or roof registers the heat inside, and the regulation of the heat is so planned that I can work at any temperature between 95° and 110° Fahr. My assistant soon learned the management of the lever connected with the "capsule' so accurately that, having "set the chamber" at any degree within its range, the heat could be maintained without variation for weeks at a time. This has been a great convenience. It has enabled me to digest, if I may so express it, various structures, tissues, and fluids with phosphorus, either with or without oxidation, at a precise temperature, and feel that if I were obliged to leave an experiment, as so often happens in obedience to the calls of professional life, the experiment would continue exactly at the point desired without danger of any failure from change of temperature.

In dealing frequently with the phosphorus solution care has to be taken against accidental combustion from evaporation. For removing the phosphorus fluid during experiments, glass pipettes of different sizes act best. The lower end of these is passed through the neck of the bottle, and is charged direct from the bottle. This prevents the necessity of pouring out the solution, and makes the measurement of quantities very exact. Care also has to be taken, during manipulation, not to inhale the phosphorus vapour. A little phosphorus always goes over with the vapour of the disulphide and causes irritation, with some possible danger of phosphorus necrosis if proper precautions of good ventilation and skilful and clean manipulation be not considered. I name these practical points as guides to other experimenters who may, perchance, follow in my footsteps.

In the way of other means for research I provided myself with oxygen in two forms; one, a bottle of

Brin's compressed oxygen, which is exceedingly convenient; the other, a specimen of oxygen peroxide, the oxygen peroxide prepared in varying strengths by volume.

ATTEMPTED SYNTHESIS OF PUS BY PHOSPHORUS
EREMACAUSIS OF NERVOUS MATTER.

Referring once again to the essay on the cerebrospinal axis published in last ASCLEPIAD, and also in the Journal of Mental Science for January last, the reader will find recorded that in the oxidation of phosphorus finely distributed through brain substance a slow combustion, a true eremacausis, can be established, with results which suggest the idea of reorganisation of animal material, and with secretion of a specific fluid. The observation led me to try what would be the effect of admixing thoroughly phosphorised white matter of the spinal cord with serum of blood, and then digesting the mixture at a temperature of 100° Fahr. in the presence of oxygen.

To carry out this inquiry, I used the fresh spinal cord of the sheep. The portion of cord operated on was freed of membrane, was rubbed through a fine muslin sieve, and was then treated with the standard phosphorus solution by trituration. The little mass thus produced was placed under the air-pump in a small flask, the mouth of which was filled with a perforated cork, having a light valve over the perforation, so that during the exhaust the vapour of the carbon disulphide could escape without admission of air when the exhaustion ceased, and when the flask was removed from the receiver of the pump. So long as the disulphide was in contact with the brain substance and serum, oxidation was impossible, the presence of the solvent being a sufficient check; but when the solvent was withdrawn the oxidation from the air was so active, if the phosphorised mass were exposed to

air, that fumes of phosphoric acid formed, and the mass was seen to be luminous in the dark when the cloud of fumes was blown away. The light valve at the top of the flask prevented the admission of air, and enabled me to keep oxidation in check until it was time for permitting the slow combustion to proceed.

After the disulphide was quite exhausted the phosphorised mass was treated with a weak solution of hydrogen peroxide rendered alkaline with solution of soda. The flask was then placed in the warm chamber, heated to 100° Fahr., and left to digest for twelve hours, additional oxygen being added from time to time until evidence of phosphoric acid fumes ceased on the further addition of oxygen, and oxygen began to be evolved. The experiment was then considered to have reached the close of its first stage, and the product was ready for examination.

The product removed from the flask consisted of a creamy fluid so nearly resembling what is commonly called "laudable" or healthy pus, it was impossible, on common observation, tò know it from that fluid. A specimen of fresh pus placed beside it was so closely the same in appearance, it was necessary to label the two specimens to prevent them being confounded one with the other. From each of them on standing a few hours there exuded a small quantity of sanious fluid, and each deposited a caseous-like layer. But it was in the microscopical appearances that the similarity was most perfect. I failed, in fact, to distinguish any difference between the two specimens. Both presented dead pus corpuscles of the ordinary character, spherical with sharp outlines, fine granular surfaces, and the usual greyish white colour.

VOL. IX.

7

COTEMPORARY PRACTICE AND

LITERATURE.

"Every physician will and ought to make observations from his own experience; but he will be able to make a better judgment and juster observations by comparing what he reads and what he sees together.”—FRIEND.

BABEL THERAPEUTICS.

T would be difficult to find a sadder subject for contemplation than the medical and other essays that have been published during the last three months on the treatment of influenza. What has occurred in this way brings back forcibly the dialogue between the squire and the apothecary, recorded by Dr. Moore, and reproduced in the notice of Moore in last ASCLEPIAD. The apothecary affirmed that his class treated influenza by the "drench," the surgeons by the "lancet," and the physicians "some of them by one thing and some of them another." But the squire treated all his retinue by two remedies, a warm bed and barley-water, or if the patient preferred gruel to barley-water, then by gruel in place of barley-water; and the best of it was that all the patients, under this simple treatment, recovered. Here was plain and reasonable treatment, but the treatment that has been brought into practice in this latest epidemic baffles description. I have calculated over one hundred different plans, each having something peculiar, and many being as wide apart from the others as the poles of treatment can be. Those who hold to the

germ origin of the disease have stood out for the treatment by what are called germicidal remedies. Those who have looked upon it as of the character of a catarrh have held by diaphoretic measures; the homœopaths have decided that their medicines are the true specifics; and the sceptical therapeutists have quietly followed Dr. Moore's squire and gone in for warmth, rest, and barleywater or some equivalent of barley-water-and have prescribed medicinally a placebo, at most, to satisfy the faith of believers in physic of some kind, of whom there is still a considerable majority in the world at large. These have been the four grand winds of treatment, but within them there have been lesser gales, sharp and furious. The question of stimulation has raised an active controversy, and has led to severer dispute out of the pale of medicine than within it, one enthusiast for brandy as the sheet anchor of treatment, going the length of distributing that unreliable fluid wholesale, and receiving from abstainers the accusation of doing an act positively dangerous and corrupting. For my part, looking on the scene that has been presented, without any prejudice, and simply as an observing learner, I have been forced to a conclusion which may be briefly stated. From the experience of the different lines of treatment that have been brought forward in the examples of the disease. which have in this outbreak come under my observation, the great subject of amazement has been the remarkable recoveries that have taken place under diversest plans of treatment. Some patients have recovered under quinine some under salicine; some under quinine and ammonia; some under salicylate of soda; some under ammonia acetate; and so on without much uniformity of action, even when the same remedies were employed. Forty-five years ago the treatment was much more uniform. It