- M. Perier, at l'Hôpital St. Antoine, has used for some years with good effect (Journal de Médicine, January, 1884) an aqueous solution of chloral, 1-100, for wounds involving the buccal cavity. The sedative action of the drug is added to its antiseptic effect. It should be employed after every ingestion of food, even of milk or bouillon, for the residue of such substances, undergoing fermentation, has an unfavorable action on the raw wound. In cases of fistulous tracts following necrosis the use of this solution by means of the irrigator is found to relieve all fetor, thereby increasing the appetite, and to have a prompt action on the pain and inflammation. Details are given of a gun-shot wound carrying away the whole of one cheek which healed very kindly under the chloral irrigations.

- Dr. Samuel Wilks, senior physician to Guy's Hospital, writes to the Medical Times and Gazette (February 9th) commending a recent paper by Dr. Matthews Duncan on Vicarious Menstruation and Amenorrhoea, and protesting against the belief in vicarious menstruation as an "old-wives' fable." He has never seen a case, and considers that the references to the subject in the text-books are a mere repetition of groundless traditions. He also declares against the use of the term amenorrhoea as referring to a substantive complaint. "For my own part," says he, "I know nothing of such a disorder, nor of such remedies as emmenagogues. I believe myself that amenorrhoea, like many other complaints, is the remnant of a popular delusion, and if so it should be eradicated, like the other disorder, from the medical minds.

-The London Society of Compositors has called the attention of the trade to the excessive mortality prevailing among the members of their craft. In the quarterly journal of the Union, The Printer, statistics are given concerning funeral allowances, which for the year amounted to seventy-four. Out of this number twenty-two compositors died from phthisis, and thirteen from bronchitis, etc., thus giving a total of thirtyfive deaths out of seventy-four due to diseases of the respiratory organs. The causes to which this mortality is ascribed are the irregularity of the hours of work, and especially the lack of ventilation in the composing rooms. These things, however, do not seem sufficiently peculiar to the printer's trade to account for such a large mortality, nor do we know that as a class these workmen are personally especially careless. The limited figures given are not enough to base a general conclusion upon, and perhaps obser

vation among American compositors would not show any worse results than among other in-door workers.

NEW YORK.

The official report of the annual collection and distribution by the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association for 1883 has just been published. The sum total of the collection was $42,803.69, against $30,681.52 the year previous, showing an increase of over $12,000. Of this, $27,040.50 was contributed by the churches and synagogues, and of this latter sum the Protestant Episcopal Church alone contributed $12,962. The Presbyterians came next, with $6,715.50, an amount just double that contributed The Jewish synagogues gave by them in 1882. $1,693.99, and the only other denominations giving over $1000 were the Reformed (Dutch) and Methodists. Sixty-nine Protestant Episcopal Churches contributed, against forty-nine in 1882; thirty-five Presbyterian, against seven in 1882; and thirty-seven Methodist, against seven in 1882.

Ten thousand seven hundred

and thirty-five dollars and sixty-eight cents was designated to particular institutions through churches and other sources, and the remaining sum (less about $3000 for expenses) was distributed to nineteen hospitals. Of these, the Mount Sinai Hospital gets the largest amount, $4,580.57, as affording the greatest number of days of hospital care for free patients for the year. The German Hospital receives $3,628.23, St. Luke's $3,323.14, the Presbyterian $2,321.82, and the Hospital for the Relief of Ruptured and Crippled $3,718.47.

CHICAGO.

- The graduating exercises of the forty-first annual course of lectures of Rush College were held at Central Music Hall on the 19th ult. One hundred and sixty-seven gentlemen received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. On Dr. A. L. Justice the honorary degree was conferred. Dr. Justice lives at El Paso, Texas, and is well and favorably known in the Western States, he having practiced for a considerable time at Denver, Col. Prof. Norman Bridge delivered the doctorate address at the commencement exercises. The alumni of the college, to the number of about four hundred, were entertained in the evening at a banquet given by the Faculty at the Grand Pacific Hotel.

At the annual meeting of the Alumni Association of Rush College, held on the same day, Dr. William Fox, of Milwaukee, was elected president for the ensuing year. The Committee on Prize Essays reported that no essay had been received which in their judgment was worthy of either the first prize of $400 or the second of $50. They recommended, however, the essay entitled Inhibitory Forces for honorable mention. The Association voted to offer, instead of the two prizes heretofore offered, one of $500 for the best essay embodying original investigation, by an alumnus of the college; essays to be presented to the committee by or before February 1, 1886.

- The medical staff of the Charitable Eye and Ear

Infirmary have established a school of ophthalmology and otology for practitioners. Its courses of instruction will be four weeks in length, thus corresponding to the The clinical practitioners' courses at the colleges. facilities of the infirmary are unexcelled. More than a hundred out-patients come to the dispensary for treatment each day, and there are nearly a hundred resident patients. The fee for the course is twenty

dollars.

Correspondence.

LETTER FROM BALTIMORE.

BALTIMORE, February 28, 1884.

Mr. Editor, As some months have elapsed since a letter from Baltimore has appeared in the JOURNAL, perhaps a brief account of the most important medical events which have occurred in that city during the interval will not be uninteresting to your readers.

The health of the city has, on the whole, been better than that of last year for the same time, and we have had no epidemics, unless a mild type of measles, which has been very prevalent here during the last three or four months, may be called epidemic. The secretary of our city Board of Health says it may not.

Our four medical schools (to which number a fifth has recently been added) began the session of 18831884 with about the usual number of students, and in a few weeks that goodly number of American physicians already dispensing good (or evil) will be increased by some three hundred or more "doctors of

medicine."

The fifth school, to which reference has been made above, was chartered under the title of The Baltimore Polyclinic and Post-Graduate Medical School. Its raison d'être is the fact that the four medical schools previously in existence require for graduation attendance on but two sessions of lectures (of less than six months each in the University of Maryland and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and less than nine months in the Baltimore Medical College and the College for Women), and none of these schools offer special facilities for post-graduate students. Indeed, the classes of under-graduates at the two schools which are connected with hospitals and large dispensaries are so full, and the time of the students so closely occupied by the didactic lectures, not to mention dissecting and parallel study, that individual clinical observation is well nigh impossible.

The incorporators of the Polyclinic do not intend to confer diplomas, but to supplement the instruction given by the other schools in order to attract to Baltimore some of that large number of physicians, notably from the South, who go for post-graduate advantages to New York or Philadelphia when not deterred by distance from going anywhere. The following are the professors and their departments: Alan P. Smith, surgery; J. Edwin Michael, genito-urinary surgery; B. B. Browne and T. A. Ashby, gynecology and obstetrics; Samuel Theobald, diseases of the eye and ear; H. Clinton McSherry, diseases of the throat and chest; Robert B. Morison, dermatology and syphilis; Randolph Winslow and John W. Chambers, operative surgery; T. Barton Brune, practice of medicine; William A. Moale, orthopedic surgery; Thomas S. Lati

mer and Ferdinand E. Cleatard, diseases of children. Diseases of the nervous system and pathology are not yet represented, but are expected to be in a short time. Many of these gentlemen are connected with one or more of the other schools, so that the Polyclinic will not be considered by them "a rival in the field." During November and the early part of December Dr. Billings delivered, in Hopkins Hall, a very interesting series of lectures on Municipal Hygiene. The lectures were given under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins University, and were intended for the students of the university, physicians, and the general public. In forming his statistics regarding the healthfulness of Baltimore and the expectation of life of its inhabitants, Dr. Billings took as a basis for calculation the United States, and not the city police, census. course, therefore, his conclusions are somewhat different from those of the city Board of Health, which latter, as you, Mr. Editor, remember, are based upon the police census, and re-enforced by certain curious and ingenious methods of enumeration. He states that the mean-after-life-time of a white male infant born in Baltimore is but little over thirty-six years, and of a colored male infant only twenty-one years.

Of

In an amusing way he ridiculed the present ward boundaries, which he thought were entirely worthless (except, perhaps, from a political point of view), and showed that they would much impair the value of the ward sanitary statistics.

One of the subjects, to which he devoted nearly the whole of two lectures, and which is particularly interesting to Baltimoreans, was that of sewerage.

We have in Baltimore upwards of 60,000 cess-pools, and our soil is pretty well honeycombed and polluted by them. How to abolish these and establish a firstrate system of sewerage, without undue expense, is the most important sanitary question with which we, at present, have to deal. Dr. Billings, after mentioning the objects and principles of sewerage, spoke in a general way about some particular systems, especially those of Waring, Liernur, and Berlier. Of the latter he said it had but recently been introduced into Paris, and it was too soon to speak of its merits. He spoke approvingly of Colonel Waring's system, and mentioned the advantages which a separate has over a combined system. He also said it was the urgency of the occasion and the cheapness of the Waring system which had occasioned its adoption for Memphis. The Liernur plan he considered had some merits, but it "is a very costly one, both for construction and maintenance, . . . and it is condemned by the leading engineers of England, France, Germany, and America." His opinion has the more weight because it is in accordance with the views expressed by Colonel Waring and City Engineer Latrobe, at the State Sanitary Convention, held in this city the 21st and 23d of last November; and because it is directly opposed to the opinion of Dr. Chancellor, the secretary of our State Board of Health. The latter, some eighteen months ago went to Europe, to investigate sanitary matters, and came back very much impressed with the advantages of Captain Liernur's system of sewerage; so much so, that at the last annual meeting of the State Medical and Chirurgical Faculty he read a paper in which he warmly praised this system, and spoke of it as "destined to supersede all other systems now in vogue." In answer to the views of Dr. Billings and the other above-mentioned gentlemen he has published quite a lengthy article in the Mary

Deaths reported 2652 (no reports from Cincinnati and Buffalo) under five years of age, 1055: principal infectious diseases (small-pox, measles, diphtheria and croup, whooping cough, erysipelas, fevers, and diarrhoeal diseases) 386, lung diseases 384, consumption 374, diphtheria and croup 145, scarlet fever 50, typhoid fever 47, measles 31, diarrhoeal diseases 29, cerebro-spinal meningitis 25, malarial fevers 24, small-pox 20, whooping-cough 12, erysipelas 12, puerperal fever 11. From measles, Baltimore 12, New York six, District of Columbia five, New Orleans and Nashville three each, Chicago two. From diarrheal diseases, New York 11, Chicago four, Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, and New Orleans three each, Lowell and Cambridge one each. From cerebro-spinal meningitis, New York five, Philadelphia, Lowell, and Worcester three each, Chicago and St. Louis two each, Boston, Charleston, Lynn, Holyoke, and Newton one each. From malarial fevers, New York 12, St. Louis four, Baltimore and New Orleans three each, Brooklyn two. From small-pox, New Orleans 17, Philadelphia, Nashville, and Holyoke one each. From whooping-cough, New York three, Boston two, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, Pittsburg, and Chelsea one each. From erysipelas, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and District of Columbia two each, Brooklyn, Boston, St. Louis, and New Haven one each. From puerperal fever, New York and Chicago three each, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, St. Louis, and Providence one each.

Three cases of small-pox were reported in St. Louis; diphtheria 20, scarlet fever 48, typhoid fever seven, and measles one in Boston; scarlet fever 14 and diphtheria four in Milwaukee.

In cities and towns of Massachusetts, with an estimated population of 1,411,763 (estimated population of the State 1,955,104), the total death-rate for the week was 16.72 against 16.28 and 19.26 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 February 2d, the death-rate was 20.5. Deaths reported 3448: acute dis

eases of the respiratory organs (London) 367, whooping-cough 126, scarlet fever 101, measles 75, fevers 38, diphtheria 36, diarrhoea 29, small-pox (Birmingham seven, Liverpool three, Sunderland two, London and Wolverhampton one each) 14. The death-rates ranged from 13.1 in Derby to 28.1 in Oldham ; Leicester 14.9; Bradford 18.4; Liverpool 19.2; Blackburn 19.4; Sheffield 20.3; Nottingham 20.6; London 20.7; Manchester 23.9; Newcastle-on-Tyne 24.1; Leeds 24.9. In Edinburgh 22.8; Glasgow 23. 6; Dublin 29.7.

In the 28 greater towns of England and Wales, with an estimated population of 8,762,354, for the week ending February 9th, the death-rate was 20.6. Deaths reported 3466: acute diseases of the respiratory organs (London) 347, whooping-cough 124, scarlet fever 94, measles 53, fever 44, diarrhoea 35, diphtheria 28, small-pox (Birmingham nine, London four, Liverpool and Sunderland three each, Wolverhampton and Manchester one each) 21. The death-rates ranged from 15.3 in Wolverhampton to 27.9 in Manchester; Blackburn 19.4; London 19.5; Birmingham 19.6; Nottingham 20.3; Leeds 21.4; Sheffield 22.1; Liverpool 23.3; Newcastle-on-Tyne 23.8; Leicester 24; Birkenhead 24.1. In Edinburgh 22.2; Glasgow 26.7; Dublin

30.

For the week ending February 9th, in the Swiss towns, there were 39 deaths from consumption, lung diseases 28, diphtheria and croup 12, diarrhoeal diseases 10, whooping-cough three, measles one, small-pox (Winterthin one) one. The death-rates were at Geneva 18.3; Zurich 15.8; Basle 14.7; Berne 27.8.

For the week ending February 2d, in the Swiss towns, there were 32 deaths from lung diseases, consumption 20, diarrhoeal diseases 16, whooping-cough seven, diphtheria and croup six, measles, scarlet fever, puerperal fever, and typhoid fever two each, small-pox one. The death-rates were, at Geneva 22.4; Zurich 13.8; Basle 18.6; Berne 24.4.

OBITUARY.

He

DR. GEORGE ENGELMANN, the oldest practitioner in St. Louis, and the father of Dr. George J. Engelmann, died of pneumonia on February 4th, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. was born in Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1809, and came to the United States in 1832, after having received his education at the Berlin, Heidelberg, and Würzburg Universities. He was one of the founders of the Western Academy of Science in 1836, and, later, one of the originators of the St. Louis Medical Society. In 1856 he was largely instrumental in founding the St. Louis Academy of Science, and was for many years president of that body. He had a high reputation as an authority in botany, and for forty-seven years he made it a part of his occupation to take meteorological observations several times a day, and only discontinued this practice two days before his death.

DR. JOHN HUTTON BALFOUR, Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Edinburgh, Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, and Queen's Botanist for Scotland, is dead at the same age, seventy-six. He was a member of many learned societies, both at home and abroad, and was the author of a variety of books and articles on botany, including the Manual of Botany and Botany and Religion.

OFFICIAL LIST OF CHANGES of officerS SERVING IN THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT UNITED STATES ARMY, FROM FEBRUARY 22, 1884, TO FEBRUARY 29, 1884.

BROWN, JOSEPH B., lieutenant-colonel, and BILLINGS, JOHN S., major, surgeons, directed to attend the International Health Exhibition in London, and, as delegates, the International Med. ical Congress at Copenhagen, to be held in May and August next, respectively; also to include Berlin in their route to or from Copenhagen, and to be governed by special instructions from the Surgeon-General in complying with this order. S. O. 44, paragraph 8, A. G. O., February 21, 1884.

WOODWARD, JOSEPH J., major and surgeon. Leave of ab

sence still further extended six months on account of sickness. S. O. 44, paragraph 11, A. G. O., February 21, 1884.

HORTON, S. M., major and surgeon. Having reported at these headquarters, from leave of absence, ordered to Fort Hays, Kansas, for duty. S. O. 40, paragraph 2, headquarters, Department of Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, February 20,

1884.

PATZKI, JULIUS H., captain and assistant surgeon. Leave of absence extended one year on surgeon's certificate of disability, with permission to go beyond sea. S. O. 43, paragraph 9, A. G. O., February 20, 1884.

MADDOX, T. J. Č., first lieutenant and assistant surgeon. Assigned to temporary duty at Meyer's Springs, Texas. Per post orders, No. 27, paragraph 1, Fort Clark, Texas, February 13, 1884.

DIETZ, WILLIAM D., first lieutenant and assistant surgeon. Assigned to temporary duty at U. S. Military Academy, West Point, N. Y.

PHILLIPS, JOHN L., first lieutenant and assistant surgeon. Assigned to temporary duty in Department of the East.

63.04 1.99

PROVIDENCE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. ELECTION OF OFFICERS. — - The annual meeting of the Providence Medical Association was held in the Medical Library, March 3, 1884, and the following officers elected for the ensuing year: President, Dr. W. J. Burge. Vice-President, Dr. E. T. Caswell. Secretary, Dr. Frank B. Fulier. Treasurer, Dr. Byron Whitford. Standing Committee, Drs. H. G. Miller, G. Radeke, G. D. Hersey, G. A. Pierce, G. W. Porter. Committee on the Reading Room, Drs. G. D. Hersey, H. G. Miller, G. W. Porter.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED. - Tribute to the late James Marion Sims, M. D., LL.D. By W. O. Baldwin, M. D., of Montgomery, Ala.

Cooper Medical College, San Francisco. Annual Announcement. Session of 1884.

11.23 P M.