MODERN ROMULUS. A curious story, recalling the myths of early Rome, is given in the Medical Press and Circular, of a woman of Toulouse who, while working in the fields, left her baby in a shady corner whither she went occasionally to nurse it. Meantime a bitch was left to protect the child. After a time, the latter not seeming to be as hungry for the breast as usual, the mother watched it, and found the bitch standing over the baby who was nursing with relish. The mother saw no objection to the proceeding, and allowed it to continue. The child throve, and the arrangement proved eminently satisfactory to all concerned.-Boston Med. and Surg. Journal.

PARENCHYMATOUS INJECTIONS OF HYPEROSMIC ACID-Delbastaille recommends intraparenchymatous injections of hyperosmic acid in chronic lymphadenitis, congenital angiomata of medium size and in neuralgia. He reports eight cases of the latter description. Two cases of intercostal neuralgia were cured; four cases of trigeminus neuralgia and one of neuralgia of the brachial plexus were much improved.

No bad side-effects, local or general, occurred. A one-per-cent solution was employed in a dosage of 1-1 syringeful daily or every other day.-Weekly Medical Review.

ROYAL ANTISEPTIC SURGERY.-Among the absurdities into which the arrogance of high station leads some men, is the following ukase issued by the king of Servia, on December 12th last: "Whereas, it is irrefutably proved by science that the so-called antiseptic treatment of wounds yields more beneficial results than all other methods, we are pleased to order that henceforward the said antiseptic plan of treatment be solely employed in all hospitals of our kingdom, and that corrosive sublimate and iodoform be used until our further dispositions."

GOUTY INFILTRATION OF THE PENIS.-A writer in the British Medical Journal reports the following remarkable case: A person subject to gout (past fifty years of age), has a thickening occupying the upper surface of the

penis; when erection or partial erection takes place, the organ is curved backward; there is no pain nor difficulty in micturition, but the glans and body appear to be atrophied to some extent. Sexual desire is not impaired, but intercourse has not been indulged in since the existence of the present condition.

M. PASTEUR'S DEAD PATIENT -It appears, from the post-mortem examination of a Russian who died after having been subjected to M. Pasteur's treatment, that the traumatic element in the case was very considerable, probably enough to have caused the man's death. Two of the bites had taken away almost the whole of the upper lip, and a fragment of the wolf's canine tooth was found imbedded in the parts above the zygoma. The encephalon presented nothing notable.

PROF. TYNDALL'S theory of vaccination is having another run through the medical and secular press of the country. If the journals quote Prof. Tyndall as industriously for the next dozen years as they have for the past dozen, his views will probably be understood. They seem as popular as those of Prof. Agassiz were on the fish and brain question a decade or two ago.

APPARENT HYDROPHOBIA.-Arthur S. Parvin, a farmer at Parvin's Mills, near Vineland, N. J., died recently, after suffering great agony for two weeks, during which he manifested all the symptoms of hydrophobia, although his disease was supposed to be congestion of the brain. It is noted that about a year ago he was bitten by a dog.

KENTUCKY DELEGATES TO THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.-The names of Drs. T. B. Greenley, West Point, and D. W. Yandell, Louisville, should have been included in our previous list of delegates appointed by the Kentucky State Medical Society to the American Medical Association for 1886.

DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES will pass the summer in Europe. It is just fifty years. since he last crossed the ocean.

LIFE AT HIGH PRESSURE.-At a recent meeting of the Paris Biological Society, M. Regnard showed two cylindrical blocks of quartz, which are to be adjusted to an apparatus for submitting animals to a pressure of 1000 atmospheres. These blocks, owing to their excessive transparency, if they do not burst, will allow the observer to study all the phenomena which occur.-Medical News.

CHOLERA ON THE CONTINENT.-Telegrams of April 18th state that theS anitary Board of Rome admits that Asiatic cholera has broken out at Brindisi, and has ordered that all arriv als at other Adriatic ports from Brindisi be quarantined one week. The Austrian Government has ordered one week's quarantine against arrivals at Austrian Adriatic ports from Brindisi.

A NEW TEST OF MEDICAL COLLEGE STANDING. The Illinois State Board of Health has resolved to recognize no medical college as of good standing, the aggregate of whose graduates amount to forty-five per cent of its aggregate matriculates during a period of five years ending with any session subsequent to the session of 1885-86.

YELLOW FEVER IN RIO DE JANEIRO.-The bulletin issued April 20th by the Secretary of the National Board of Health states that the

disease is reported prevalent, and that it has been steadily advancing since January 1st, during that month one hundred and thirty-two deaths from this cause having been reported.

COCAINE IN NYMPHOMANIA.-Prof. Parvin (Weekly Medical Review) reports a case of nymphomania treated with cocaine applied to the walls of the vagina. The result was a complete relief of inordinate sexual desire at the end of three weeks. The permanent effect, however, remains to be seen.

Dr. FLINT'S SUCCESSOR.-Dr. Edward G. Janeway has been appointed Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, in place of the late Dr. Flint.

THE SOUTHWESTERN KENTUCKY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION will meet in Paducah on Tuesday, May 11th. For information relative to the meeting address W. M. COWGILL, M. D., Cor. Secr'y., Paducah, Ky.

Army and Navy Medical Intelligence. OFFICIAL LIST of Changes in the Stations and Duties of Officers serving in the Medical Department, United States Army, from April 11, 1886, to April 17, 1886:

Captain J. H. Patzki, Assistant Surgeon, relieved from duty at Jackson Barracks, Louisiana, and ordered for duty as Post Surgeon at Mt. Vernon Barracks, Alabama. (S. O. 75, Dept. East, April 12, 1886.) Captain John Van R. Hoff, Assistant Surgeon, leave of absence extended eleven months, with permission to leave the United States. (S. O. 85, A. G. O., April 12, 1886.) Captain Richards Barnett, Assistant Surgeon, granted leave of absence for two months. (S. O. 16, Div. Atlantic, April 12, 1886.) First Lieutenant Philip G. Wales, Assistant Surgeon, granted leave of absence for two months. (S. O. 85, A. G. O., April 12, 1886.)

OFFICIAL LIST of Changes of Stations and Duties of Medical Officers of the United States Marine Hospital Service, for the four weeks ending April 24, 1886:

Wyman, Walter, Surgeon, to represent the Service at the meeting of the American Medical Association a St. Louis, Mo. April 12, 1886. Sawtelle, H. W., Surgeon, detailed as chairman of Board for Physical Examination of Officers of the Revenue Marine Service, April 15, 1886. Urquhart, F. M., Passed Assistant Surgeon, relieved from duty at Norfolk, Va., May 1, 1886, to assume charge of Cape Charles Quarantine, April 16, 1886. Yemans, H. W., Passed Assistant Surgeon, detailed as recorder of Board for Physical Examination of Officers of the Revenue Marine Service. April 15, 1886. Heath, F. C., Assistant Surgeon, appointed an Assistant Surgeon, April 15, 1886. Assigned to duty at Chicago, Ill., April 16, 1886. Long W. H. Surgeon, granted leave of absence for seven days. April 24, 1886. Banks C. E., Passed Assistant Surgeon, granted leave of absence for ten days. April 20, 1886. Armstrong S. T., Passed Assistant Surgeon, granted leave of absence for five days. April 20, 1886.

OFFICIAL LIST of Changes in the Stations and Duties of Officers serving in the Medical Depart ment United States Army, from April 18 1886, to April 24, 1886:

Maj. M. K. Taylor, Surgeon, granted one month's leave of absence, on surgeon's certificate of disability, with permission to leave the limits of the Department. (S. O. 39, Dept. Mo., April 16, 1886,) Capt. Wm. W. Gray, Assistant Surgeon, ordered to Fort Maginnis, M. T. Capt. Ezra Woodruff, Assistant Surgeon, ordered to Fort Missoula, M. T. First Lieut. Reuben L. Robertson, Assistant Surgeon, ordered for temporary duty at Fort Snelling, Minn. (S. O. 33 Dept. Dak., April 16, 1886.) First Lieut. Philip G. Wales, Assistant Surgeon, granted leave of absence for one month. (S. Ö. 56, Dept. Columbia, April 8, 1886.)

No. 10.

VOL. I. [NEW SERIES.]

Certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than any thing else.-RUSKIN.

Original Articles.

SOME POINTS IN BACTERIOLOGY.*

JAMES T. WHITTAKER, M. D. Prof. of Theory and Practice of Medicine, Medical College of Ohio.

"Vere scire est per causas scire.”—BACON. There are three planes in the history of medicine. The first is the study of the symptoms or appearance of the disease. It is the period of the infancy of medicine. It is naturally the most crude period, and all irregular medicine still rests upon this plane. It gave us a pharmacopeia, and the highest expression of it made of the practice of medicine an art. The second plane begins with the observation of the effects or lesions of disease. It made us familiar with the natural history of disease, and thereby nearly destroyed the pharmacopeia. The third is the present plane, upon which are being prosecuted investigations into the cause of disease. Investigators have just set foot upon its threshold. When it shall have been fully attained medicine will be entitled to a place among the sciences which are called

exact.

The progress made in this direction during the past year so con.pletely overshadows all other work in range and promise of practical value as to justify in this report, to the excluclusion of every thing else, a brief review of

the conclusions reached.

The etiology of acute infections is comprised under the single term

Address of the Chairman of the Section of Practice of Medicine, etc., at the American Medical Association, St. Louis, May 6, 1886.

BACTERIOLOGY,

the bacterium having come in the course of time to include all pathogenic as well as many innocent micro-organisms.

The year just passed has not been as eventful in the definite discovery of new causes of diseases as several that have preceded it in the first half of the present decade. What has especially characterized the past year is the fixation of facts previously acquired, whereby the so-called germ theory of infectious disease has been brought from the realms of the ideal to the region of the real. Coemans said, several years ago, "The following up of a single bacterium through all its phases of development is far more valuable than the discovery of new germs," and this pursuit has now been made with such success in the case of many forms as to justify in our day the claim of Magni in the Roman Annals of Public Medicine, fifteen years ago, that the study of medicine should undergo a reform, making obligatory at least a three months' course with micro-organisms.

For it is now demonstrated beyond dispute that pathogenic micro-organisms do exist in distinct and definite entity. The views advanced by Beale, that bacteria are portions of diseased protoplasm from living tissues, and by Wigand, that they may spring up de novo in organic matter by transformation of organic molecules, are no longer held worthy of serious consideration. The view of Beale was never any thing more than an ingenious hypothesis, and it fell to the ground with the first studies of the life-history of bacteria, while Wigand's theory had no better support than any other.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

The fate which overtook the illustration of this theory may serve to show the danger of advocating spontaneous generation in our day.

Wigand remarked that, for the purpose of dissipating all doubts concerning the spontaneous development of bacteria in the protoplasm of cells, he would call attention to the fact that moving bacteria could be seen at any time in the healthy living cells of the Trianea bogoten sis, and in the hairs of the libiatæ. This statement was brought to the notice of the eminent botanist of Strasburg, De Bary, who thus describes his investigations. The trianea is a South American floating water plant. A piece of its living tissue removed from a fresh, healthy plant, examined under the microscope, reveals in fact the most exquisite picture of bacteria. Slender bacilli, alone or adherent in short rows, follow about the movements of the protoplasm and other contents of the cell in the liveliest way. Such a picture is a model -as a picture. But the addition of a drop of diluted nitric acid quickly dispels the illusion. Instead of maintaining itself like a true microorganism, the bacteria of the trianea are dissolved away at once. The same is true of the rods in the hairs of the lip-flowering plants. The bacteria are nothing else than small crystals of oxalate of lime frequent in this form in the cells of plants. This story is instructive, the author says, in showing how far astray preconceptions may lead otherwise excellent ob

servers.

Wigand saw micro-organisms develop in fluids after exposure to boiling heat for half an hour, a temperature and time sufficient, he thought, to destroy all germs. But the experiments at Koch's laboratory, at Berlin, prove that individual spores resist a boiling heat for several hours. Wigand's erroneous conclusions were based upon an imperfect sterilization.

What a contrast to these obscure conceptions is offered in the clear statements of Leeuwenhoek, the first individual to turn the lens, crude and imperfect as it then was, upon, and to discover, micro-organisms. It would almost seem as if great minds knew intuitively what is true and what is false, else how may we understand the observations, made by Leeuwenhoek as early as 1685, of the minute organisms found in water: "they do not arise in the water," he says, "they develop from germs."

The germ theory of disease was never really

in so much danger from its enemies as its friends. For many years it suffered ridicule and discredit because of the false conceptions of "undismayed pioneers" and overzealous advocates. The Germans still speak of the überreifer Eifer of this class. Thus the choleraphyton proclaimed in England, and later again in Germany, turned out to be nothing else than eggs of intestinal worms; the animalculæ of variola eventuated in the common bacteria of putrefaction, and the palmellæ of malaria disclosed by one of our countrymen were unmasked as foreign bodies, impurities, not even germs.

CLAIMS OF CONVERTIBILITY OF ALL GERMS.

An original conception of this overripe zeal was the view of Hallier, that all kinds of germs, big and little, molds, ferments, bacteria, are mutually convertible. Micrococci, said Zürn, are only stages of development of molds. This view needed only the most accurate observations of Brefeld and De Bary to be entirely refuted. More serious was the claim of Grawitz, that innocent mold fungi, aspergillus, mucor, etc., could be converted into dangerous forms. Grawitz saw that the injection of aspergillus into the blood of rabbits remained without effect, whereupon it occurred to him to change its natural, cool, acid soil to a warm, alkaline soil, with a view of changing its form and action. Such general permeation of various internal organs, especially the kidneys, followed these experiments as to seem to have demonstrated the conversion of an innocent parasite into a dangerous

one.

But when Koch and Gaffky came to repeat these experiments, with the precautions implied in control observations, it was soon discovered that the species of aspergillus, mucor, etc., included a whole series of pathogenic germs, some of which had entered with the injection of innocent forms. Grawitz's erroneous conclusions were based upon the use of impure cultures.

The field had now become limited to the bacteria proper. It may be said at once that all practical interest hinges upon the question of the constancy or inconstancy,

MUTABILITY OR IMMUTABILITY, of the forms of pathogenic micro-organisms. If they are not specifically different, as Nägeli claimed, but are forms of one or a few species, so that the same species, by assuming different forms, may in the course of years or decades effect at one time the souring of milk, the ageing of wine putrefaction, the decomposition of urea, the red coloration of starchy food, and at other times produce typhus, malarial or relaps ing fevers, diphtheria, and cholera-if such mutability of form and action exists as this, if the myriad micro-organisms of the earth and air may at any time assume deadly propertiesall effort at investigation is futile, if not foolish, and every effort at destruction is not only powerless, but paralyzed.

This idea of the unity of species, first advo cated in our day by Ray Lancaster, met with warm advocacy at the hand of Billroth, who derived the different forms from variations in the soil or substratum, and later of Warming, who considered the different forms as so many different stages of development of the same. species, like, to use a coarse comparison, the different stages of development of tapeworms in different hosts. Klebs was also inclined to accept this view, though with the reservation that certain forms occur preferably in the form of bacilli, others of micrococci.

HAY AND MILZBRAND BACILLUS.

Perhaps no single statement seemed to lend such support to the negation of species as the claim of Buchner to be able to transform the innocent bacillus of hay infusion into the deadly organism of milzbrand. Buchner observed under continued cultivation the gradual change of the hay bacillus into the milzbrand bacillus, and with the reversal of this change, which he was likewise able to produce, maintained that the loss of virulence of the milzbrand bacillus was not an attenuation, as Pasteur had claimed, but a veritable transformation. Buchner was sufficiently well acquainted with the gross differences of the two bacilli, but he regarded them as accommodations of the same form to different soils. Hueppe credits Buchner also with a knowledge of the spore formation of the two bacilli-the most distinctive

characteristic of different forms-which Buchner considered identical, a consideration which misled Bredford to adapt Buchner's conclusions; but De Bary insists that with the gross differences in the spore formation of the two bacilli, it is doubtful if Buchner ever really studied the hay bacillus in this essential particular.

At any rate, it was easy for Koch, by pointing out these differences, as well as the difference in the resistance of the spores, the difference in the optimum and minimum temperatures in the process of reproduction, etc., to prove that Buchner was experimenting with two distinct species or forms, and that the apparent transformation was really a case of substitution or displacement of one form by the other. Inasmuch as no one has since succeeded in effecting such a transformation, this question may be regarded as definitely settled. Final disproof of Buchner's claim was made by Prazmowski in 1884, with the exhibition

of such distinct differences in the two forms as to demonstrate their independence, so that whatever dispute remained concerned simply the possibility of attenuating the bacilli of milzbrand, a subject to be noticed again,

BACTERIA OF MILK.

A much more simple and easily refuted illustration of the inconstancy of the action of micro-organisms was the observation of Nägeli, that fresh milk on standing becomes sour, but boiled milk bitter. Fresh milk becomes sour, Nägeli says, under the action of a certain bacterium. Boiling the milk changes the character of the soil and the action of the same germ. Here, then, is an every-day observation of the transformation of the same microorganism.

That this illustration may not seem too trivial, it may be said that it was, up to the time of Buchner's experiments, just mentioned, the sole apparently indisputable proof of the change of one definite ferment into another.

The fallacy of it became obvious when it was discovered that milk is made sour by many causes, among others, by many varieties of bacteria, of which Nägeli assumed the existence of but one. It did not occur to him