value of these teeth is a million dollars. The materials of which they are composed are feldspar, kaolin, and rock crystal.

-Dr. Lemoyez, writing to the Bulletin Générale de Thérapeutique, recommends parenchymatous injections of pure sulphuric ether for sebaceous cysts of the face and scalp. A case is reported of a man who was relieved of a wen of five years' growth by ten hypodermic injections of ether practiced at intervals of a day or two. The result was the conversion of the tumor into a cyst with fluid contents, the evacuation of the same, and speedy destruction of the cyst wall by inflammatory action. The injections are made into the interior of the cyst, five or ten drops at each sitting, the needle of the hypodermic syringe being moved about so as to break up the contents as much as possible. They are discontinued when inflammation or suppuration begins. In the case quoted the treatment resulted in a perfect cure in a month without keeping the patient in bed or restricting his movements as would have been required by the ordinary operation.

-The New York Times of January 12th contains an editorial on the Longevity of Doctors, which the editor evidenly thought would be amusing to his readers. So it is. The article is based on the list of English practitioners who have died at an advanced age during the last four years. The writer attempts to account for their long life by enumerating in a serio-comic strain the healthful features of a doctor's life, chief among which he places the fact that doctors as a rule swallow little medicine. He then enumerates the pleasures which his profession yields him, and gives vent to the following sentence: "The physician meets with quantities of interesting diseases, and is always hoping to be the first to describe some new disease to which his name will be forever attached, like the popular diseases discovered by Messrs. BRIGHT and Cox respectively!" Evidently the funny man's Latin enables him to translate morbus Coxæ into Cox's disease.

NEW YORK.

-Truly this is the age of progress (?). At the last meeting of the County Medical Society (New Code) a resolution was adopted urging the passage of a pending bill before the Legislature establishing a State Medical Board of Examiners composed of regulars, homœopaths, and eclectics, whose prerogative it shall be to determine upon the qualifications of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, now vested in the various medical colleges. The bill provides that the examiners shall be appointed by the Governor. -The fourth course of the Cartwright Lectures of the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons was delivered in Association Hall by Prof. Burt G. Wilder, M. D., of Cornell University, on the evenings of February 2d, 4th, and 6th, his subject being Methods of Studying the Brain. The first lecture was devoted to a consideration of the limits of the subject of macroscopic encephalic morphology and the methods of regarding the brain based

upon its condition in embryos and in amphibia; the second to the methods of preserving and examining the brain; and the third to the methods of figuring and describing the brain.

A slight fire occurred in Charity Hospital January 27th, which might have been serious had it not been for the presence of mind and energetic action of Dr. Seaman, chief of staff. It occurred at 5.15 in the morning on the third floor of the section of the building occupied by the house physicians and surgeons, and one of their number, Dr. Weiss, was nearly asphyxiated with smoke. 'It was thought that the fire was caused by the steam-heating pipes.

-Mayor Low, of Brooklyn, has reappointed Dr. Joseph H. Raymond Commissioner of Health of that city.

Dr. Elisha Harris, secretary of the State Board of Health, died of peritonitis, after a brief illness, at Albany, on the 31st of January. He was born at Westminster, Vt., March 5, 1824, and received the degree of M. D. from the College of Physicians aud In 1855 he was Surgeons, New York, in 1849. made superintendent and physician-in-chief of the quarantine hospitals on Staten Island, and during the greater part of the late war he was a member of the National Sanitary Commission. For a number of years afterward he was connected with the New York Board of Health, and on the organization of the State Board of Health, in 1880, he was appointed its secretary.

If we go back some forty-five or fifty years to the time when Bright was engaged in writing his famous papers on abdominal tumors, and compare that period with the present, we are forced to exclaim that the stride made by abdominal surgery is little less than miraculous. Then it was the practice to puncture the abdomen and draw off the contents of the tumor as often as it refilled and became troublesome, or until the unfortunate patient died of exhaustion or peritonitis or from septic poisoning produced by suppuration of the growth. Then opening the abdomen was an experiment little resorted to, and when attempted generally resulted in such disaster that even progressive men like Bright were inclined to look upon it with suspicion and disfavor. On this point he says: "I believe as far as cure is concerned the malignant ovarian dropsy admits of none unless we may consider the excision of the tumor in that light, and this must ever

be so doubtful an operation, surrounded by so much darkness and attended with so much danger, that I can only look upon its happy event as the fortunate result of a bold and hazardous enterprise, which should not tempt us to adopt it as a rule of practice."

"1

What would Bright have said could he have penetrated the future and foreseen Keith's seventy-six consecutive "excisions of the tumor," without a death, and now Mr. Thornton's brilliant results?

Until Professor Bigelow demonstrated to the contrary, surgeons were always talking of the intolerance of the bladder and urethra, making this a bête noir. The peritoneum has also been considered in a similar light, and only within the past few years have surgeons begun to learn that it is not so very intolerant after all, and admits of some pretty rough handling without any particular danger to the patient.

cess.

Armed with this knowledge and Listerism the specialist now seems ready to attack any of the abdominal morbid growths, and with a tolerable certainty of sucI say specialist, for I do not believe that the general surgeon, however skillful and learned he may be, can compete with one who devotes a large part of his time to abdominal surgery alone, and the many opportunities which I have had of witnessing operations by both verify the statement.

On the 18th inst. Mr. Thornton removed by laparotomy a large fibro-cyst of the uterus, amputating the latter near the middle of the cervix. The spermatic arteries having been tied, Koeberlé's serre-noeud was used to constrict the cervix. The "stump" was treated by the extra-peritoneal method. It is now the fifth day since the operation, and the patient is doing well. On the 8th Mr. Meredith operated on a hydatid cyst of the liver. This case is of especial interest, as the patient came under Mr. Meredith's care about a year ago and underwent a similar operation; the one case I know of where the same abdomen has been twice opened for the removal of hydatids. The patient is now convalescent.

Both Thornton and Meredith continue to use the spray, and operate in a thoroughly antiseptic manner; and I fancy that their excellent results are partially due to this fact.

At the last meeting of the Obstetrical Society of London a very interesting paper On Observations of Puerperal Temperature, by Dr. E. S. Tait, was read. The article dealt almost exclusively with the relation of nervous impressions or disturbances to post-partum rise of temperature.

The observations were made in one of the London lying-in hospitals, and are a valuable contribution to the literature of the subject. The paper provoked an animated discussion, in which the President, Drs. Mathews Duncan, Playfair, Graily Hewitt, Williams, Champneys, and others joined.

Dr. John Williams's paper on Corroding Ulcer of the Os Uteri, was deferred until the next meeting. The specimen, however, was exhibited, and by courtesy of Dr. Williams I saw the drawings which will be used for illustrations. It is to be hoped that this paper, emanating from so high an authority, will throw some light on the etiology of this very obscure disease, which Emmet says "is almost as rarely met with as is true sarcoma."

The new antipyretic kairin, discovered last year by Fischer, of Munich, does not appear to be gaining

1 The italics are mine.

FATAL RESULT FROM INJECTION OF THE TUNICA VAGINALIS WITH IODINE.

DR. JOHN A. WYETH reports in the Annals of Anatomy (January, 1884) a case where death followed the medical treatment of hydrocele by injection of iodine. The patient was forty-three years of age, of good family history. Had had syphilis and gonorrhoea, the latter several times, but no symptoms of any unusual lesion for at least three years. The hydrocele on the left side was of three months' standing at the time of operation. The urine contained a trace of albumen and pus, supposed to be the liquor puris. In the oper ation, which was done June 27th, the method advised by Van Buren and Keyes was followed. The fluid, measuring about eight ounces, was drawn off with a medium-sized aspirator needle, and one half the quantity of tincture of iodine was thrown in and immediately drawn back into the aspirator. A small quantity, estimated at about one half an ounce, would not return through the needle, and was allowed to remain in and to trickle out through the trocar wound.

Pallor and other evidences of slight shock followed the operation, which was done at ten A. M. At four P. M. patient had a chill lasting fifteen minutes, followed by delirium and a rapid pulse scarcely perceptible at the wrist. Half an ounce of whiskey was given

per os.

By this time a dark-blue spot, insensible to the touch and as large as a silver dollar, had made its appearance on the scrotum, extending to the median raphé. A free incision was now made into the tunica vaginalis through this spot, the cavity was washed out, and the scrotum covered with a poultice. The iodine which was left in was washed out, together with a few small brown clots, which seemed to be coagulated hydrocele fluid, stained with iodine. Urine passed six hours after operation was colored with iodine, and the breath had a peculiar odor. Temperature on this day was, at 3.40 P. M., 101° F.; 4.20 P. M., 102° F.; eight P. M., 99.8° F.; ten P. M., 99.7° F. Quantity of urine in first twenty-four hours, 3xv.

June 28th. Temperature from one to eleven A. M., 99° F. At two A. M. passed 3v. dark urine. Slight vomiting, and again at nine A. M., after taking milk. Cellulitis of scrotum, penis, and contiguous skin of abdomen. One P. M., temperature 101° F.; four P. M., temperature 102° F.; urine, Zixss.

The next few days sloughing of the scrotum occurred, poultices were applied, and the patient was in general comfortable with temperature never above 101° F. The urine averaged about twelve ounces. On July 4th patient was seized with a severe diar

rhoea, followed by eleven evacuations, which greatly prostrated him before they could be checked with quinine, bismuth, and opium; urine, 3xv.

The next day, at six A. M., while attempting to sit up in bed and lift himself by his hands, he cried out as if in great pain, and fell back instantly dead. An autopsy was refused.

The immediate cause of death was believed by the author to be severe diarrhoea, which, supervening on

Deaths reported 2822 (no report from Buffalo): under five years of age, 978: principal infectious diseases (small-pox, measles, diphtheria and croup, whooping cough, erysipelas, fevers, and diarrhoeal diseases) 424, lung diseases 460, consumption 396, diphtheria and croup 146, scarlet fever 80, typhoid fever 50, diarrhoeal diseases 37, measles 33, malarial fevers 28, whooping-cough 20, small-pox 17, cerebro-spinal meningitis 17, puerperal fever 14, erysipelas 11, typhus fever one. From diarrheal diseases, New York 11, New Orleans eight, Brooklyn five, Boston three, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Cincinnati two each, Chicago, Nashville, Cambridge, and Holyoke one each. From measles, Baltimore 11, New York seven, Brooklyn and District of Columbia five each, Philadelphia two, Chicago, Nashville, and Worcester one each. From malarial fever, New York and New Orleans six each, Chicago five, Brooklyn four, St. Louis three, Baltimore, two, District of Columbia and New Haven one each. From whooping-cough, New York four, Baltimore and District of Columbia three each, Brooklyn two, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Nashville,

Worcester, and Chelsea one each. From small-pox, New Orleans 16, Philadelphia one. From cerebro-spinal meningitis, New York six, Philadelphia and Worcester three each, Chicago, New Orleans, New Haven, Cambridge, and Somerville one each. From puerperal fever, Boston five, Chicago three, Brooklyn two, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Lowell one each. From erysipelas, New York, Chicago, and Lowell two each, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, St. Louis, and Baltimore one each. From typhus fever, New York one.

Eight cases of small-pox were reported in St. Louis, Cincinnati one; scarlet fever 59, diphtheria 29, and typhoid fever seven in Boston.

In 105 cities and towns of Massachusetts, with an estimated population of 1,319,006 (estimated population of the State 1,922,530), the total death-rate for the week was 17.78 against 20.00 and 18.00 for the previous two weeks.

In the 28 greater towns of England and Wales, with an estimated population of 8,620,975, for the week ending January 12th, the death-rate was 21. Deaths reported 3523: acute dis

eases of the respiratory organs (London) 379, scarlet fever 117 measles 116, whooping-cough 99, fevers 51, diphtheria 32, diar rhoea 29, small-pox (Birmingham seven, London and Sunder land two each, Liverpool one) 12. The death-rates ranged from 13.7 in Portsmouth to 28.9 in Norwich; Bristol 17.2; London 91.4; Birmingham 20.2; Sunderland 20.8; Nottingham 21.1; Bradford 21 4; Newcastle-on-Tyne 22.8; Liverpool 23.7; Sheffield 25.5; Manchester 28.4. In Edinburgh 18.8; Glasgow 25.8; Dublin 27.1.

For the week ending January 12th, in the Swiss towns, there

were 36 deaths from consumption, lung diseases 22, diphtheria and croup 11, diarrhoeal diseases 10, whooping cough six, measles three, scarlet fever three, typhoid fever two, small-pox one, erysipelas one. The death-rates were, at Geneva 19.4; Zurich 5.9; Basle 20.9; Berne 23.3.

The meteorological record for the week ending January 26th, in Boston, was as follows, according to observations furnished by Sergeant O. B. Cole, of the United States Signal Corps:

Daily Mean.

Relative

Humidity.

Maximum.

Minimum.

OFFICIAL LIST OF CHANGES OF OFFICERS SERVING IN THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT UNITED STATES ARMY, FROM JANUARY 25, 1884, TO FEBRUARY 1, 1884.

ALEXANDER, CHARLES T., major and surgeon. So much of paragraph 7, S. O. 211, September 14, 1883, as directs him to report in person to the commanding general, Department of the Missouri, for duty, is revoked, and he will, upon the expiration of his present leave of absence, proceed to St. Louis, Mo., and assume duty as attending surgeon and examiner of recruits in that city. Paragraph 1, S. O. 21, A. G. O., January 25, 1884. ELBREY, FREDERICK W., captain and assistant surgeon. Present leave of absence extended six months. Paragraph 9, S. O. 24, A. G. O., January 25, 1884.

JOHN L. CLARK, M. D., fifty-five years of age, a ward master in the Boston City Hospital, died recently in that institution of pneumonia. The deceased was a well-educated man, and was graduated at the Harvard Medical School in the class of 1861, with Drs. Blake and Edes, now visiting physicians to the City Hospital. He served in the Union Army as an assistant surgeon until the war was over. He then practiced medicine for a time in Providence, R. I., but subsequently suffered pecuniary misfortune. Previous to his entering the service at the City Hospital he was steward at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

APPOINTMENTS. - Dr. Charles M. Green has been appointed assistant in obstetrics in the Harvard Medical School.

Mr. Charles F. Donnelly has been again appointed by the Governor on the Massachusetts Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. Robert T. Davis, M. C.

DEATH. DR. JOSHUA JEWETT JOHNSON. - Died, in Northborough, Mass., January 29, 1884, Joshua Jewett Johnson, M. D., M. M. S. S., aged seventy-four years nine months.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS Received. Hints on the Drainage and Sewerage of Dwellings. By William Paul Gerhard, Civil Engineer. New York: William T. Comstock, 6 Astor Place. 1884.

Report of Proceedings of the Illinois State Board of Health. Quarterly Meeting, Springfield, January 17, 18, 1884.

A Manual of Practical Hygiene. By Edmund A. Parks, M. D., F. R. S., late Professor of Military Hygiene in the Army Medical School, etc. Edited by F. S. B. François De Chaumont, M. D., F. R. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Professor of Military Hygiene in the Army Medical School. Sixth Edition, with an Appendix giving the American Practice in Matters relating to Hygiene, prepared by and under the Supervision of Frederick N. Owen, Civil and Sanitary Engineer. Vol. II. New York: William Wood & Co. 1883. (November Number of Wood's Library of Standard Medical Authors.)

The Relation Dairy Products bear to Disease. By Hugh Hamilton, M. D., Harrisburg, Pa. (Reprint.) 1884.

Transactions of the American Gynecological Society. Vol. VIII. For the Year 1883. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

1884.

So Called "Concussion of the Spine" in Railway Injuries. By John G. Johnson, M. D. New York.

Eighteenth Report of the Board of Trustees of the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane. 1884.

Morbid Somnolence. By Rudolph Matas, M. D. Read be fore the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Association.

Trismus Nascentium, or the Lockjaw of Infants: Its History, Cause, Prevention, and Cure, etc. By J. F. Hartigan, M. D., of Washington, D. C. (Reprint from American Journal of the Medical Sciences.)

Annual Address delivered before the American Academy of Medicine at New York, October 10, 1883. By Henry O. Marcy, A. M., M. D., President of the Academy.