FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
343 
observer was engaged in studying the inflammatory process 
in the foot of the frog, and he first obtained a circumscribed 
spot of inflammation by means of a drop of collodion, and 
after a few days found the pigment-cells of the irritated spot 
accumulated around the vessels in a contracted condition, and 
in the course of a short time that they had entirely dis- 
appeared. He immediately applied himself to the question 
of explaining the mode of their disappearance. In other 
frogs he excited inflammation by dropping on the web a small 
quantity of a 2 per cent, solution of sulphuric acid. Again, 
after a few days, lie saw that the pigment-cells had accumu- 
lated around the blood-vessels, and that, though they still pre- 
served their contractility, their processes were less branched 
and numerous than natural. On further examination, he now 
observed that these processes began to penetrate the walls of 
the adjacent capillaries and small veins, causing an obstruc- 
tion to the onward movement of the red corpuscles on their 
proximal side, while a clear space was observable on their distal 
side, occupied only by serum. And now one of two things 
occurred : either the process of the cell broke off, and was 
swept away by the blood current, or the whole cell gradually 
squeezed itself through the capillary wall (the part within the 
vessel becoming greatly attenuated and elongated) until it 
also was carried away. In the former case, the cell, shorn of 
part of its substance, still remained outside the vessel ; in the 
latter it of course disappeared entirely. As regards the time 
occupied in these phenomena. Dr. Saviotti finds that the cell- 
processes penetrate the vessels in a period varying from three 
to six hours, and that it takes about the same length of time 
for the whole cell to follow and to be washed away from the 
internal surface, to which it long remains adherent.— Ibid. 
Sulphurous Acid. — Dr. Wilks reports that he has used 
sulphurous acid with great success in cases of typhoid fever. 
He says that it “arrests the development of the fever 
poison, and by continuing this arrest long enough the fever 
is exterminated. Briefly, it is an antidote .” — British Medical 
Journal. 
The Use of Ammonia in Snake Bites. — Mr. F. G. 
Adye-Curran, M.B., Assistant-Surgeon to the 83rd regi- 
ment, reports in the Lancet a case in which the ammonia 
remedy was tried without success. A native butler noticing 
a cobra di capello to emerge from a rat-hole, immediately 
informed his master, who came and fired at the cobra, 
wounding it in the neck, but not killing it. The butler, who 
