44 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 260 



lawyers, statesmen, and others, all celebrated for the fluency of 

 their speech, shows a surprisingly large development of the third 

 frontal convolution of the left hemisphere. The brain of Gambetta 

 is a marked instance of the same fact. Here this convolution is so 

 highly developed that it is actually doubled by a slight fissure in 

 the middle, no trace of this development being found on the right 

 side. 



What is above described includes merely what is most surely and 

 definitely known, — a vast field for future research remains open, 

 and even now enigmas are waiting to be answered. That certain 

 aphasic patients are unable to count, and others do so normally ; 

 that some can tell time, distinguish the beats, but cannot count ; 

 and so on, — are facts as yet without meaning. So, too, the loss 

 of the power to express one's self in gestures, and to use the ordi- 

 nary conventionalities of life, may some day find a definite cerebral 

 localization. Sometimes only certain kinds of signs are lost, and 

 the rest retained ; sometimes the patient can talk only by singing. 

 All these facts may, in the science of the future, be as definitely ex- 

 plored as the main types of aphasia are to-day. 



The Psychology of Handwriting. — In the North Ameri- 

 can Review for January, the editor, Mr. Rice, prints a series of the 

 autographs of Napoleon, written at various epochs in his eventful 

 life. Starting in his earlier years with a bold and clear signature, 

 it retains most of these characteristics in the days of his greatest 

 successes ; but parallel with the declining fortunes of the great man, 

 is a degeneration of his autograph, until at the end we have noth- 

 ing more than the rudest, characterless scrawl. The autographs 

 cannot but suggest the ravaging changes in the nervous system 

 that were the physiological concomitant of the turmoil raging in 

 the hero's mind. 



HEALTH MATTERS. 



Foot-and-Mouth Disease, and its Relations to Human Scarlatina 



as a Prophylactic. 



At a recent meeting of the New Yoik Academy of Medicme, Dr. 

 J. W. Stickler of Orange, N.J., read a paper entitled ' Foot-and- 

 Mouth Disease as it affects Man and Animals, and its Relation to 

 Human Scarlatina as a Prophylactic' He said that it had long 

 been known that foot-and-mouth disease could be communicated 

 from animals to man through the milk of the affected animals, and 

 by the introduction of the virus into wounds. When human beings 

 are the subjects of this disease, the glands become enlarged, vesicles 

 appear in the mouth and upon the hands and feet, and in some 

 cases an eruption which resembles that of scarlet-fever. Hert- 

 wig and others, who purposely contracted the disease by drinking 

 infected milk, were affected in this way. In 1884 there was an 

 epidemic of sore throat, together with glandular enlargements and 

 vesicles, in Dover, England. Upon investigation it was shown 

 that it was due to the drinking of milk from animals sick with foot- 

 and-mouth disease. Two years after this, an investigation was 

 made in one hundred and eighty-two of the cases which had suf- 

 fered from the sore throat in 18S4. None of them had since had 

 scarlet-fever, and from other points in their history it appeared that 

 they had been rendered insusceptible to that disease. Dr. Stickler 

 had himself inoculated three children with virus from milch-cows, 

 and subsequently exposed them to scarlet-fever. One of these, 

 after having fully recovered from the inoculation, was taken to the 

 bedside of a scarlet-fever patient, and inhaled the latter's breath, 

 and placed his head upon the pillow of the sick one. The child did 

 not contract the fever. Two other children, similarly inoculated 

 and similarly exposed, have not contracted the disease. In con- 

 cluding his paper, Dr. Stickler said, that, while it was by no means 

 proven that scarlet-fever could be prevented by such inoculations, 

 the results thus far obtained were very suggestive, and proposed to 

 continue his investigation. 



In the discussion which followed the reading of the paper. Pro- 

 fessor Law of Cornell University said that he was sceptical as to 

 the prophylactic value of these inoculations against scarlet-fever. 

 In Great Britain there were frequent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth 

 disease, affecting cattle and the persons who came in contact with 

 them, and, if it was a protective disease against scarlet-fever, he 

 thought the latter should be much less prevalent than it was. He 



had himself been over and over again exposed to foot-and-mouth 

 disease, but had never suffered, while, on the first exposure to 

 scarlet-fever, he contracted it ; his system being susceptible to the 

 one, and not to the other. He thought it would be dangerous to 

 investigate this subject very much in the United States, as it would 

 be a very serious matter if the foot-and-mouth disease should be 

 introduced among American cattle. He also feared that scarlet- 

 fever might be more widely disseminated if these inoculations were 

 to be made general. While he had great respect for Pasteur, he 

 could not help believing that he had increased the spread of an- 

 thrax by scattering abroad his modified anthrax virus, as, under 

 favorable conditions, this weakened virus might become potent and 

 dangerous. He considered it a fact that there had been more 

 rabies in England since Pasteur's discovery than before ; and the 

 same danger existed in the attenuated virus of rabies as in that of 

 anthrax. 



Dr. L. McLean of Brooklyn said that there was no such natural 

 disease as bovine scarlatina. If cows contracted the disease, it 

 could only be by inoculation from affected human beings. He did 

 not believe that foot-and-mouth disease was prophylactic of scarlet- 

 fever. There had been but two outbreaks of foot-and-moutli dis- 

 ease in this country, — one in Maine; and one in the vicinity of 

 New York City, extending up the Hudson as far as Poughkeepsie. 



Dr. J. Lewis Smith said, " Since the time of Jenner the hope has 

 been awakened that some of the other fatal infectious diseases, and 

 especially scarlet-fever, might be prevented, as small pox has been, 

 by the substitution of a milder and modified disease, derived from 

 the lower animals. As regards scarlet-fever, two propositions of 

 great interest and importance have arisen : first, is there a disease 

 in the bovine race which is true scarlet-fever, or which communi- 

 cates genuine scarlet-fever to man ? and, second, if there be such 

 a disease, does it produce a mild and modified form of scarlet-fever 

 in man ? Many instances have been recorded in the last five or six 

 years in which epidemics of scarlet-fever have arisen from the use 

 of milk furnished by healthy cows, and infected with the scarlatin- 

 ous germ after the milking ; but in the St. Marylebone and Hendon 

 epidemic, occurring two years ago, and described in the British 

 Medical Journal, May 20, 1S86, the outbreak of scarlet-fever ap- 

 peared to be clearly traced to diseased cows. Now, the point to 

 which I wish to call attention is this. The sickness of the cows 

 was mild, not appreciably impairing their appetite, nor diminishing 

 their milk, but the disease which the use of the infected milk pro- 

 duced is described as an ' intense outbreak of scarlet-fever.' In- 

 stead of a mild disease being propagated from the cow, for which 

 we are looking and hoping, the reverse occurred. A mild form of 

 the disease in the cow produced a severe one in man ; so that it 

 appears from the history of this epidemic, that, by inoculating with 

 the bovine scarlatinous virus, we might produce severe and fatal 

 epidemics, instead of a mild and modified form of the disease." 



Dr. Stickler closed the discussion by saying, that, if he produced 

 only a slight and harmless attack of scarlatina by his inoculations, 

 he could see no objection to the use of the scarlatinal virus for this 

 purpose ; and, when the terrible effects of the unmodified disease 

 were taken into consideration, he thought it of extreme importance 

 that a method of protection should be secured if possible. As to 

 the disease from which the Hendon cows suffered, it had, he 

 thought, been clearly demonstrated that it was nothing else than 

 scarlatina, since it was precisely the same affection as was ordina- 

 rily produced in cows by the inoculation of scarlatinal virus from 

 the human subject. 



The Bacillus of Cancer. — Dr. Horatio R. Bigelow, in a 

 letter from Berlin to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, ex- 

 presses his conviction that Scheurlen has discovered the bacillus of 

 cancer. This discovery is confirmed by S. Guttmann and Stab- 

 sartz Schill. In every case of cancer which Scheurlen has e.x- 

 amined, he has found the bacillus. Dr. Bigelow believes that there 

 is a bacillus of cancer just as really and absolutely as there is one 

 of consumption. Its morphological characteristics are not yet 

 clearly defined, and there are many other doubts to clear up and 

 questions to answer ; but all of this can come only after many 

 months of hard and patient labor. At a recent meeting of the 

 Berlin Society of Internal Medicine this discovery of Scheurlen 

 was discussed. Fraenkel regarded the methods employed by 



