August 5, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



65 



as if reflecting insinuations of shortcomings. It is manifest that no 

 sanitary service under tlie direction of such a board can be efficient. 

 Sanitary surveillance should therefore be exercised by the health 

 department of every city, town, county, or district, as the case 

 may be, with that special care which the nature of the ser\'ice 

 demands. 



The essav, as we have already said, is one of great value, and 

 we would recommend every teacher in the State to send to the 

 secretary of the Medical Society, William Manlius Smith, M.D., for 

 a copy. 



Base-Ball Players. — Dr. Leuf contributes an article to the 

 Medical atid Surgical Reporter on the injuries of base-ball players. 

 The doctor is a player himself, and speaks from personal experience 

 as well as from observation. He says that one of his fingers was 

 injured by a ball five times in one week, and that all his fingers 

 have been injured at least once. His treatment is to continue play- 

 ing, and at every opportunity — either in the street, in the office, or 

 upon the field — to firmly grasp the finger about the middle, and 

 rub towards the tip. Under this treatment, the swelling, stiffness, 

 and soreness diminish, and after some weeks are entirely gone. The 

 most marked swelling of the hand, accompanied by great pain, can 

 be best relieved by the application of water as hot as can be borne, 

 the hand remaining in the water for an hour, the temperature being 

 maintained during the whole time. Nothing will do so much harm 

 to a player as to abstain altogether from playing because he has 

 some trivial injury or sore muscles. 



DiPHTHERLi CARRIED BY THE CoOK. — Dr. Jacobi sends the 

 following letter to the health board of New York : " Ann Donnelly 

 is a cook. She was in the house of Lieutenant Reed of West 

 Point. She went to New York to bury a child of hers, who died of 

 diphtheria at the house.of a Mrs. McKee, No. 327 West 43d Street, 

 about May 20. About ten or tvifelve days ago she unpacked a 

 trunk in Lieutenant Reed's house, in the presence of his children. 

 The boy is recovering from diphtheria : the girl, of five years, died 

 day before yesterday. The cook has disappeared from the house, — 

 trunk and all, — ready to unpack again somewhere else, and go on 

 murdering. If that woman cannot be sent to the State prison for 

 sowing death wherever she goes, can she not be hunted up and 

 stopped from doing mischief ? " 



Types of Breathing. — Dr. Mays of Philadelphia has been 

 investigating the reasons for the abdominal or diaphragmatic type 

 of breathing in the male, and the costal type in the female. That 

 there is a fundamental difference in the two sexes was observed by 

 Boerhaave as long ago as 1744. Hutchinson seemed to think that 

 it might be a peculiar reservation against the period of gestation, 

 when the abdomen cannot allow of so free a descent of the dia- 

 phragm ; and to-day this is regarded as the reason for the differ- 

 ence. It occurred to Dr. Mays that an observation on the 

 respiratory movements of females of a wild race, who had never 

 been subjected to the constriction produced by civilized dress, would 

 assist in solving the problem. With this object in view, he ob- 

 tained permission to investigate the chest movements of the Indian 

 girls of the Lincoln Institution. The instrument which he em- 

 ployed was a pneumograph of his own device, modelled somewhat 

 after that of Paul Bert. It consists of a pair of calipers with two 

 long and two short arms. The long arms are applied to the chest, 

 and the short arms extend beyond the pinion which binds the in- 

 strument together. Between the two short arms, and by means 

 of two small pinions, an air-drum is adjusted in such a way that 

 the slightest motion produces either a rarefaction or a condensation 

 of the air in the drum, which being connected by a column of air 

 with a similar drum carrying a registering-lever, the movements of 

 the chest are accurately marked on a revolving cylinder. In order 

 to produce a slight and uniform pressure on the walls of the chest, 

 the two long arms are connected near their union by a thin piece of 

 elastic rubber. By means of this apparatus Dr. Mays examined 

 the movements of eighty-two chests, and in each case took an ab- 

 dominal and a costal tracing. The girls were partly pure, and 

 partly mixed with white blood, and their ages ranged between ten 

 and twenty years. There were thirty-three full-blooded In- 

 dians. Seventy-five of the entire number showed a decided 

 abdominal type of breathing ; three, a costal type ; and in three 



both types were about even. Those who showed the costal 

 type, or a divergence from the abdominal type, came from the more 

 civilized tribes, like the Mohawks and Chippewas, and were either 

 one-half or three-fourths white ; while in no single instance did a 

 full-blooded Indian girl possess this type of breathing. From these 

 observations Dr. Mays concludes, that, so far as the Indian is 

 concerned, the abdominal is the original type of respiration in both 

 male and female, and that the costal type in the civilized female is 

 developed through the constricting influence of dress around the 

 abdomen. It is very evident that the costal type of respiration in 

 the civilized female is not due to the influence of gestation, as was 

 believed by Boerhaave, Haller, and Hutchinson ; for the influence 

 of this process obtains as much among the uncivilized as it does 

 among the civilized people. Dr. Mays directs attention to one 

 result of his investigations which is well worthy of consideration. 

 What is the influence of such abdominal constriction, as is prac- 

 tised by our civilized female, on the respiratory functions ? he asks. 

 Is it detrimental to health, or is it not ? If, as is shown by these 

 experiments, interference with the motion of the diaphragm pro- 

 duces a compensatory breathing in the costal portion of the chest, 

 does not this tend to antagonize or counteract the sluggish respira- 

 tory movement of the lung apices .' Is there any intimate relation 

 between this induction and the fact that proportionally, and as a 

 rule not without some exceptions, a less number of females than 

 males die of pulmonary' consumption .'' 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 



Good and Bad Temper. 



Mr. Francis Galton, whose researches on the hereditary and 

 other characteristics of mental faculty have introduced science into 

 subjects usually given over to opinion, publishes, in the Forttiightly 

 Review for July, an analysis of statistics on good and bad temper. 

 Some time ago Mr. Galton drew up an extensive series of questions 

 concerning the physical and mental traits of families, and offered 

 prizes for the most complete set of answers embracing the record of 

 several generations. Fully recognizing the sources of inaccuracy 

 inherent in such reports, Mr. Galton has ingeniously tested their 

 reliability, and is extremely careful not to treat them in a more 

 accurate manner than they justify. The statistics, embracing 

 descriptions of the tempers of 1,981 persons, are sufficiently ex- 

 tensive to warrant the general conclusions which they suggest. 



' Temper ' is a convenient word wherewith to describe that gen- 

 eral complex of emotional traits which serves in common life to 

 distinguish personal characteristics that lead to sociability from 

 those that do not. Every one knows what it means, and, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, guides his social intercourse accordingly. 

 It is this that is most tangibly referred to as the source of family 

 feuds and social quarrels. Its variability and fundamental impor- 

 tance make it difficult to describe. It is curious to note that Mr. 

 Galton has only fifteen epithets for good temper, and forty-six for 

 bad. 



These are again grouped into five main classes, — mild, docile, 

 fretful, violent, masterful ; the three former predominating in 

 women, the two latter in men. The number of persons, however, 

 in the two groups of good and bad temper, is about equal ; one set 

 of data making it 48 good to 52 bad, and another 47 to 53. There 

 is likewise little difference between the sexes ; but what there is, is 

 in favor of the gentler sex, there being 45 per cent of bad tempers 

 amongst them, and 55 per cent amongst men. Altogether 36 

 per cent were mild in temper, 15 per cent docile, 29 percent fretful, 

 12 per cent violent, and 8 per cent masterful. 



It is curious to note how well the number of persons recorded as 

 good, bad, or neutral in temper coincides with what theoretical con- 

 siderations demand. Of 1,361 persons, 321 are described as good, 

 342 as bad, and 705 as neutral (most of the last not being described 

 at all) ; that is, these observers unconsciously divide persons into four 

 equal classes, — good-tempered, bad-tempered, not decidedly either 

 but with more of a tendency to good, and similarly towards the 

 bad. This shows that the line of average temper was placed where 

 it belongs, with equal deviations in either direction. Another mark 

 of reliability is to be found in the fact that near relatives are spoken 

 of as bad-tempered quite as unreservedly as more distant ones. 



