146 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 242 



pital purposes, stating that the hability to enteric fever and other 

 camp diseases was much lessened when the sick were under can- 

 vas. The streets between hospital-tents should be at least fift/ 



feet in width ; and when it was necessary to heat the tents, as in 

 winter, open fires in front of them gave the best results. 



The following resolutions were adopted by the section of cli- 

 matology and demography : — 



" Resolved, That in the opinion of the section on medical climatol- 

 ogy and demography, of the Ninth International Medical Congress, 

 assembled in the city of Washington, Sept. 5-10, 1S87, it is impor- 

 tant there should be established in every country a national depart- 

 ment, bureau, or commission for the record of vital statistics upon a 

 uniform basis, to include not only accurate returns of births and 

 deaths, but the results of collective investigation by government 

 officials, of facts bearing upon the natural history of disease as 

 manifested among men, women, and children separately, especially 

 with regard to climatic and other discoverable causes of the sev- 

 eral forms of disease, — race, occupation, and residence being in- 

 cluded, — that necessary preventive measures may be determined 

 and enforced for the preservation of the public health." 



Dr. Denison of Colorado read a paper on the preferable climate 

 for phthisis, illustrated copiously with maps and tables. He be- 

 lieves that climate is to be preferred for the greater number of con- 

 sumptives in the United States which is between fifteen hundred 

 feet elevation in the North in winter, and ten thousand feet in the 

 South in summer. 



Dr. Day of Louisiana presented a report which was the result of 

 an inquiry into the facts relating to the effects of overflow of the 

 Mississippi River, and based on communications from five hundred 

 physicians of the South. His deductions are, (i) that overflows are 

 injurious to the public health ; (2) that their evil effects upon health 

 are lessened or entirely antagonized by good natural or artificial 

 drainage, and by copious showers of rain occurring during the period 

 of subsidence of the waters ; (3) that rice-culture is inimical to 

 health only by reason of the improper and unsanitary manner of its 

 cultivation. 



Dr. Semmola of Naples delivered an address on bacteriology 



and its therapeutic relations. He regards the tendency to con- 

 sider bacteriology as the key to all pathology to be a great mis- 

 take. Microbes are not always the cause, but are often the effects,, 

 of disease. Before any microbe is to be regarded as the cause of a 

 given disease, we ought to reproduce that disease artificially by that 

 microbe. The experiments macie have not given any satisfactory 

 results, except in carbuncle and tuberculosis. To conclude hastily 

 that a given microbe is the cause of any disease is to ignore the ex- 

 perimental method. In the present condition of bacteriology it can- 

 not be taken as a guide for the treatment of internal diseases. 

 Modern bacteriology may lead the way to the most fruitful field of 

 inquiry in the future, but for the present it has produced no practi- 

 cal results in the cure of internal diseases. It has not yet been 

 demonstrated in what measure microbes are the causes of diseases. 

 In future investigations preconceived ideas must be abandoned, and 

 scientific independence must be preserved. 



Dr. Freire of Brazil read a paper on vaccination in yellow-fever, 

 in which he renewed his claim to the discovery of a method by 

 which yellow-fever may be prevented. He also exhibited speci- 

 mens of the yellow-fever microbe. In families consisting of a con- 

 siderable number of persons, if vaccination was practised after the 

 outbreak of the fever, its progress in that family was arrested ; if 

 not practised, all would be stricken down, and a large proportion, if 

 not all, would die. 



In addition to these papers, of which we have been able to give 

 only the briefest resume, a large number of others were presented 

 to the congress, which were of great value and importance, and from 

 which we shall hope to make extracts hereafter. 



SOME WESTERN MUMMIES. 



Early in the present year a party of prospectors were searching 

 for prerinus metals and old Spanish mines in the wild regions of 



They happened to win the confidence 

 his sick daughter, who had been giverir 

 up by the medicine-man ; and he offered to show them a wonderful 

 cave, where it was supposed that gold bars and immense riches 



Arizona and New Mexico 

 of an Indian chief by curini 



