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SUNDRIES 
famine, mention is made that up to last January it was esti¬ 
mated that 500,000 horses had died in the province of Samara 
alone. From a calculation it was believed that of a million 
of horses no more than 400,000 would be alive at the end of 
last month, and these would be in such an exhausted condi¬ 
tion as to be useless for heavy agricultural labor. This is, 
indeed, a serious matter, not only presently, but prospectively, 
as it will require many years to replace these animals, and 
agriculture will accordingly suffer, even if the seasons should 
prove propitious. We do not hear that the starving peas¬ 
ants availed themselves of the flesh of the horses as food, and 
it might be inferred that they did not, but like our soldiers in 
the Crimea, preferred to perish rather than consume such 
food. The French at Metz and in Paris in 1870-71 were not 
so “ nice .”—Medical Record. 
Immunity. —Professors Brieger and Kitasato, and Dr. 
Wassermann, working in Koch’s laboratory, have found a 
method of preparing a substance which confers immunity to 
animals from infective diseases such as typhoid, diphtheria, 
cholera and tetanus. The bacilli of these diseases, with their 
culture fluids, are exposed to the action of extracts of thy¬ 
mus gland at a temperature of 65° to 8o° C. This kills the 
bacilli, but leaves in the fluid an antitoxine which confers im¬ 
munity. Immunity seems to be secured rather easily and in 
various ways in experimental laboratories. What is wanted is 
something that works in practice. Recently Dr. G. Taruffi 
has reported a sixth case of tetanus cured by the antitoxine 
of Tizzoni and Cantani, and this has an encouraging look.— 
Medical Record. 
A Worthy Sanitary Feat Quietly Accomplished.— 
It is alleged for General Rusk that he has greatly improved 
the treatment of cattle exported to Europe for food purposes. 
The mortality among them at sea, resulting from cruelity, 
want of water, etc., was formerly stated at sixteen per cent., 
while at the present time it is one per cent. The value of 
these exportations is not far from $25,000,000 annually. If 
this statement is only partly true, General Rusk has accom¬ 
plished a great sanitary reform, for he has been the means of 
indirectly purifying the flesh-food supply of thousands of Eu¬ 
ropean consumers.— N. Y. Medical Journal. 
