£86 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 298 



and those intrusted with their use should be informed of their prop- 

 erties, that all necessary precautions may be taken. 



"There is, however, one process of disinfection with corrosive 

 sublimate to which this objection may with some reason be made. 

 I refer to its use for the disinfection of streets, for which purpose it 

 has been employed by the Board of Health of Boston for the past 

 two years or more. If its use for this purpose is continued, the 

 time cannot be far distant when the beds of the streets will become 

 saturated with various compounds of mercury. All of these, so far 

 as we have any knowledge of them, are violent poisons. Is any 

 danger to be apprehended from continually inhaling or swallowing, 

 month after month, dust loaded with compounds of mercury.' 

 This is a question deserving serious consideration at the hands of 

 the Board of Health. While not claiming that the process is posi- 

 tively a dangerous one, I believe it is one which involves some 

 risks, and one which it is advisable, therefore, to discontinue." 



Dependent Children. — We commend to our readers a paper 

 presented to the Prison Congress by Mr. C. H. Reeve of Plymouth, 

 Ind., entitled ' Dependent Children.' He says, " The mass of de- 

 pendent children is largely made up of foundlings, illegitimates, 

 children abandoned by worthless parents, orphans of the very poor, 

 with a few better born who become waifs from various causes. In 

 the cases of nearly all of them except the last, there is more or less 

 mental deficiency, or deformity in the brain substance, or the con- 

 formation or arrangement of brain ganglia. Statute law makes 

 marriage a civil contract, — a matter of dollars and cents. No 

 matter who comes for a marriage permit, - the strong or the weak- 

 minded ; the sound and healthy or the deformed and constitutionally 

 diseased; the miUionnaire or the hereditary pauper; the moral 

 and orderly, or the vicious and confirmed criminal ; the progenitor of 

 statesmen or of idiots ; the sane, or the hereditary insane if favored 

 with a lucid interval ; the temperate or the besotted, — all are given 

 a permit alike. The revenue is collected, the ceremony authorized, 

 the record made, and this civil contract is fully completed by sanc- 

 tion of law. If a man wants to run a locomotive-engine, or prac- 

 tise medicine (elsewhere than in the United States), or plead in the 

 courts, or stand in the sacred desk and talk theology, or teach a 

 school, or run a pilot-boat, or even to secure a pettv clerkship un- 

 der government, he must submit to a rigid e.xamination as to his 

 fitness for the position and its duties, and be able to pass one. 

 But one comes forward to get a permit to enter into a contract 

 that places him under obligations, and demands of him duties, that 

 are the most important, the most responsible, the most sacred, that 

 can be assumed anywhere between the cradle and the grave, that 

 vitally affect the bodies social and politic as well as corporal, now 

 existing and hereafter to exist, directly and indirectly, not a word is 

 said. All are licensed." In his paper he criticises the Church in 

 the following language : " It regards marriage as a holy, sacramen- 

 tal covenant. By permission of law, its ministers ceremonially aid 

 the parties in making this holy covenant, which at the same time 

 involves the statutory civil contract. It makes little or no inquirv 

 as to the candidates (one organization may as to belief in a creed). 

 It looks only for a license, and the fee in prospect. Even in the 

 shadow of the prison-wall and of the gallows, its ministers, in 

 sacerdotal robes, have united criminals. Thus is it sanctioned 

 by the Church ! " He believes that human foresight and legal 

 provisions can prevent these marriages. 



Baldness. — We have from time to time given our readers the 

 views held by the medical profession and the laity as to the causes 

 of baldness. The view which has seemed to us as being the best 

 supported by both facts and theory is that baldness is especially 

 liable to follow the wearing of a tight-fitting hat, the band of which 

 constricts the blood-vessels, and thus diminishes the blood-supply 

 to the scalp. In the Poptclar Science Monthly is a communication 

 from a writer who has spent a considerable time in India, which 

 controverts this explanation of the cause of baldness. The Parsees 

 are compelled to keep the head covered during the day by a high 

 hat, which is so tight as to crease the scalp, and, the writer thinks, 

 possibly the skull, and at night by a skull-cap. He has never seen 

 ■or heard of one of them being bald. 



Treatment of Yellow-Fever. — Regarding the treatment of 

 this disease. Dr. George M. Sternberg, U.S.A., in the Therapeutic 



Gazette, Aug. 15, reports the favorable results obtained in a series 

 of twelve cases treated on the alkaline plan. His recent researches 

 in Havana have led him to think it very probable that in yellow- 

 fever, as in cholera, the specific micro-organism causing the disease 

 is located in the alimentary canal. While this is not proved, it is 

 demonstrated, that, as a rule, no micro-organism capable of develop- 

 ment in the culture-media usually employed by bacteriologists is 

 present in the blood or tissues of those recently dead from yellow- 

 fever. This view naturally suggests intestinal antisepsis as a mode 

 of treatment. It is well known that in yellow-fever the urine and 

 the vomited matters are highly acid. He has also found the intes- 

 tinal contents to have usually a more or less decided acid re-action. 

 A microbe, therefore, capable of multiplying in the stomach and in- 

 testine in this disease must be able to grow in an acid medium. 

 But aside from this theoretical reason for prescribing alkalies, the 

 highly acid condition of the secretions furnishes an indication for 

 such a treatment, and the writer has long desired an opportunity to 

 see a thorough trial of a decidedly alkaline treatment. These con- 

 siderations induced him, during his recent visit to Havana, to pro- 

 pose a formula, which was adopted by Dr. Raphael Weiss, house 

 physician at the Garcini Hospital, and he has just received from 

 him a record of twelve cases treated by the director of the hospital. 

 Dr. Francis Cabera, and himself. They all recovered, and he adds 

 that every case so far treated at the Garcini by that method has 

 recovered. While these twelve cases were being treated, and a 

 little before, eight cases were treated in the same institution by 

 other methods, and five of the eight died. 



Diphtheria carried by Turkeys. — Some time ago we re- 

 ported several cases of diphtheria which had been contracted from 

 a turkey. The following case, which is taken from the British 

 Medical Journal, is another contribution to this subject : " A 

 fowl with diphtheria was brought to the house of a veteiinary sur- 

 geon on April 24, and died on the 2gth. The feeding and nursing 

 of the bird devolved on a lad, aged fourteen, who was assisted by 

 his brother, aged five. On the evening of May 11 the writer was 

 called to see the little boy of five, who had been poorly for a day or 

 two. He had enlarged cervical glands on the left side, which had 

 come on rapidly. He was a delicate little fellow, with fair hair and 

 anasmic aspect. The temperature was 103° F. ; pulse, between 

 120 and 130. The fauces were more or less covered with diph- 

 theritic membrane, the left tonsil more especially. Under the ad- 

 ministration of biniodide of mercury and iron, the throat symptoms 

 cleared up, and the child made a good recovery. On the day after 

 this case was first seen, the boy who fed the fowl was very fever- 

 ish, and had similar patches over his fauces, but not to the same 

 extent as his brother. His throat was painted with boroglyceride. 

 A sister, aged nine, had also a similar explosion on the fauces. 

 Bark and acid and boroglyceride was the treatment. On the i8th 

 the mother, who had nursed them, was attacked, and was similarly 

 treated. They were all kept well up with beef-tea and stimulants." 



Cigarette-Smoking. — Dr. W. L. Dudley has been conduct- 

 ing some experiments with cigarettes in order to determine their 

 effect upon smokers. His conclusions are, (i) that carbonic 

 oxide is the most poisonous constituent of tobacco-smoke ; (2) 

 that more injury results from cigarette than cigar or pipe smoking, 

 because, as a rule, the smoke of the former is inhaled ; (3) that 

 cigarette-smoking without inhaling is no more injurious than pipe 

 or cigar smoking ; (4) that the smoke of a cigar or pipe, if inhaled, 

 is as injurious as cigarette-smoke inhaled ; and (5) that the smoke 

 from a Turkish pipe, if inhaled, is as injurious as that of a cigarette 

 inhaled. 



ELECTRICAL SCIENCE. 

 Electric Lighting in America. 



The following is an abstract of Prof. George Forbes's paper on 

 the above subject, read at the recent meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation. Professor Forbes has been in the United States, and has 

 paid especial attention to the alternating-current system of electrical 

 distribution. He first sketched the rapid advance of electric light- 

 ing in the United States as compared with its slow progress in 

 England, — a result which he considered partly due to the acts of 



