30 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 232 



What to eat with Tea and Coffee. — In the /onr/ial 0/ 

 Ana/ofiiy and Physiology, Dr. J. W. Fraser reports the results of 

 his experiments on the action of tea, coffee, and cocoa on stomach 

 and intestinal digestion. He summarizes his views by the following 

 recommendations and deductions: i. That it is better not to eat 

 most albuminoid food-stuffs at the same time as infused beverages 

 are taken ; for it has been shown that their digestion will in most 

 cases be retarded, though there are possibly exceptions. Absorp- 

 tion may be rendered more rapid, but there is a loss of nutritive 

 substance. On the other hand, the digestion of starchy food appears 

 to be assisted by tea and coffee ; and gluten, the albuminoid of 

 flour, has been seen to be the principle least retarded in digestion 

 by tea, and it only comes third with cocoa, while coffee has ap- 

 parently a much greater retarding action on it. From this it 

 appears that bread is the natural accompaniment of tea and cocoa 

 when used as the beverages at a meal. Perhaps the action of 

 coffee is the reason why, in this country, it is usually drunk alone 

 or at breakfast, — a meal which consists much of meat, and of 

 meats {s.%% and salt meats) which are not much retarded in diges- 

 tion by coffee. 2. That eggs are the best form of animal food to be 

 taken along with infused beverages, and that apparently they are 

 best lightly boiled if tea, hard boiled if coffee or cocoa, is the bever- 

 age. 3. That the caseine of the milk and cream taken with the 

 beverages is probably absorbed in a large degree from the stomach, 

 and that the butter used with bread undergoes digestion more 

 slowly in the presence of tea, but more quickly in the presence of 

 coffee or cocoa ; that is, if the fats of butter are influenced in a 

 way similar to oleine. 4. That the use of coffee or cocoa as excipi- 

 ents for cod-liver oil, etc., appears not only to depend on their pro- 

 nounced tastes, but also on their action in assisting the digestion 

 of fats. 



Consumption. — At the recent meeting of the American 

 Climatological Association held in Baltimore, the discussion of pul- 

 monary' consumption occupied an important position. The address 

 of the president. Dr. F. Donaldson, sen., was on the prophylactic 

 treatment of those who inherit a predisposition to phthisis. He 

 thinks that we are justified in assuming from statistics that this 

 disease is diminishing. In England there has been a gain in rriales 

 of fourteen per cent, and in females of twenty-two per cent, while 

 in Massachusetts there has been a gain of fifty-four lives in every 

 hundred thousand. Thirty per cent of the cases have an inherited 

 predisposition to the disease. This hereditary form, when de- 

 veloped, offers the least prospect of recovery. He regards the 

 acceptance of Koch's bacillus as well-nigh universal. Its constant 

 presence in phthisis must be accepted as the full explanation of the 

 manifestation of tuberculosis. Persons who are predisposed to the 

 disease may develop it by the inhalation of the dried bacillus from 

 the expectoration of diseased persons. The prophylactic treatment 

 embraces two elements : (i) the improvement of the general health 

 of the subject, and (2) the protection from contagion. The tuber- 

 culous mother should not nurse her child, but, if possible, it should 

 be given to a healthy wet-nurse. The hygiene of the nursery should 

 be looked after carefully. The room should be well ventilated, and 

 kept at a comparatively low temperature. The subject should live 

 much out of doors, especially between the ages of fifteen and twenty 

 years. The beneficial effect of sunlight should be borne in mind. 

 The physical form of the chest should be enlarged by gymnastic 

 movements. If possible, life should be passed in high altitudes. 

 Oleaginous fluids are useful if they can be digested. The milk and 

 flesh of tuberculous animals must be avoided, for cooking rarely 

 destroys the bacilli of beef. If the prophylactic treatment is 

 thoroughly carried out, the hereditary proclivity may remain latent, 

 and the individual never contract the disease. In the discussion 

 of the general subject, Dr. Bruen considered that in tubercular 

 phthisis the influence of sea-air was disastrous. Those cases 

 which are most benefited by prolonged sea-voyages are those in 

 which there is no inherited tendency to tuberculosis. Dr. Bowditch 

 thought that a great distinction should be made in speaking of the 

 seacoast-air and the pure sea-air. Cases which could not stand the 

 harsh, cold, and changeable air of the seacoast may be benefited 

 by a sea-voyage, or residence on an island some distance from 

 the shore, where the conditions are similar to those which are ob- 

 tained in a sea-voyage. Dr. Knight remarked that he knew of 



several patients who had improved and gained in weight during a 

 stay at some of the coldest resorts on the New England coast. Dr. 

 Wilson gave it as the result of his experience that there were three 

 classes of consumptive patients who cannot go to the Atlantic sea- 

 coast without risk: (i) those in whom there is active febrile dis- 

 turbance, (2) those who have a highly excitable nervous organi- 

 zation, (3) those who suffer from repeated attacks of spitting of 

 blood. 



Brain-Wounds. — At a meeting of the American Surgical 

 Association held in Washington, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew of Phila- 

 delphia discussed the medico-legal aspect of wounds of the brain 

 and thorax. The study of the subject was suggested by a recent 

 case which occurred in Newport, in which a colored man was found 

 dead under the breakfast-table. He had food in his mouth, and a 

 wound of the head and the heart. The question was as to the 

 possibility of these wounds being self-inflicted. Dr. Agnew, after 

 a thorough examination into the subject, states that injury to the 

 brain is not necessarily followed by loss of consciousness or paraly- 

 sis. Numerous instances have occurred in which, after injury to 

 the heart, the individual had performed many acts. He concluded 

 that it is possible for a ball to enter the brain without destroying 

 consciousness, although for a moment it may cause mental con- 

 fusion, and that a suicide may shoot himself in the head, and after 

 a moment shoot himself in the heart. In the particular case which 

 gave rise to the discussion, it was demonstrated that the deceased 

 had been murdered, his son-in-law confessing the crime. 



BOOK -REVIEWS. 



The Effect of the War of liiin upon the ConsoUdatwi of the 

 Unio?i. By NICHOLAS MURRAY BuTLER, Ph.D. Baltimore, 

 Publication Agency of the Johns Hopkins University. 



A VERY interesting subject is treated with tantalizing brevity in 

 the monograph which forms the seventh number in the fifth series 

 of the 'Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Politi- 

 cal Science.' Dr. Butler has confined himself wholly to one line 

 of investigation, avoiding the many fascinating questions that are 

 collateral to it, and freeing his own discussion of the main subject 

 from all but the very briefest comment. He desires to show, first, 

 that real peril to the perpetuity of the Union sprang from the anti- 

 nationalistic theories broached in the first decade of the present 

 century ; and, second, that the immediate effect of the war of 1812 

 was so to stimulate national pride and strengthen the waning desire 

 for national unity as to avert that peril until it confronted the State 

 once more at a later day, allied with the political interests of 

 slavery. 



The term ' anti-nationalistic,' which Dr. Butler uses, ser\-es a very 

 convenient purpose ; for it cannot be truly said, that, as a practical 

 factor of national politics, the doctrine of State sovereignty was 

 more the property of the Democratic than of the Federal party. 

 It was really a question between the ins and the outs. Although 

 the first clear statement of the principle of State sovereignty is 

 found in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and hence must 

 be regarded as Democratic, still, in the practical application of that 

 principle, the Federalists of the Massachusetts and Connecticut 

 Legislatures and of the unfortunate Hartford Convention were 

 not a whit behind their old opponents ; and Dr. Butler makes it 

 very clear, that, until a foreign war had drawn the popular attention 

 away from internal dissensions to the public peril, neither party 

 was truly animated by a consistent and continuous desire for gen- 

 uine union. That the war of 181 2 was in its inception a party war, 

 is, of course, quite true ; yet in 1816 the people, as a whole, made 

 it evident by their votes that they had united in approving it, and 

 that they rejoiced, with a thrill of national pride that was wholly 

 new, over the brilliant victories of the American navy, and of Jack- 

 son's army at New Orleans. Of this curious change in popular 

 sentiment. Dr. Butler gives us much interesting corroborative testi- 

 mony, and, strangely enough, from men of the same party that 

 first paved the way for the later doctrines of Calhoun and Hayne. 



" The war," says Dr. Butler, " had ruined the particularists : it 

 had made all nationalists, if we may use the word. The bonds of 

 the early days of the Revolution were forged anew, and the 



