September 28, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



15^ 



but not with action of pancreatic extract on starch. Peptic and 

 pancreatic digestions of albuminoids were almost prevented by this 

 agent. 



It is obvious from these experiments that the indiscriminate use 

 of these agents in the preservation of food is to be regarded as ob- 

 jectionable and a proper subject of sanitary supervision. Tlieir use 

 is scarcely allowable under any circumstances, and certainly only 

 when the nature of the preservative, and the amount, are distinctly 

 stated. These remarks apply more particularly to salicylic acid, 

 saccharine, and beta-naphtliol ; but the use of boric acid and sodium 

 acid sulphite may be brought also under the same restrictions, be- 

 cause their actions on the animal functions are not yet thoroughly 

 investigated. 



Contagiousness of Leprosy. — The contagiousness of lep- 

 rosy still continues to be a mooted question. Dr. Rake, superin- 

 tendent of the Trinidad Leper Hospital, has made a report to the 

 British Medical Association which embodies the results of his ex- 

 periments in the cultivation of the germ of leprosy, the bacillus 

 Icprcc, which have been under way for the past four years. He 

 says that (i) at a tropical temperature and on the ordinary nutrient 

 media he has failed to grow the bacillus kprcE ; (2) in all animals 

 yet examined he has failed to find any local growth or general dis- 

 semination of the bacillus after inoculation, whether beneath the 

 skin, in the abdominal cavity, or in the anterior chamber; feeding 

 with leprous tissues has also given negative results ; (3) he has 

 found no growth of the bacillus lepra: when placed in putrid fluids 

 or buried in the earth. He further says that an inquiry of this kind 

 is practically endless, so varied are the conditions of temperature, 

 time, nutrient media, living animal tissues, or putrescent substance, 

 and so many are the observations necessary to avoid or lessen the 

 risk of errors of experiment. 



Fatal Seasickness. — It is not often that seasickness proves 

 fatal ; and yet that it may do so under aggravated circumstances, 

 can easily be imagined. Such an instance recently occurred on the 

 steamer ' Dunara Castle,' on the trip from Tiree to the Clyde. 

 The patient was a girl, aged eight years, in whom the seasickness 

 terminated in a convulsion, which proved fatal. 



Milk. — Dr. S. Henry Dessau, in a letter to the New York 

 Medical Jiecord, recommends the use of fresh condensed milk as a 

 substitute for mother's milk. His objections to the use of cow's 

 milk as supplied by the milk-dealers are, that during the summer 

 months it is impossible to obtain it fresh and unadulterated in 

 large cities, unless at a cost beyond the reach of the masses. All 

 of the milk that is delivered in the market of New York is at least 

 from twelve to twenty-four hours old, and has undergone rough 

 transportation of from fifteen to thirty miles in not strictly clean 

 vessels. The cans used in bringing the milk to the city are not 

 cleansed until returned to their owner. By the time that the milk 

 has reached the poorer classes, it has commonly undergone more 

 or less adulteration, often in spite of the closest watching by the 

 health authorities. In the course of its consumption by the aver- 

 age infant, it is still further liable to lactic-acid fermentation, and, 

 even though boiled, it is not unlikely to become scorched or made 

 otherwise unwholesome for the infant. Perhaps the most impor- 

 tant objection to cow's milk, notwithstanding the fact that it is 

 regarded as the nearest approach to mother's milk, is the difficult 

 digestion of the caseine by the delicate infant whose stomach has 

 been damaged by an attack of summer diarrhoea. This has neces- 

 sitated the invention of numerous means and measures for over- 

 coming the obstacle, the most common of which is the addition of 

 some farinaceous substance. Such practice for an infant, previous 

 to the eruption of its teeth, is contrary to the provisions of nature, 

 and, though occasionally successful, cannot be defended as a gen- 

 eral usage upon physiological principles. Dr. Dessau thinks it 

 impossible to adulterate condensed milk, and that the caseine of 

 condensed milk is so altered in the condensing process as to be 

 very easily digested. He even prefers it to milk sterilized by 

 Soxhlet's method. 



Death bv Drowning. — Dr. Paul Loye, according to the 

 Lancet, has published some observations made by Iiim, bearing on 

 the phenomena which precede death by sudden immersion. The 



first stage of deep inspirations lasts about ten seconds, followed by 

 a re-action caused by the resistance to the entrance of water into 

 the bronchioles. This lasts for a minute, and is succeeded by 

 arrest of respiration and loss of consciousness. Finally the scene 

 closes with four or five respiratory efforts — the last. Immersion 

 causes an immediate rise in the blood-pressure, with slowing of 

 the heart-beats. The action of the heart remains slow but strong 

 till death ensues. The pressure gradually lessens, but rises just 

 before death, to fall to zero immediately afterward. The heart 

 sometimes continues to beat feebly for about twenty minutes. 

 The result is the same in animals which have been tracheotomized : 

 the period of respiratory resistance is therefore due to the respira- 

 tory muscles, and not to spasm of the glottis. 



Inherited Deficiency of a Tooth. — Dr. Cryer says, ir> 

 the Philadelphia Medical Times, that he has, among his patients^ 

 members of the same family, representing five generations, each 

 lacking the left lower lateral incisor tooth. An interesting feature- 

 of this remarkable instance of heredity is that one of the members 

 of the same family has a supernumerary lower incisor. 



Whooping-Cough. — The value of Mobin's treatment of 

 whooping-cough by sulphurous acid is receiving strong confirma- 

 tion from many sources. Dr. Manly, in the Practitioner, ex- 

 presses the opinion, that, if it was carried out in every case, at the 

 end of six months the disease would be unknown. The method 

 used by him is as follows: the patient is in the morning put into- 

 clean clothes and removed elsewhere. All his clothes and toys, 

 etc., are brought into the bedroom, and sulphur is burnt upon a few 

 live-coals in the middle of the room. The fire is allowed to re- 

 main in the room for five hours, and then the windows and doors. 

 are thrown open. The child sleeps in the room the same evening. 

 About twenty-five grams (a little under an ounce) of sulphur to 

 every cubic metre may be burnt ; this is equivalent to rather more 

 than ten grains per cubic foot. The room is fumigated in a like 

 manner during the night ; the patient practically living in an atmos- 

 phere of diluted sulphurous-acid gas for some days, while in several 

 cases the process is repeated at the end of a week. 



The Power of the Imagination. — We learn from the New- 

 Orleans Picayune that Dr. Durand, wishing to test the practical 

 effect of mind-disease, gave a hundred patients a dose of sweetened 

 water. Fifteen minutes after, entering apparently in great excite- 

 ment, he announced that he had by mistake given a powerful 

 emetic, and preparations must be made accordingly. Eighty out 

 of the hundred patients became thorougly ill, and exhibited the 

 usual result of an emetic : twenty were unaffected. The curious 

 part of it is, that, with very few exceptions, the eighty ' emeticized " 

 subjects were men, while the strong-minded few, who were not to- 

 be caught with chaff, were women. 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 

 The Recognition of Sense-Impressions. 



We inherit from so ancient a philosopher as Aristotle the recog- 

 nition of the process of the association of ideas, as well as of the 

 laws by which it acts. He distinguished association by similarity, 

 by contrast, by simultaneity, and by successiveness. The contrast 

 that binds together is due to an underlying similarity, and the latter 

 term may stand for both processes. So, again, the last pair may- 

 be included under association by adjacency. In the hope of de- 

 cidmg which of these two general processes is the more real and 

 generic, or whether, perhaps, the two apply to two different spheres- 

 of perceptions, Dr Alfred Lehmann {Philosophische Studien. v. i) 

 devised a series of experiments, which, aside from their bearing 

 upon this theoretical problem, present many points of interest. 



The association of ideas is seen at work in the process of recall- 

 ing, of recognizing as familiar, former impressions. We may speak, 

 of a simple recognition in w-hich the mere identity of the present 

 recollection with the mental impression formerly registered is the 

 point ; or of a recognition with details in which the time, place, 

 outward circumstances, are also recalled w-ith the remembrance of 

 the impression, say, that of meeting a friend. To this must be 

 added the recognition by means of these details, they ser\'ing as 



