158 LACTIC ACID THE NORMAL ACID OF THE STOMACH. 
averaged a value of 14 L apiece, 112/. in all. One of the 
staves of the tub, having been sent to a chymist, was found 
to have been impregnated with sugar of lead nearly throughout 
its whole thickness; so that, he remarked, it contained as 
much as would have killed 40 cows. The vendor of second- 
hand tubs said he had bought the one that had proved so 
fatal, at a chymieal works. The farmer hesitates, we under- 
stand, to raise a claim for damages against one or both of the 
tub-vendors, because of its being a new case. If he is so 
advised, we cannot help saying we hold such an opinion to 
be a most irrational legal refinement. Surely, the first man 
who got a limb broken by a railway carriage was not denied 
compensation ; nor should w r e fear to raise an action of damages 
if our head were to be broken by a cocoa-nut, though it might 
be the first instance in Britain of such a missile being used 
for such a purpose ; to common sense it appears that the 
effect, and not the cause or means, is the question the law 
has to consider in a civil action — has injury been done, and 
what is its amount ? — Glasgow Mail . 
ANTIDOTE TO LEAD AS A POISON. 
M. Melsens has found the iodide of potassium the most 
effective antidote to poisoning by lead compounds ; the soluble 
iodide of lead being eliminated from the system by the 
kidneys. 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals. 
LACTIC ACID THE NORMAL ACID OE THE STOMACH. 
Most of our readers will remember the experiments insti- 
tuted by Dr. W. Beaumont, U.S. Army, on a young Cana- 
dian, Alexis St. Martin, who accidentally received the con- 
tents of a gun loaded with powder and duck-shot in his left 
side; which, after tearing away the integuments, muscles, 
portions of the fifth and sixth ribs, and of the left lung and 
diaphragm, perforated the stomach, the orifice being large 
enough to admit the forefinger. This orifice has never closed, 
although the surrounding wound cicatrized readily. 
