i88i.j 
Notes. 
757 
the patient took internally, in twenty-four hours, 500 grms. 
Spanish wine, 300 grms. rum, and 200 grms. Chartreuse, without 
experiencing the least symptom of intoxication. 
Mr. T. Taylor, in a paper read before the American Associa- 
tion, has experimentally proved the house-fly to be a distributor 
of poison-germs. (We may return to this subjeCI.) 
We are happy to welcome Prof. Pettigrew, F.R.S., as an able 
combatant against cram and examinationism. In an introduc- 
tory leCture in physiology, at the University of St. Andrews, he 
is reported to have said : — “The ancients believed, and he thought 
rightly, that men varied as to intellectual capacity and endow- 
ment, and that it was the province of education to draw out of 
the man that which naturally inhered in him. The more modern 
— and he believed the less philosophic — view takes for granted 
that men vary little to begin with, and that everything might be 
put into them by a process of cramming. The ancients aimed 
at teaching men to think and judge ; the moderns had no soul 
above passing examinations and getting on in the world. As a 
physiologist, his sympathies were wholly with the ancients. The 
great problem of the day was how to develope and cultivate the 
human intellect. The two great modern schools of education 
were, he said, widely divergent. The one sought, by symbol and 
cipher, to impart to the young and inexperienced head abstract 
ideas and truths about men and things ; the other aimed at in- 
structing youth not by symbols and the mere names of things, 
but by the things themselves — these, fortunately for Science, 
being strewn around in prodigal profusion. The former method 
— the symbol teaching — leans principally upon memory, and is 
eminently unattractive to the young mind. It has, as a conse- 
quence, proved a comparative failure. The. latter method — the 
objeCl lesson method — is quite a seduCtion for children ; it leans 
less, indeed comparatively little, on memory, and provokes 
thought and reflection. The objeCt lesson method expands the 
reason, and developes and corrects the judgment.” 
M. Burcq (“ Comptes Rendus ”) shows that copper has a pow- 
erful disinfeCtive and antiseptic aCtion. Artisans who work with 
this metal enjoy an almost absolute immunity from cholera and 
typhoid fever. 
M. Joyeux-Laffuie has carried out observations on the poison- 
apparatus and the poison of Scorpio occitanus. He finds that 
this poison, though less deadly than is commonly inserted, is 
very aCtive. A single drop injeCted into the cellular tissue of a 
rabbit proves rapidly fatal. The same quantity suffices to kill 
seven or eight frogs. Fishes and mollusks are more refractory, 
but the Articulata are exceedingly sensitive. One-hundredth of 
a drop of the poison immediately kills a large crab. The poison 
