Mat 13, 1887.1 



SCIENCE. 



457 



from a source which was contaminated shortly be- 

 fore the commencement of the epidemic. The 

 farm where the disease existed was dail}' sending 

 to the city one hundred and twenty gallons of in- 

 fected milk. This subject has been considerably 

 discussed in Edinburgh recently, and a letter from 

 a physician which appeared in the daily press, 

 recommending that all milk should be boiled five 

 minutes, has resulted in the general adoption of 

 the suggestion throughout the city. Scarlet-fever 

 appears to be very prevalent in Edinburgh, there 

 having been at one time one hundred and ninety- 

 nine patients in the city fever-hospital. 



Yellow-fever inoculaton. — Dr. IJrricoechea, 

 surgeon of a battalion in Colombia, inoculated five 

 of his soldiers for the prevention of yellow-fever. 

 Twenty minutes after the operation the tempera- 

 ture gradually ascended to 40° C accompanied 

 with all the symptoms of yellow-fevei*. This 

 lasted forty hour?, at the expiration of which the 

 fever and all attendant symptoms had disappeared. 

 At the present time the inoculated soldiers are 

 exposed to the infection. Dr. Bustamente, a 

 physician of Cucuta, Colombia, reports that he 

 has inoculated forty ]Der sons, and in many of them 

 a fever, with many of the characteristics of yel- 

 low-fever, has presented itself ; this fever, devel- 

 oped by inoculation, varying several tenths of a 

 degree, and in some cases ascending to 41° C, but 

 never presenting the most grave symptoms of 

 yellow-fever. Dr. Bustamente says that the re- 

 sult of his observations justifies him in stating 

 positively that the fever produced by inoculation 

 is attended with no danger, and that it is safe to 

 inoculate, as he has already done, persons from 

 the age of two years upwards. Many of the per- 

 sons inocu'ated by him have been exposed to 

 yellow-fever, and in no case has the fever attacked 

 them. 



Gelatine liquefaction by bacteria. — Dr. 

 Sternberg has been studying the liquefaction of 

 gelatine by bacteria, and has ascertained that it 

 is due to a soluble chemical product which is 

 formed during the active growth of the liquefying 

 organisms, and that a comparatively small amount 

 of this substance will liquefy gelatine quite inde- 

 pendently of the living organism. Dr. Sternberg 

 expresses the hope that some chemist will take up 

 the question with a view to ascertaining the exact 

 nature of this substance. 



Water-filtration. — A very interesting series 

 of experiments in the filtration of water has re- 

 cently been made by Dr. G. T. Swarts, and re- 

 ported by him to the Rhode Island medical so- 

 ciety. He finds that, Avhen first used, some filters 

 successfully remove some of the organisms which 



the water contains, but that tests made seventeen 

 days later showed in every instance a marked in- 

 crease in the number in the filtered as compared 

 with the unfiltered water. In one case the un- 

 filtered water contained thirty-six colonies, and 

 after passing through the filter there were 2,000 ; 

 in another case the number was 10,000. An ex- 

 amination made on the seventieth day showed the 

 number of colonies increased to 117,000. The ex- 

 planation of these results is, that, in passing 

 through the filter, some of the micro-organisms 

 present in the water are retained in the filter, and 

 at the same time some of the albuminoids which 

 are present are also retained. These latter serve 

 as pabulum for the micro-organisms, and the lat- 

 ter increase enormously under these favorable con- 

 ditions, and water subsequently passing through 

 the filter takes them up in large numbers. With 

 every possible precaution in sterilizing and cleans- 

 ing the filter, the number of organisms in filtered 

 water exceeded those in unfiltered by several 

 thousands ; especially is this marked if the filter 

 is in a warm room or in proximity to a hot-water 

 pipe. "While the bacteria ordinarily found in 

 water are harmless, still it is possible that those 

 of cholera or typhoid-fever might be present in 

 drinking-water ; and the practical application of 

 these observations of Dr. Swarts is, that such 

 germs would not only not be filtered out in the 

 process of filtration, but that their number would 

 probably increase many timfs in the filter itself . 

 The filtration of water is therefore of no use when, 

 the presence of pathogenic organisms is suspected ; 

 and recourse should, under such circumstances, be 

 had to boiling, it having been adundantly demon- 

 strated that all organisms in water are destroyed 

 at the boiling-point, if that temperature is main- 

 tained for one hour. 



THE HUMAN FACULTIES. 

 Mind and muscle. 

 The full significance of the modern view of the 

 relation of body to mind is well brought home by 

 the success of a recent experiment upon a dozen 

 dull, sluggish, shiftless, illiterate inmates of the 

 Elmira reformatory. The men were not exactly 

 feeble-minded, but were dull and stupid, had made 

 no progress in school-work, and seemed incapable 

 of a prolonged mental effort. The class was 

 formed on June 5 of 1886, when the men were, on 

 the average, 22.9 years old ; they had been commit- 

 ted for rather low orders of crimes, for which the 

 law would have imposed an average sentence of 

 about seven years ; had one and all never learned 

 a trade ; and exhibited the usual amount of in- 

 temperance, hereditary taint, and lack of moral 



