 eral, those of the left hemisphere, being subjected to greater press- 

 ure in their distal ramifications, will be more apt to yield than 

 corresponding ones in the right. 



In passing, it may be mentioned that the location in the left 

 hemisphere of the centres connected with the faculty of language 

 is explainable on the ground of better development of that hemi- 

 sphere. An admirable lecture on this subject by Professor Gerhardt 

 appeared in Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, No. 18, 1887. 



Concerning the different periods at vvhich different motor activi- 

 ties become manifested in the human infant, it is weU to remem- 

 ber that the voluntary motor tract is not completely developed in the- 

 human being until after the end of the first year (Flecbsig), and that 

 the fibres developing from the occipital cortex only begin to appear 

 between the second and third months of extra-uterine life. Up- 

 to the latter period, motor activities following visual stimulation 

 must be considered as reflex; but the use of the right hand pre- 

 dominantly, or at a later period Iroui conscious choice, is a conse- 



