518 Learned Socteties. 
THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SoclETy.—Dr. Macpherson’s 
paper on the “ Early Seats of Cholera in India and in the 
East, with reference to the past and the present,” recently 
read before the Epidemiological Society, was of great in- 
terest. He traced the disease in India back to 1563, two 
centuries earlier than the date commonly accepted—to the 
time, indeed, when Europeans first began to write of the 
maladies of that country, recognising and describing its 
symptoms by names not yet extinct. He showed that, as 
far back as 1633, cholera was widely diffused in India, that 
it then prevailed also in Java, in Arabia, and in Morocco, 
and that the seats of cholera described in the oldest ac- 
counts are seats of cholera at the present day. Dr. Mac- 
pherson showed that the importance which has been at- 
tached to the Gangetic Delta as a generator of cholera 
was not warranted by the facts. The frequent preva- 
lence of cholera in Persia or the Persian Gulf, and in 
Arabia, and its occasional occurrence in the Red Sea, 
Dr. Macpherson maintained, would render measures of 
quarantine in the Red Sea, such as those suggested by the 
International Congress, futile. 
ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.—At the Comitia 
Majora of the Royal College of Physicians, held on 
the 15th ult. there was a large gathering of Fellows, 
to hear the farewell address of Sir Thos. Watson, Bart., 
who for five years has so worthily presided over the 
College. The address was an interesting retrospect of the 
official year; their losses by death were eloquently mourned, 
and the gains to science acknowledged. Dr. Alderson, who 
graduated in Arts at Cambridge, in 1822, when he was 
Sixth Wrangler of his year, was at the same meeting 
elected the new President. 
ODONTOLOGICAL SocIETY.—At the ordinary monthly 
meeting of this Society, April Ist, 1867, the President, Mr. 
G. A. Ibbetson, in the chair, Dr. Richardson exhibited and 
described various modifications of the ether spray apparatus 
introduced by him; and C. Spence Bate, Esq., F. R. S., 
read a paper upon the “Dentition of the Moles (Talpa 
Europcea).” 
