EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
49 
MERCURY POISONING. 
A farmer who had bought from the druggist a pound of grey 
mercury salve as an agent for lice, applied the same to nineteen 
young cattle^with considerable friction and over a large surface. 
On the next day all the animals so treated refused their 
mess, and exhibited spasmodic contractions of the general 
muscular system and regular in character; also a foetid diarrhoea 
having a most intolerent odor and disgusting appearance. The 
gait exceptional, and some few were too weak to maintain them¬ 
selves standing. After several days the symptoms became 
more benign, but the local lesions, where the salve had been 
applied, only now commenced to appear; the latter consisted 
of a cutaneous swelling, and later a moist eczema of a most 
irritable nature. 
This eruption healed very slowly after the lapse of two 
months. In some of the individuals the skin became hard and 
scaly over more or less of the surface. The animals surviving 
the severest local lesions were attacked fourteen days later 
with painful laryngitis and subsequent pneumonia. Respiration, 
40-5°; pulse, 95; temperature, 104° F. 
In the other patients only the cough appeared; a young bull, 
six months old, succumbed to the application .—Berliner Wock. 
A ’P 3 - 
RUMINATIO HUMANA. 
Hille communicates the following upon the subject of rumin¬ 
ation in man. The first case respects a 45-year-old cow hand, 
who had regurgitated regularly since his sixteenth. The act 
was continuous, and occurred independent of food consumption, 
and was not under the volition. 
The second and third cases were respectively a 53-year-old 
man and his 21-year-old son. The latter had been accustomed 
to the process since early childhood. The father had suffered 
for a long time from dyspepsia, which he stated was contracted 
in his twentieth year. 
The rumination in the last two instances was governed by 
