ileo-cæcal valve. There was also present a cord-like body springing from the lower end of the ileum about opposite the ileo-cæcal valve. He thought this might be a Meckel's diverticulum though it was in a very unusual position for this. A motion to adjourn was made and seconded. Carried. GEORGE BLUMER, Secretary. President. UNION MEDICAL SOCIETY.-The Union Medical Society, comprising Saratoga, Rensselaer, Washington, Albany, Bennington and Berkshire counties, held its quarterly meeting in Holmes' Hall, Hoosick Falls, Friday, January 19, 1900. Dr. Homer Bushnell, of North Adams, Mass., the president, occupied the chair. The following papers were read and discussed: "Frontal, Ethmoidal and Maxillary Sinusitis," B. S. Booth, M. D., Troy; "Report of Rare Cases in Fifty Years of Practice,” S. A. Skinner, M. D., Hoosick Falls; "Collections and Investments by the Physician," F. W. Goodall, M. D., Bennington, Vt;"Dystocia Caused by Death and Putrefaction of the Foetus," Martin M. Brown, M. D., North Adams, Mass.; "Ophthalmia Neonatorum," L. F. Adt, M. D., Troy; Report of a Case, C. E. Nichols, M. D., Troy; Reports of Cases, John B. Harvie, M. D., Troy. AMERICAN MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION.-The Secretary of this Association, Dr. C. B. Burr, of Flint, Michigan, announces that the next meeting of this Association, under the presidency of Dr. Joseph G. Rogers, of Logansport, Indiana, will be held at Richmond, Virginia, May 1, 2, 3 and 4, 1900. Numerous expressions of appreciation of the selection of this charming southern city as a meeting place have been received from members and a large attendance is confidently predicted. The Executive Committee is busily at work on arrangements for the meeting and when these are perfected an announcement of plan and program will be made. THE MEDICAL STANDARD.-With the December number of this journal Dr. George F. Butler resigned the editorship to engage in another journalistic enterprise, in which his special abilities will have the most congenial scope. The chief editorial responsibility of the Medical Standard now devolves on Dr. Alfred V. Burdick, the previous managing editor. New features are announced. The May or June number will be a complete history of the medical schools of Chicago, and during the year the Standard will contain a series of illustrated articles describing the medical schools, et cetera, of Europe and America. THE PROVIDENCE MEDICAL JOURNAL.-A new quarterly journal has made its appearance and is published by the Providence Medical Association with Dr. George D. Hersey as Editor, and Dr. F. T. Rogers, Business Manager. The object in view is to publish the papers of value which are read before the several local and State societies; to report the interesting cases which occur in the hospitals and to record for future reference the medical matters of interest to the profession of the State which would not otherwise be made a matter of record. A peculiar feature of the journal will be that it is to contain only original matter. We wish success to our confreres. PROFESSOR SCHENK REMOVED.-Dr. S. L. Schenk, professor of embryology, histology, and director of the Embryological Institute at the University of Vienna, has been retired on a pension. This action is an answer to a petition from the medical faculty of the University alleging the publication in the lay press of scientific theories constituting a form of advertisement. Dr. Schenk, it will be remembered, published a saccharine theory of sex production and made a little noise in the newspaper world. He had been director of the Embryological Institute for twenty-six years. FOR THE STUDY OF CANCER.-Mrs. Caroline Brewer Croft, a Bostonian who died abroad two years ago, willed to her family physicians, Dr. Henry K. Oliver and Dr. J. Collins Warren, $100,000 for the scientific study of the etiology of cancer, and made the provision that Harvard receive the amount in case these gentlemen should not care to undertake it. Owing to the slowness of the English courts the legacy came to light only a few months ago. The primary purpose of the gift seems to be to enable medical science to discover the origin of cancer, since it was stated in the will that if the origin of cancer should be determined the income from the fund-which alone is to be used in either case—is to be applied toward the discovery of the sources and nature of other little understood diseases. The work is now being organized under the supervision of the surgical department of the Harvard Medical School and will be carried on in connection with other funds for such purposes. Drs. Oliver and Warren will naturally be prominently identified with the work. The principal appointee will be Dr. E. H. Nichols, who will go abroad for the purpose of studying foreign methods. THE CRAIG COLONY FOR EPILEPTICS.-A board of consulting physicians and surgeons has been constituted as follows: Neurologists.—Dr. M. Allen Starr and Dr. George W. Jacoby, of New York, Dr. Henry Hun, of Albany, and Dr. James W. Putnam, of Buffalo. Surgeons.-Dr. Charles McBurney, of New York, Dr. Roswell Park, of Buffalo, and Dr. John W. Whitbeck, of Rochester. Physicians.-Dr. Charles E. Jones (deceased), of Albany, Dr. Charles Cary, of Buffalo, and Dr. William S. Ely, of Rochester. Orthopedic Surgeons.-Dr. Henry Ling Taylor, of New York, and Dr. Louis A. Weigel, of Rochester. Ophthalmologists.—Dr. Lucien Howe, of Buffalo, Dr. Wheelock Rider, of Rochester, and Dr. George M. Gould, of Westfield. Gynecologist.-Dr. Matthew D. Mann, of Buffalo. Pathologist.-Dr. Ira Van Gieson, of New York. Bacteriologist.-Dr. Harlow H. Brooks, of New York. Psychologist.-Dr. Boris gist. Dr. Harlon H. Brooks, of New York. Psychologist.-Dr. Boris Sidis, of New York. Pathological Chemist.—Dr. Chrirtian A. Herter, of New York. Dentist.-Dr. Charles J. Mills of Mount Morris. THE DEATH OF DR. CHARLES E. JONES.-At a meeting of the Board of Managers of Craig Colony, held at Sonyea, N. Y., January 9, 1900, the following note was recorded in the minutes: The Board of Managers of the Craig Colony record with genuine sorrow the death of one of their number, Dr. Charles E. Jones, of Albany, N. Y., who died in that city, December 1, 1899. He was a man who had won a high place as a skillful and faithful physician, a man of upright dealings always, and a man who was regarded with affectionate consideration by patients and friends alike. He was the late Governor Flower's family physician, and upon signing the bill creating the Craig Colony, the Governor appointed Dr. Jones a member of the Board of Managers, which position he held from the founding of the Colony to the day of his death. He took the deepest interest in this charity and greatly aided its development by his earnest zeal and broad-minded consideration of all matters relating to it. We feel his death to be a public loss which this Board especially deplores. Signed for the Board of Managers of Craig Colony, RECENT MUNICIPAL MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS.-The Mayor of the City of Albany has again honored the Albany Medical College by appointing Dr. Joseph D. Craig, Adjunct Professor of Anatomy, the Health Officer. Dr. Craig succeeds Dr. Theodore Bailey. Dr. William G. Lewi was appointed City Physician and Dr. Edward G. Cox, Police Surgeon. Commissioner of Public Safety Ham has appointed the following as health physicians: Drs. M. D. Stevenson, Wilfred S. Hale, Frederick W. Guyer, Irving Goewey and Robert H. Tedford. Dr. Christian G. Hacker has been appointed Physician to the Fire Department, in the place of Dr. Harry S. Pearse, resigned. PERSONAL.-Dr. ROBERT L. ELLITHORP (A. M. C. '97), has been reappointed Health Officer of Johnstown. -Dr. ANDREW RONAN (A. M. C. '97), who some time ago was appointed in the Surgeon General's office at Washington, has been assigned to duty with the signal corps for duty in Manila. -Dr. GEORGE E. GORHAM had been appointed by Governor Roosevelt a member of the Board of Managers of the Craig Colony, vice Dr. Charles E. Jones, deceased. Book Reviews The Nervous System and Its Constituent Neurones. Designed for the use of Practitioners of Medicine and of Students of Medicine and Psychology. By LEWELLYS F. BARKER, M. B., Tor., Associate Professor of Anatomy in the Johns Hopkins University, and Assistant Resident Pathologist to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. With two colored plates and six hundred and seventy-six illustrations in the text. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1899. Readers of the New York Medical Journal will recall the series of articles begun by the author in 1897, in which the newer investigations into the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system were summarized. The rapid increase in neurological literature soon prevented limitation of the subject to the medical journal, and the task has been completed in the present volume. The enormous amount of work expended upon the neurone concept may be appreciated from a glance at this elaborate octavo of over eleven hundred pages. The subject is considered under six sections: the History of the Development of the Neurone Concept; the External Morphology of Neurones; the Internal Morphology of Neurones; the Histogenetic Relations of the Neurones; the Neurone as the Unit in Physiological and Pathological Processes; the Grouping and Chaining together of Neurones in a Complex Nervous System like that of Man and Mammals. The term neurone is used in the widest sense to mean a cell belonging to the nervous system with all its parts, and Dr. Barker's book is consequently to be regarded as a histological study of the architecture of the nervous system. It will thus appeal especially to laboratory workers and investigators, for whom this vast fund of information heretofore has not been collated. Section I reviews the studies of Deiters, von Gerlach, Golgi, His, Forel, Kölliker, Ramón y Cajal, von Gehuchten, Retzius, von Lenhossek Marchi, Nissl and others. In Section II are discussed the external form of the cell body and of the dendrites; the external form of the axis-cylinder processes and the collaterals, side fibrils, and inter-neuronal substances. Section III treats of the interior morphology of neurones, in which is fully discussed cellular structures as revealed by Nissl's method. Section IV includes consideration of the origin of the nervous system in embryo and the development of the neurones. Section V deals with the function of the neurone, and its conditions in various physiological and pathological states, as, e. g., Wallerian degeneration and regeneration, in which the author refers especially to the probable participation of the cells as well as the nerve fibre; the direction of conduction in the neurone, which is not, according to the author, invariably cellulipetal in the dendrite and cellulifugal in the axone. He further asserts in respect of sensory conduction, that though embryologically a dendrite, the peripheral sensory fibre is in the adult histologically an axone, and the passages of impulses from the periphery to the centres must be taken as an example of centripetal conduction in an axone. This section also includes a study of the effects of poison and traumatism upon the histological conditions of the neurone. Section VI, comprising about seven hundred pages, is an architectural synopsis of the nervous system, and five classes of neurones are described and traced as far as investigation has been able to follow them. These consist of (1) neurones connecting the sense organs of the body with the central nervous system; (2) neurones within the central nervous system connecting the end stations of the axones of the peripheral centripetal neurones with other portions of the central nervous system, and neurones which in turn connect the end stations of the latter with still high er portions of the central system; (3) neurones connecting the central nervous system with the voluntary muscles of the body; (4) neurones within the central nervous system which enter into conduction relation with the lower motor neurones and throw the latter under the influence of other centres; and (5) projection, commissural, and association neurones of the telencephalon. The nomenclature employed throughout the book is almost exclusively that of the BNA. As a painstaking study of an extremely complicated and difficult subject the book is entitled to unstinted praise. The efforts of the author have been ably seconded by the publishers who have spared no pains to reach perfection in letter-press and illustration. In its mechanical features the book is of unusual excellence. Current Medical Literature SURGERY Edited by A. Vander Veer, M. D. Do Gonococci Occur upon the Mucous Membrane of the Genital Organs of Women without Clinical Symptoms of Gonorrhoea ?-By HERRMAN SCHILLES. Berl. klin. Woch., October 9, 1899. Neisser in 1896 made the statement that gonococci can be present in the female genitalia without the clinical symptoms of gonorrhoea, and thus a diagnosis can only be made by microscopical examination. In a series of papers published by the writer and Dr. Broese in 1898, they stated that they had never found the gonococci present in the female genitalia without clinical symptoms of gonorrhoea. In the present article the writer reports the results of examinations of 300 cases taken at random and without any previous knowledge of the clinical history. In none of these cases was he able to find the gonococci without clinical symptoms. The writer does not believe that the gonococci can live in a mucous membrane without causing an inflammation of the same. The grade of inflammation often varies, and a careful examination must often be made to detect it, but it can always be found. The writer states that his view is shared by Sanger, Broese and Kroenig. Uncommon Uses of Pilocarpin. -Dr. HARNSBERGER (Catlett, Va.) discusses this topic in the issue for August 26 of the Philadelphia Medical Journal; in substantiation of a part of his thesis, he reports three cases in which the exhibition of pilocarpin hydrochlorat, in cases of orchitis, effected gratifying relief; two were cases of gonorrheal orchitis, in men, the third of the traumatic variety, in a dog. He says these cases should suffice to direct attention to pilocarpin as a remedy worthy of trial in inflammation of the testicle and epididymis, from whatever cause. He further used it in cases of cholelithiasis, with especial reference to the hepatic colic; the remedy is best administered subcutaneously. Pilocarpin is likewise remedial in cases of hiccough, when firm pressure upon the base of the tongue fails to relieve. Also in arthrogryposis; the author recom |
