infant the left breast exclusively, while the right breast should be nursed by a puppy to be procured for the purpose. The patient refused to remain. PREGNANCY INDEFINITELY PROLONGED. In connection with the editorial on that subject in our last issue we are pleased to call the attention of our readers to a note in the Jour. de. Méd. et de Chirurg. Prat. for June last. Dr. Fraipont publishes in the Annals of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Liège a report on the work of Dr. Mueller relative to this much controverted question. This work starts with the communication of an unpublished observation from Prof. Stoltz of an extra-uterine pregnancy confounded with a uterine pregnancy until the autopsy. The author, stimulated by this observation, had the thought to seek similar errors to be found in science and to examine if it is possible that a uterine pregnancy may have a duration as long as the extra-uterine pregnancy, in a word, if an ovum which presents all the characteristics of maturity can continue in the uterus, living or dead, during one or several months or even whole years. Several accoucheurs of talent, and notably among English authors, have admitted that in certain cases, rare it is true, the phenomena of labor have been manifested at the normal term, but were not completed, and were arrested. The fetus remains in the uterus, sometimes without causing modifications, but most frequently undergoing and producing various alterations. This it is which in England is designated as "missed labor." The author carefully collected all the observations of protracted pregnancy published up to the time of his work,and,after having submitted them to a severe critical examination, he has come to the conclusion that there is no positive proof of the retention during more than ten months of a fetus living or dead. There are, he says, not more than three or four that could be considered doubtful; but they are so incomplete and present such obscure points that no one could place any credit in them at present. To affirm in the living subject that a pregnancy is uterine, it is necessary to be able to feel distinctly the bones of the fetus through the orifice of the neck and to be assured that the womb is not empty on exploring with a sound. Now the causes of error are too many to enumerate. Then as Mueller says, whenever there is no autopsy we can know nothing certainly;and even at an autopsy after a certain number of years of duration of an extra-uterine pregnancy, the empty womb is often so difficult to recognize, enwrapped as it is in the masses of tissue of new formation surronding the cyst, that one might think that there was the uterus where there was only a cyst, an error committed by the most eminent anatomists. That is just what had occurred in the case of Stoltz which was the beginning of Mueller's work. According to the author, "missed labor" is simply labor which declares itself at term in extra-uterine pregnancy, but a labor which is incomplete, and gives place then to a pregnancy indefinitely prolonged, but extra-uterine and not uterine as is believed. For the present, says he in concluding, there exists no authentic observation of retention of the fetus in the womb beyond the term of an ordinary pregnancy. CHRONIC INDURATION OF THE BREAST. In the June number of the Jour. de Méd. et de Chirurg. Prat. the editor gives an interesting résumé of the points made by Dr. Phocas with reference to this subject in a thesis on the relations between certain inflammations and tumors of the breast. He gives to this affection the name of maladie noueuse de la mamelle, or knotty disease of the breast, and notes particularly the possibility of an incorrect diagnosis. This affection, designated by different authors by the names chronic mammary tumor, partial hypertrophy, chronic mammitis etc., appears in two different conditions. Sometimes the disease has been preceded by an abscess in the breast, and appears in women advanced in age: sometimes it follows upon other causes and appears in young women. In the first case the abscess may have existed at an epoch far removed from the moment when the lesion is observed. In the second, chronic contusion has been observed as constituting the cause, such, for instance as the compression of the corset and menstrual troubles. The commencement of the disease is often slow and insidious; the patient discovers by chance that she has an enlargement of the breast, but often also pain is the first symptom to appear. When the disease has reached its full development, there is almost nothing to be seen except a vary slight deformity. On examination from before backwards, one almost always finds a movable, distinct tumor whose size varies from that of a hazelnut to that of a large walnut, whose consistence is firm and resisting, superficially situa ted, in general separated from the skin by a small quantity of soft tissues, and finally of that mobility of adenomata to the extent of being capable of displacement from two to three fingers' breadths in all directions, offering the sensation of a foreign body in the gland. But further exploration shows that this tumor is by no means isolated; at a greater or less distance from the principal tumor there exist a large number of other prominences, separate from one another by small intervals. The size of these nodosities varies from that of a pin-head to that of a pea. Their consistence is the same as that of the principal tumor. That which distinguishes them specially from the principal tumor, is their perfect connection with the mammary gland. If one takes the gland between two fingers, one can quickly determine that all these little prominences are an integral part of the gland which is, one might say, sclerosed, especially in its upper third, where one finds a quantity of these nodosities which are disseminated irregularly in the substance of the breast. One might imagine that he had pricked a great num ber of pins into its substance and could feel the heads through the skin. As to the principal tumor its mobility is not absolute; it is limited by a pedicle which it is usually possible to find on searching across the tumor; but it has no connection with the skin. As to functional signs they are reduced to pains, very variable according to the case, but which in some circumstances are so intense as to constitute one of the forms of the disease which has been described under the name of irritable tumors of the breast. The course of the affection is fitful. There are alternations, oscillations, in the volume of the tumor; its termination may be by spontaneous recovery or by treatment which consists in compression; and it is the disappearance of these tumors which has led to the belief in the cure of cancer by certain forms of treatment. There are also cases which one might call "frustes," (incomplete) in which the tumor exists alone without being accompanied by those little nodosities which give its particular character. These are the cases which are most difficult of diagnosis. This is based especially upon the fact that the maladie noueuse de la mamelle succeeds in certain cases to abscesses and in others is the result of a known irritation; that on palpation it is composed of a principal tumor, mobile but pediculated, accompanied by a multitude of little disseminated indurations in the thickness of the breast, which contract intimate connections with the gland; that it is often bilateral; at it advances in an irregular fashion, and by jumps, and finally terminates favorably. But in the incomplete form, that is without the nodosities and fibromata, the resemblances are such that the diagnosis becomes very difficult, and so that one may ask if there is not an identity of nature between benign tumors and this form of mammitis. These tumors would be only a more advanced state of the affection which it is important not to misunderstand, since in this case all operative measures are contra-indicated. ALCOHOL IN HIGH LATITUDES. Under this title The Forum for August has an article from the pen of Gen. A. W. Greeley, in which he relates his and his comrades' experience with alcohol during the time passed by them in the extreme north, on the notable Lady Franklin Bay expedition. It is interesting to note how Gen. Greeley's experience and conclusions confirm some of what are now the most generally accepted opinions regarding the effects and legitimate uses of alcohol, yet which in the minds of some need still further scientific confirmation. The extreme exposure and great physical and mental strain to which the members of this notable expedition were subjected at Fort Conger for two years are now matters of history. "Despite all this," says Gen. Greeley, "no case of serious frost-bite nor any disabling illness occurred, save in one instance, when Sergeant Cice, the photographer, attacked by inflammatory rheumatism, was brought to camp by a reliable party. In this single case, Dr. Pavy and Rice, who composed the original party, had abundantly provided themselves with rum from an English cache in Lincoln Bay." * * * "During the boat retreat southward from Conger to Cape Sabine, in August and September, 1884, a considerable quantity of rum and whiskey was taken with the party, but although there was much exposure from great physical labor, more than half the journey was completed before the issue of spirits was begun. It was commenced at a time when the party was somewhat disheartened by the surroundings, and the particular result thus sought was to benefit the men mentally rather than physically. The use of rum during the boat retreat appeared to be most beneficial when given to the men just after the day's work was over, and before they entered their sleeping bags. Before reaction came the men received hot food. Every one who could avoided drinking the rum until he had entered his bag. These special issues of rum, either * * * |