Am.  Jour.  Pharm. \ 
April,  1899.  / 
Notes  and  News. 
xiii 
NOTES  AND  NEWS. 
Prof.  Rudolf  Robert  is  no  longer  Director  of  the  Sanatorium  Brehmer 
at  Gorbersdorf-Silesia,  but  is  again  Professor  of  Pharmacology  and  Physio- 
logical Chemistry  in  Rostock-Mecklenburg.  This  is  welcome  news  as  we 
shall  look  for  further  contributions  to  the  literature  of  this  subject  from  him. 
History  of  thf  Massage  Treatment.— This  form  of  treatment,  as  now 
practiced  by  modern  Europeans  and  other  English-speaking  nations,  origi- 
nated in  Sweden,  but  according  to  the  legends  of  their  country  the  Chinese 
were  the  real  originators  of  massage  and  other  forms  of  physical  exercise. — 
Scientific  American. 
Arsenic  in  Tea. — An  ingenious  microbiological  method  is  employed  by 
Morpurgo  and  Brunner  {Giornale  di  /armaria,  1898,  p.  195).  They  place 
the  material  containing  arsenic  in  the  middle  of  a  piece  of  potato  ready  for 
culture  and  sow  on  it  the  spores  of  a  fungus  Penicillium  brevicaule.  Arse- 
nous  acid  is  given  off,  which  is  caught  in  a  potassium  bitartrate  solution  and 
estimated. — Pharm.  Centralh.,  1898,  670. 
Mental  Telepathy. — In  these  days,  when  our  views  with  regard  to  the 
seen  and  unseen  are  becoming  more  and  more  rational,  partly  on  account  of 
recent  psycological  researches,  the  following  from  the  Lancet  may  be  of  in- 
terest :  Sir  William  Crookes,  as  is  well  known,  has  been  bold  in  expressing  his 
views  on  what  most  people  consider  to  be  occult  subjects,  and  he  has  been 
taken  to  task  for  his  attitude  as  a  scientific  man  on  these  questions.  He  has 
been  silent  for  some  time,  but  he  evidently  felt  that  the  trend  of  public  thought 
has  changed,  and  so  he  reverted  to  a  subject  which  has  recently  attracted  the 
attention  of  recognized  men  of  science.  Sir  William  Crookes  believes  the  fun- 
damental law  of  telepathy  to  be  "  that  thoughts  and  images  may  be  transferred 
from  one  mind  to  another  without  the  agency  of  the  recognized  organs  of 
sense,  that  knowledge  may  enter  the  human  mind  without  being  communi- 
cated in  any  hitherto  known  or  recognized  ways."  The  subject  obviously  pre- 
sents many  difficulties  in  the  way  of  practical  inquiry,  investigation  and  eluci- 
dation ;  but  we  do  not  doubt  that  some  are  prepared  to  accept  this  postulate. 
Molecular  movements  occur  in  the  brain  during  thought  processes,  and  it  is 
conceivable  that  physical  vibrations  are  set  up,  capable,  from  their  extreme 
minuteness,  of  acting  directly  on  individual  molecules,  while  their  rapidity 
approaches  that  of  the  internal  and  external  movements  of  the  atoms  them- 
selves. We  need  only  refer  to  the  Roentgen  ray  phenomena  and  the  transmis- 
sion of  electric  waves  without  wires  in  order  to  find  an  analogy  which  lends 
considerable  assistance  to  the  idea. 
Electric  Sunstroke. — It  is  reported  by  the  French  physician  L,avraud 
that  an  engineer  exposed  for  an  hour,  at  a  distance  of  about  3  feet,  to  the  rays 
given  out  by  two  connected  arcs  under  a  current  of  15  amperes,  manifested 
in  about  three  hours  all  the  symptoms  of  sunstroke.  The  affection  was  at- 
tributed to  the  chemical  rays,  and  not  to  the  intensity  of  the  heat,  the  patient 
having  been  situated  in  that  part  of  the  cone  of  rays  where  the  light  was  least, 
but  the  chemical  activity  greatest. — New  York  Medical  Journal. 
