SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
317 
interested to perceive that at a recent meeting of one of the continental 
scientific societies, Dr. Kjelherg related his experience of the use of 
Liebig’s food for infants as a remedy. Six cases of diarrhoea occurred in his 
Children’s Hospital among infants of from 1|^ to 2 years ; five of them had 
already been treated ^vith medicine without effect. A thin broth made from 
the food ” was given them as their only nourishment, and all medicine was 
discontinued. The motions at once assumed a better appearance. In one 
case, which had no previous treatment, the effect of the exclusive use of 
Liebig’s food was very striking. Dr. Kjelberg says that he had used the 
treatment in two cases of children, private patients, in whom not diarrhoea, 
but obstinate constipation was the malady. The children were still suckled, 
while the food was administered. The peristaltic function of the bowels 
rapidly became normal and regular. Dr. Kjelberg thinks that Liebig’s food 
possesses the capacity of regulating the activity of the intestinal canal. 
Opium-eating. — We do not vouch for the accuracy of the statement made 
in the New York Medical Necord that Mr. Horace Day (who is said to be 
the author of a recent American book, The Opium Habit ”) has eaten over 
fifty pounds of opium. 
What are the Actual ^Effects of Absinthe on the System. — Many of the 
memoirs in the Comptes-Rendus are more remarkable for the distinctness 
with which the conclusions they set forth are expressed, than for the sound 
evidence on which such conclusions are based. We won’t say that this applies 
to the following. But, as the question of the effect of absinthe is often 
asked, we shall lay the following conclusions of M. Magnan before our 
readers : — 1. The epileptic or epileptiform accidents in alcoholism — or, in other 
words, alcoholic epilepsy — are of a radically different nature, according as 
the alcoholism is acute or chronic. 2. In acute alcoholism the epilepsy is 
imder the complete influence of an external agent, of a poison (absinthe) 
which of itself alone causes the epileptic attack ; it is epilepsy by intoxica- 
tion.” 3. The alcoholic epileptics exhibit the ordinary features of simple 
alcoholic cases, and also superadded phenomena, among which the epileptic 
attack is dominant. 4. These two groups of symptoms (the alcoholic 
symptoms and alcoholic convulsions), united in the same subject, have a 
relation to the twofold nature of the poison (absinthe), whose elements are 
absinthe and alcohol. 5. In chronic alcoholism the epileptic or epileptiform 
accidents are under the direct control of organic modifications which take 
place in the patient. The excess of liquids, in gradually altering the tissues, 
renders them capable, under the influence of various causes, of producing 
by themselves convulsive epileptiform phenomena, accidents analogous to 
those that we see take place in other patients in certain cases of lesions of the 
nervous centres (general paralysis, tumours of the brain, &c.). {Comptes- 
Rendus, April 5.) 
An Anatomist decorated. — Professor Brunetti, the celebrated anatomist, 
of Padua, has been decorated with the orders of St. Anne of Bussia and St. 
Gregory the Great of Home. This last honour, says V Imparziale, has been 
conferred on him as a consequence of the illustrious astronomer. Father 
Secchi, having shown to the Pope some of his (Brunetti’s) anatomical pre- 
parations illustrative of his researches on the means of preserving animal 
structures. 
