SCIENTIFIC SUHMAKY. 
425 
no variation in pulsation ; whence lie concluded that the phenomena in 
question are not related as cause and effect, hut are results of the same 
cause. 
Lobes of the Liver in different Animals. — Professor Flower, F.R.S., re- 
cently alluded to the great diversities in the arrangement of the lobes of 
the liver in different animals, which he illustrated by numerous diagrams. 
He suggested that, in studying these arrangements, the principal thing is to 
look carefully to the great blood-vessels around which the hepatic substance 
is grouped, taking the umbilical vein as the central starting-point. Nume- 
rous details were given, and suggestions were made, with a view to systema- 
tise the arrangement of the lobes in various animals so that the parts may 
be more accurately described by anatomists than they have hitherto been. 
In the course of the discussion on the paper, it was stated by Professor 
Strutbers that the liver in the human subject is very unequally divided, the 
right lobe being much larger than the left, and he suggested that this might 
have some relation to the strength of the right hand as compared with the 
left. It was also stated that the old system of tight-lacing often intro- 
duced changes of form in the liver, and sometimes an additional fissure was 
in this way produced. — Brighton Meeting of the British Association. 
Cutaneous Absorption. — M. Bernard has recently described very fully to 
the French Academy his observations on the above subject. They are also 
fully translated in the u Chemical News/’ July 12. He used a bath appa- 
ratus in his experiments, which consisted of a furnace, a boiler, a chamber 
in which the steam coming from the boiler was charged with the substance 
to be applied, and a wooden cage, in which the patient was seated while 
enveloped in the vapour. He used iodide of potassium in his experiments 
— (1) because it is not volatile ; (2) because its presence in urine is easily 
determined by nitric acid and chloroform ; (3) because, in seizing the iodine 
set at liberty by the nitric acid, the chloroform takes a rose colour varying 
in a marked way with quantity; and thus, by comparing with a graduated 
scale, one may determine pretty accurately, and without quantitative analysis, 
the quantity of iodide of potassium in the urine. The skin of the subjects 
experimented on was intact, without wound or scratch. The urine was 
examined before the bath was taken, and the absence of iodine ascertained. 
By a respiratory tube, the patient breathed the external air through his 
mouth, the nostrils being pinched. A thick sheet of caoutchouc was bound 
by a T-bandage over the anus ; the penis was sheathed in the same mate- 
rial; while the hands and feet were wrapped in cotton and gummed taffeta. 
The subject was then placed in the cage, and subjected 'for thirty minutes 
to vapour from the mixing chamber, into which there had been put 20 grins, 
of iodide of potassium. The temperature in the cage was gradually raised 
to 45°; the skin of the subject became wet. He was then wrapped in a 
woollen covering and put in bed, when profuse perspiration took place. 
The urine analysed two hours after the bath gave a rose colour ; some taken 
three hours after gave a much more lively colour: thus affording clear 
proof of the absorption of iodide of potassium through the skin, the only 
way it could have entered the system. Besides, if it had entered by pul- 
monary passages, it would have been eliminated immediately after the 
bath. 
