Notes. 
568 
M. Schnetzler (“ Archives de Geneve ”) states that the most 
resisting badteria are instantly killed by water containing one- 
thousandth part of formic acid. 
M. Feltz (“Comptes Rendus ”) finds that the immunity 
against “ charbon ” obtained by vaccination does not extend be- 
yond seventeen to eighteen months. 
M. Chamberland informs us that the most impure waters, if 
filtered through unglazed porcelain, retain no microbic germs. 
M. A. Carnot shows that the quality of coal depends not 
merely upon the age and the circumstances to which it has been 
exposed, but also upon the species of plants from which it has 
been formed. 
We learn, with extreme regret, that the problem of aerial 
navigation has apparently been solved, and that the saturnalia of 
crime and outrage are consequently close at hand. 
According to M. A. Mairet (“ Comptes Rendus ”) madness 
modifies — in various manners, according to its stages — the 
elimination of phosphoric acid and nitrogen by urine. It in- 
creases the nutritive changes which take place in the nervous 
system. The general nutrition is intensified in periods of ex- 
citement and lowered in periods of depression. 
According to “ Science ” a “ summer school ” of Economic 
Entomology has been opened at Cornell. 
The scientific world has to regret the death of another eminent 
French chemist, Paul Thenard. Discoverers die, whilst speech- 
makers and agitators live on. 
The Royal College of Surgeons, under the will of the late Sir 
Erasmus Wilson, is likely to receive a legacy of £180,000. 
Examinationism has just scored another deplorable triumph. 
The ranks of surgeon-major and brigade-surgeon are in future to 
be reached, not rebus gestis , — not by the pradtical display of 
skill, tadt, and resources, but by examinations ! Thus the glib 
talker will here, as elsewhere, be lord of the ascendant. 
We are glad to learn, from a medical contemporary, that 
kairine is uncertain in its adtion and transitory in its effedbs, and 
not to be compared with quinine. 
It is said that the cholera germ described by Dr. Koch had 
been discovered thirty years ago by Dr. Filippo Pacini. In a 
treatise published by Pacini in 1854, in the “ Italian Medical 
Gazette, and which was subsequently translated both into French 
and English, he declares the cholera due to the adtion of “ a very 
simple organism, which I shall call the choleraic microbion.” 
