of Medical Sciences will be held this year at Am- DEATH FROM CHLOROFORM.-A death from the sterdam from the 7th to the 16th of September. Prof. Donders will preside. administration of chloroform occurred recently in this city. The patient had received an injury resulting in dislocation of the ankle joint, accompanied with fracture of the lower end of the tibia. Chloroform was administered to facilitate reduction, and while the attendants were in the act of adjust HONORS TO CANADIANS.-W. J. Mickle, M.B., Toronto University, Grove Hall, Bow, London, and A. M. Baines, M.D., Trinity Medical College, Toronto, have successfully passed the examination ing the parts, stertorous breathing was observed, before the Royal College of Physicians, London, and were admitted members of the college on the 24th of April. No or and almost immediately afterwards respiration en- LACTOPEPTINE.-We again draw the attention Charles Sheard, M.D., Trinity College, Toronto, successfully passed the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons, Eng., and was admitted a member of that body on the 23rd of April. G. of the profession to the merits of this new preparaH. Cowan, M.D., Toronto, has passed the primary examination of the Royal College of Surgeons. tion. We have used it in practice since its introduction and have been greatly pleased with the results. Its formula shows it to be a strictly TROMMER'S EXTRACT OF MALT.-There are few scientific preparation, and one which cannot fail to remedies which have within the past few years come take a prominent rank among the pharmaceutical into more general use, than extract of malt. It preparations of the day. In the treatment of has now come to be not only the great substitute marasmus, dyspepsia, cholera infantum, vomiting for cod liver oil, where this remedy cannot be of pregnancy, diarrhoea, &c., it is especially intolerated, but also a most important adjunct in the dicated, and rarely ever fails to give satisfaction. treatment of all cases of tuberculosis. Almost all We have no hesitation in recommending it. the authorities both at home and abroad recommend its remedial qualities. The administration of extract of malt is applicable to a greater number 8th annual convocation of Bishop's University, was held on the 10th of April, when the following genofficinal in the German Pharmacopoeia, and by tlemen received the degree of M. D., C. M.: D German medical writers it is placed in the D. Gaherty (Wood gold medallist), G. W. Nelson front rank as a remedy possessing in the high- (prize for best final), G. G. Gale, G. O. Germon, front rank as a remedy possessing in the high- R. E. C. Leprohon, C. Marshall, J. T. Jenkins, C. est degree, nutritive and restorative, com- E. D. Comean, M. M. Kannon. of cases than cod liver oil. Extract of malt is bined with sedative, tonic and alterative virtues. It is not only valuable in the treatment of phthisis but also in all feeble and exhausted states of the constitution. In Ziemssen's Cyclopædia of Medicine, vol. xvi., it is recommended in the highest terms in the treatment of phthisis and other wasting diseases. We can also speak from experience in regard to its efficacy, having used it in practice more or less frequently during the past two years. It is easily borne by the weakest stomach, and when continued for some time produces a marked improvement in the condition of the patient, where the disease is not too far advanced, accompanied with an increase in the weight. It may be used either in the form of the simple extract, or combined with cod liver oil with which it forms an agreeable emulsion, iron, hypophosphites, iodides, quinine, pepsin, &c., &c. BISHOP'S MEDICAL College, MONTREAL.-The W. CORONERS.-Charles Battersby, M.D., C.M., of Port Dover, to be an Associate Coroner for the county of Norfolk. T. T. Beveridge, M.D., to be a Coroner for the county of Victoria, N,B. Besset and F. Gaudet, M.D., 'to be Coroners for the county of Westmoreland, N.B. W. Taylor, M.D., to be a Coroner for the county of Gloucester, N.B. APPOINTMENT OF HEALTH OFFICERS.-The following gentlemen have been appointed as members of the Board of Health for King's County, N. B., by order of Council: E. A. Vail, M.D., B. McMonagle, M.D., J. N. Burnet, M.D., J. H. Ryan, M.D., G. Johnson, M.D., J. Gray, M.D., and Alfred Markham; Geo. H. Wallace, Secretary. APPOINTMENTS.-Dr. E. W. Jenks, of Detroit, has been appointed to the chair of Medical and Surgical Diseases of Women, and Clinical Gynecology in the Chicago Medical College. He will take up his residence in Chicago shortly. Beports of Societies. HAMILTON MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY. At the last regular meeting of this Society, held Dr. Brouse has been appointed a member of at the Royal Hotel, Dr. McKelcan, President, oc the Senate of the Dominion Government. Dr. U. Ogden has been appointed as the reprerentative of the medical graduates on the Senate of Victoria College. The death of Charles Murchison, M.D., L.L.D., of St. Thomas' Hospital, on the 23rd of April, in his 49th year, is announced in our exchanges. The cause of death was aortic incompetence. To the Editor of the CANADA LANCET. SIR, I would like to ask if you know anything of one Dr. Budd. He claims to be an English graduate, and to have been a surgeon in the British army and on the G. T. Railway of Canada, and while in the employ of the latter was stationed in the neighborhood of Port Huron. He came to this village and made arrangements to rent a house, paying or offering to pay a much higher rate of rent than the house was bringing, and by other acts of open-handedness made the people believe he was something beyond the common. He even went so far as to offer to buy out my practice. This show lasted for two or three days, and at the end of that time, he left. went out for a walk in the morning, saying he would be back for dinner. This occurred three weeks ago, and since then nothing has been seen or heard of him. It is needless to add he forgot to pay his board bill. He If he is a legally registered practitioner he is certainly a disgrace to the profession, and if he is a quack, tramp, or an impostor he ought to be exposed. He pretends to have been registered at the late examination. Yours, &c., GEORGE RIDDELL. Coldsprings, May 24th, 1879. [We know nothing of the person referred to above. He is not a legally qualified medical man, and his name does not appear among those who passed at the recent examination.-ED. LANCET.] cupied the chair, and after routine Dr. Griffin read a short but interesting paper on a case of Cardiac Thrombosis, and represented the heart with the thrombus in situ. The paper gave rise to some very suggestive remarks from the members present. Dr. T. W. Mills, resident physician of the City Hospital, presented six specimens of the following pathological conditions:-(1.) Three specimens of chronic inflammation of the bladder, the cause of one being a stricture of twelve years' standing, and of the other two, enlarged prostrate in old men. In one of the latter cases the walls of the bladder were 3/4 of an inch thick; ureters and pelvis of kidneys involved in each case. (2.) Case of anthracosis of the lung. (3.) Diphtheritis of the larynx (fatal issue from closure of the glottis) in a case of erysipelas of the head and neck. (4) Cancer of the pylorus, with secondary nodules in the liver. After brief explanations of the pathological history in each case, the doctor further illustrated the subject by microscopic sections of several of the organs presented. Books and Lamphlets. NAVAL HYGIENE, by Joseph Wilson, M.D., Medical Director U.S. Navy. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. Toronto: Willing & Williamson. It may be affirmed safely, because much observation and the inherent nature of things, the necessary relation of cause and effect, bear testimony to its truth, that if abundance of wholesome food, pure water, ample clothing, cleanliness, and efficient ven. tilation, as they now prevail in the American, British, and European navies, had in the time of Anson and Cook been the rule, the tremendous mortality resulting from scurvy, which frequently more than half depopulated the ships, would have been avoided. In 1779, in the British Navy, there was one death in every eight men employed, annually. In 1811 it was one in 32, in the present day one in 72. This wonderful improvement is the sole result of a careful attention to hygienic rules, including specially a fresh meat allowance and a liberal supply of lemon juice. The statistical re ports on the health of the British Navy do not sent to us for notice should, if sufficiently circulated entirely accord with the views of Dr. Logan in his and read, suffice for the enforcement of strict hyreview of the medical aspects of the Pacific coast of gienic rules. That the greater number of the ailSouth America. Compared with the climate of the ments to which mankind are subject are entailed British and American (N) ports, it appears, drawing upon them by their ignorance, carelessness, and conclusions according to prevalent hypothesis and apathy, is an observation familiar to every reflecting accepted dogmata, to have almost everything against practitioner of medicine. How large a proportion it. Most of it is within the tropics. A great por- of the patients whom he daily visits might, by the tion of its shores is still in a state of nature all of simplest hygienic precautions, have altogether it is teeming with vegetable and animal productions avoided the maladies they are suffering under, or growing or decomposing rapidly. Rain falls in tor- have rendered their duration less prolonged, and rents at intervals in many places, and evaporation, their character less grave. If there is one axiom atmospheric heat being intense, proceeds rapidly. more indisputable than another in medical experHigh winds are rare, calms are common. Yet with ience, it is that where filth and dirt prevail, that all these apparent elements of disease and destruction, the mortality of the squadrons employed there from 1830 to 1836 was less than in the force employed in England during the same period. Compared with other tropical positions, particularly the coast of Africa and the West Indies, nothing appears in its favor; compared with the latter, something in the natural condition of the soil and its superabundant products appears against it, yet its mortality is not one-third part so great. These things and others of similar import, show the imperfect knowledge on the subject of climate as affecting health, and that much must be unlearned as well as learned, before anything deserving the name of knowledge shall be obtained on this very interesting subject. Dr J. Wilson's work of 260 pages includes remarks on outfit, drainage, clothing, food, arrangement of meals, purifying and preserving water, superiority of tea, coffee and other drinks, over alcohol; zoology and botany of Mexico and the West Indies; ventilation, special hygiene, and other subjects, the nature and multifarious character of which preclude in our short space anything approaching to an analytical review. We would recommend the work to such of our new graduates as may contemplate spending a few years as surgeons to vessels. HEALTH AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT, by Richard onto Willing & Williamson. where the neglected habitations of a crowded and squalid population exist, there will be especially found the ravages of epidemic disease to prevail. This is moreover no barren fact, for the position that these physical conditions do generate or propagate epidemic disease, is scarcely less easy of demonstration than that they are for the most part removable. The object of the works now under review is to point out the injurious operation of these circumstances, and the most feasible plans for removing them, and counteracting their influence on the wellbeing of society. M. Mallet and Dr. Chadwick bear testimony that we should not estimate the strength of a people by its mere numerical condition, that it does not depend on the absolute number of its population, but on the relative number of those who are of the age and strength for labour. It is proved that the real and productive value of the population of Geneva has increased in a much greater ratio than the increase in its absolute numbers. The absolute number has only doubled in three centuries, but the value of the population has more than doubled upon the purely numerical increase of the population. In other words a population of 27,000 in which the probability of life is 40 years for each individual is more than twice as strong for the purposes of proMc-duction as a population of 27,000 in which the Tor- probability or value of life is only 20 years for each indivividual. Dr. McSherry's work consists of eight HEALTH PRIMERS. No. 1, Exercise and Training; chapters :-Hygiene the better part of medicine; No. 2, Alcohol; No. 3, The House and its Sur- four divisions of human life-adult, mature and deroundings; No. 4, Premature Death, its PromoReprinted by D. Appleton clining age; race, temperaments, idiosyncrasies, inToronto: Willing & Will-heritance, habits, constitution; air we breathe, ozone, malaria, animal emanations, water, clothing, Dr. McSherry's work, and the Health Primers exercise, food, alcohol-use and abuse, &c., &c. tion or Prevention. & Co., New York. iamson. These works are intended more for the general reader than the practitioner, and with laudable taste are accordingly not overloaded with professional disquisitions; technical terms are carefully avoided; no arbitrary dogmas find place, and they have the great merit of being free from the empiricism of recommending sanitary precautions as the only infallible guides, not only when disease prevails to a comparatively trifling extent, but when the vigilant attention. of the physician is demanded. We hope these works may obtain a wide circulation and attentive perusal. A New Illustrated Work on the Normal and Pathological Histology of the Eye, by A. Alt, M.D., of Trinity Medical School, Toronto. This work is heartily endorsed by Dr. Knapp, who stands at the head of this branch of the profession. It will be published simultaneously in New York, by Putnam's Sons, and in Weisbaden, Germany. This is the first work on the subject yet published. MODERN SURGICAL THERAPEUTICS. A COMPEN The above work, as will be seen from the title page, is a ready reference book for the surgeon. The work is a very popular one, and has had a ready and rapid sale. The practical character of the work commends itself to our special consideration. All the most recent formulæ, new dressings, and improved methods of treatment, including suggestions of the most recent date whether in books or journals are included in the present edition. There is also a companion work on MEDICAL THERAPEUTICS, issued by the same publisher. A similar work on Diseases of Women is also in contemplation. ATLAS OF SKIN DISEASES. By Louis A. Duhring, M.D., Professor of Skin Diseases, Pennsylvania Hospital. Part V. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Toronto Willing & Williamson. Part V contains four beautiful photos. of scabies, herpes zoster, tinea sycosis, and eczema (vesiculosum.) Each number continues to improve. The drawing and coloring in the present number are even better than those which have preceded, and are sufficiently large to enable the smallest details to be shown with distinctness and fidelity. These photos are considered by many to be more natural and truthful than any We unhesithat have as yet appeared in any atlas. tatingly recommend this atlas to our readers. New Instruments. A NEW SURGICAL NEEDLE. The above cut represents a new needle for the introduction of silver wire sutures, by Mr. Bailey, of Toronto. This needle is so constructed that the silver wire, instead of being passed into the eye as in the ordinary needle, is screwed into the posterior part of the shaft, so that the wire appears as if a continuation of the needle. The wire can be removed at pleasure, or a new one introduced. There is no drag in stitching wounds, as is often the case when the needle is being pulled through the margin of the wound, owing to twists and quirks in the wire. The contrivance is a really good one, and we have no doubt it will sooner or later supersede the old form in the application of wire sutures. Births, Marriages & Deaths. In Arkona, on Monday, May 5th, the wife of Dr. R. G. Brett, of a son. At St. Stephen, N.B., on the 17th ult., the wife of W. M. Deinstadt, M.D., of a son. On the 14th ult., Winford York, M.D., of Simcoe, to Eva Rose, daughter of Rev. H. P. Fitch. On the 16th ult., Frank S. Scovil, Esq., M.R.C. S.E., of St. John, N.B., to Mary Alice, only daughter of John Cate, Esq., of Brighton, N.B. On the 20th ult., Mr. Isaac Waterman, to Carrie N., eldest daughter of James Cattermole, Esq., M. D., London. On the 30th of April, A. Alt., M.D., of Toronto, to Helena, second daughter of the late T. W. Houghtaling, of Albion, N.Y. abdominal viscera. Indeed from the medulla ob THE CANADA LANCET, A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF and the intermediate spinal and sympathetic nerve centres, we have a great nervous circle, the several parts of which are en rapport, reflexly, and so mutually influence each other, that it seems impossible to disturb the functions of any without causing a No. 11. perturbation in the whole. MEDICAL AND SURGICAL SCIENCE. VOL. XI. TORONTO, JULY 1ST, 1879. Original Communications. ON THE ACTION OF THE SO-CALLED "INHIBITOR," ""ACCELERATOR" AND "DEPRESSOR" NERVES OF THE HEART. BY THOMAS W. POOLE, M.D., M.C.P.S. ONT., It has been demonstrated that in so far as respiration is concerned, the vagi are sensory or centripetal nerves, and act reflexly through the medulla and cord on the phrenic and other motor nerves concerned in respiratory action.* There is proof that the vagi, instead of being direct motor nerves of the heart (as their assumed inhibitory action necessitates) have centripetal functions as regards the heart also, and modify its action, when they do so at all, indirectly through the cord, the sympathetics and the nervous circle referred to above. This proof consists in the fact that section of the vagi has no effect on the pulse, if the cord below the medulla be previously divided:t-this operation effectually cutting off the channel of its reflex action through the circle mentioned. (Author of "Physiological Therapeutics.") Physiological writers invariably teach that the pneumogastric nerves (vagi) exert a restraining or inhibitory influence over the motor ganglia of the heart, whereby its pulsations are normally rendered slower. The reasons assigned for this opinion are, chiefly, that after section of the vagus, in some ani- We shall have to show, by and by, on direct phymals, the heart beats faster, owing to an assumed siological authority, that neither the so-called "acparalysis of its inhibitory nerves; while the applica-celerators," nor the "depressor" exercises any direct tion to the vagi of a faradic current, which is re- influence on the heart's action; but that in so far garded as a stimulant, slows the heart, and if strong as they modify it, they do so solely through "the enough, arrests it altogether, owing to an increase of the inhibitory power placing such an embargo upon the motor ganglia of the heart as to render their power ineffectual to continue its action. In what is to follow, we are about to call this hypothesis in question, and to appeal to authentic physiological facts in so doing. peripheral circulation." This being the fact in regard to the "accelerators," which are simply a part of the sympathetic vaso-motor system, and the fact being also shown that the pneumogastrics excite or depress this system through the medulla or spine,-all that is necessary to do is to shew that impressions made on the pneumogastrics are of a stimulating or paralyzing kind, in order to account for the vascular effects which follow. The vagus is not a simple nerve-cord connecting the medulla oblongata with the heart, on which experiments can be made implicating this nerve alone. Section of the vagus, we claim, sends a wave of It is in most intimate connection with the roots of molecular disturbance through the sensory or centhe sympathetic in the medulla oblongata, with the tripetal fibres of this nerve, which acts on the vasofibres of this nerve in the cervical spine, with the motor centre of the medulla oblongata as an irricervical (spinal) plexus, with the cervical sympathe-tation, equivalent to excitation, and is reflected as tic ganglia and the nerve cords and plexus from such upon the vaso-motor nerves of the cord and these surrounding the great systemic vessels and sympathetic ganglia, as a result of which the periwith the ramifications of the same nerve in the pheral arteries are dilated. As a consequence, the lungs. It materially influences the heart through transmission of blood through the systemic chanthe respiratory process and the pulmonary circula-nels is facilitated, blood pressure falls, from lessened tion; and it is, besides, in reflex relation with the • Handbook for the Phys. Lab., p. 336. Prof. Kuss, Lec on Physplanchnics, the chief vaso-motor nerves of the siol. Duval, Amory, p. 336. † Handbook, etc., p. 284, |
