876 
CAUSTIC CHARPIE.* 
The nitrate of silver, when applied in its solid form to 
wounds, sometimes acts too forcibly, while when used in the 
fluid form its action is too temporary. M. Riboli dissolves 
some of the nitrate in a small quantity of water, and having 
soaked charpie in the solution allows this to dry. Charpie 
so prepared exerts a more permanent effect upon ill-condi- 
tioned wounds greater than the ordinary solution, w 7 hile its 
strength is just as capable of gradation . — Bulletin de Therap., 
April, p. 379. 
CHARCOAL IN BURNS. 
A Petersburg surgeon speaks in strong terms of the great 
advantage which is derived from the application of finely-pow- 
dered and fresh charcoal to burns. — Med. Zeit . Russlands,lSo.\. 
A NAIL IN THE HEART OE A HORSE. 
A correspondent of the Field mentions that the Right 
Hon. Sir J. Trollope recently sent an old hunter, which was 
incurably lame, and incapable of further service, over to his 
kennels to be killed for his hounds. When he was cut up, 
the huntsman took the heart for some young hounds ill of 
distemper, and in cutting it up the knife struck against some 
hard substance, which he found to be a blacksmith’s shoeing 
nail, full two inches and a half long, and imbedded in the 
heart, with the head of the nail near the point, the sharp end 
upwards. The nail had never been clenched, but was nearly 
straight, the point slightly turned ; and it looked as if it had 
been rejected by a smith on trying it in a shoe. The horse 
had been for eight years in Sir J. T.’s possession. Some of 
your readers may be able to account for this singular fact, 
that the animal should live with such a substance in the seat 
of life ; but how it got there must be very conjectural. 
[The above has been sent us with a request that w T e would 
give it insertion in our journal. This we do without in any 
way holding ourselves responsible for its correctness. Me- 
tallic bodies have occasionally passed into the thorax, and 
penetrated, in different cases, to a greater or less extent, 
* A collection of filaments of old linen, used in the place of lint. 
