FACTS Ai\l> OBSERVATIONS. 
469 
of the moisture, it is clear that the so-called ozonometric test 
is a fallacy. A remarkable instance of the advantage vhich 
medical men may derive from chemistry has been published 
in the reports of the hospital Hotel Dieu, at Paris. A young 
student wrote a thesis in which he showed that gangrene 
and deficiency of oxygen were to be regarded as cause and 
effect. Dr. Laugier, surgeon in chief of the hospital, having 
a case of spontaneous gangrene under his care, proceeded to 
test the theory. The patient, a man seventy-five years of 
age, had the disease in one foot, one toe was mortified, and 
the whole member was in danger. The diseased part was 
enclosed in an apparatus contrived to disengage oxygen con- 
tin uousl}', and in a short time the gangrene was arrested 
and the foot recovered its healthy condition. A similar 
experiment tried upon another patient equally aged, was 
equally successful, from which the inference follows that 
treatment with oxygen is an effectual remedy for a disease 
which too often infests hospitals. M. Pasteur, the well- 
known chemist, has presented a paper to the Academy of 
Sciences at Paris on the part played by the oxygen of the 
atmosphere in fermentation, putrefaction, and slow combus¬ 
tion, which throws a flood of light on three natural pheno¬ 
mena, which, as some readers are aware, by accomplishing 
the destruction of organized matter, tend to the perpetuity 
of life on the globe. We content ourselves with this brief 
notice for the present, reserving further discussion until the 
paper shall have been published in full; we shall only add, 
that the opinion among members of the Academy was that 
M. Pasteur has, by his new researches, demolished alike the 
hypothesis of spontaneous generation, and the old theories of 
fermentation. The soapmakers of New York and Boston 
are now using water-glass —liquor silicuni —as the alkaline 
constituent in the manufacture of soap. Formerly, they 
mixed resin largely with the fat, in order to keep down the 
price of soap; but since the blockade of the Carolinas, 
whence the supply of resin was drawn, they have had to dis¬ 
cover a substitute. They have found, within the last two 
years, that highly silicious water-glass assimilates perfectly 
with soap, and decidedly improves its quality and now the 
so-called soap-liquid^^ has come into general use among the 
soapmakers of the Northern States. There is reason to 
believe that the cheanness of the article encourao-es fraud, 
for we observe that a good-looking soap can be made which 
contains full 60 per cent, of the silicate, and that some manu¬ 
facturers, instead of silicated soap, produce '' water-glass in 
bars .^’—Cltamhcris Journal. 
XXXVI. 
31 
