THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MICRO-ORGANISMS.

A STUDY IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.-By Alfred Binet. Translated from the French by Thomas McCormack, with a preface by the author written especially for the American edition. Chicago: 1889. The Open Court Publishing Company. Cloth,

75 Cents. Paper, 50 Cents.

This is a most interesting work in a new field of research. The scope of the book can, perhaps, be best given by a few extracts from its pages:

THE HUNTER ANIMALCULES.

"In a large number of animacules the prehension of food is preceded by another stage, the search for food, and in the case of living prey, by its capture. We shall not investigate these phenomena among all the Protozoa, but shall direct our attention especially to the ciliated Infusoria. Their habits are a remarkable study. If a drop of water containing Infusoria be placed under the microscope, organisms are seen swimming rapidly about and traversing the liquid medium in which they are, in every direction. Their movements are not simple; the infusory guides itself while swimming about; it avoids obstacles; often it undertakes to force them aside; its movements seemed to be designed to effect an end, which in most instances is the search for food; it approaches certain particles suspended in the liquid, it feels them with its cilia, it goes away and returns, all the while describing a zigzag course similar to the paths of captive fish in aquariums; this latter comparison naturally occurs to the mind. In short, the act of locomotion, as seen in detached Infusoria, exhibits all the marks of voluntary movement."

FECUNDATION.

"The same desires stir mite and elephant alike."-Montaigne.

"A remarkable circumstance in this connection is, that the copulation of the spermatozoid and ovule is not without analogy to the copulation of the two animals from which they originated. The spermatozoid and the ovule, to some extent, repeat on a small scale what the two individuals perform in their larger sphere. Thus, it is the spermatozoid that, in its capacity of male element, goes in quest of the female. It possesses, in view of the journeys

it has to make, organs of locomotion that are lacking in the female and are useless to it. The spermatozoid of man and of a great number of mammifers is equipped with a long tail, the end of which describes a circular conical movement, which together with

its rotation about its axis, determines the forward motion of the spermatozoid.

"The spermatic element, in directing itself toward the ovule to be fecundated, is animated by the same sexual instinct that di rects the parent organism towards its female.

"In the higher animals, the movements of the spermatozoid that is endeavoring to reach the female exhibit a peculiar character, which it is important to emphasize: these movements do not appear to be directly provoked by an exterior object, as those of micro-organisms are; the spermatozoid endeavors to reach an ovule which is frequently situated a great distance away; this is the case particularly with animals that fecundate internally, with birds and mammifers. A fact that is important to mention in a gen eral way is the length of road the spermatozoid has to traverse before coming up with the ovule.

"Let us now follow the spermatozoid in its journey to the ovule. It is known that the road it has to traverse is, in certain instances, extremely long. Thus, in the hen the oviduct measures 60 centimeters, and in large mammifers the passages have a length of from 25 to 30 centimeters. We might ask ourselves how such frail and minute creatures come by a power of locomotion great enough to enable them to traverse so long a path. But observation discloses the fact that they are able to overcome obstacles quite out of proportion to their size. Henle has seen spermatozoids carry along with them masses of crystals ten times larger than themselves, without appreciably lessening their speed. F. A. Pouchet has seen them carry bunches of from eight to ten bloodglobules. M. Balbiani has attested the same fact. These globules, which have fastened themselves about the head of the spermatozoid, have each of them a volume double that of the head. Now, according to Welcker, the weight of a globule of human blood is 0.00008 of a milligramme: allowing that the spermatozoid has the same weight, we may then say that it is able to carry burdens four or five times heavier than itself."

These brief extracts will, we hope, incite in our readers a desire to see the entire work as it is curiously interesting through

out.

HE HAD BOTH KINDS.-Old lady (to druggist's boy)—"I want to git a leetle paint, boy. Boy-"Yes'um; face or fence?"—Life.

Read before the Clermont County Medical Society, October, 1888.

Antifebrine, as is known, I presume, to every physician present, is one among several new remedies recently introduced to the attention of our profession for the reduction of "temperature."

There is no condition which rules so large a part of the physicians duty, whether in the way of distinguishing diseases, or of curing them, as the constitutional state known to us all as "Fever" or increased heat of the body above 98°. Heat is the most essential, and perhaps the only essential phenomena of "fever."

The better to understand the physiological action of the remedy under consideration, and the process by which it brings about the reduction of heat, it is necessary to understand somewhat the pathological condition which produces the rise of temperature.

The true pathology, or ultimate essence of the febrile state, is still a subject open to question; but it is in accord with modern physiology to regard fever as connected with some complex derangement of the functions on which normal animal heat is known to depend, viz: The nutrition of the textures of the body, or the vital changes constantly in operation between the blood, on the one hand, and the ultimate atoms of solid textures on the other.

Recent observations have shown that, in the paroxysms of ague, the waste of nitrogenous tissue is in excess; and, further, the curious result appears to be arrived at, that for almost every grain of excretion representing this excess of waste in a given time, there is a proportional increase of the temperature of the blood according to accurate thermometric observations.

If such observations are corroborated and extended, it will

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probably appear that the cause of fever is to be found in an increased destructive decomposition of the atoms of texture through the oxygen absorbed at the lungs and circulated with the bloodperhaps under the influence of a derangement of the nervous system, which has been shown by experiment to have a very marked control over the generation of animal heat.

The remedies heretofore at our hand which certainly control "fever," or mitigate it to any considerable degree, without deleterious effects and dangerous probabilities, are few, if any; and if further use and experimentation shall develop the fact, (and all clinical experience and observation now assert it), that we have in antifebrine, a certain, efficient, pleasant and comparatively nondangerous means of combatting fever, then will our science have made as great a stride toward the amelioration of suffering, the prolongation and preservation of life, as when opium and its alkaloids and chloroform were brought to use for the soothing and healing of suffering mankind.

Our teachers all tell us, and our experience corroborates it, that in "fevers" the chief danger lies in the long continued elevation of temperature; or in its extreme elevation in the more acute diseases.

That fever will consume the vital forces, no one will question; so, if we have in the remedy under consideration, a means of sparing our patients a waste of vitality by the reducing of their fever, we have also a means of increasing their chances for recovery, and are duty bound to give them the best means at our command that will facilitate not only recovery, but a rapid recovery.

Antifebrine was first discovered by Gerhardt in 1845, but was not known to the medical profession as a remedy, until the latter part of 1886, when Drs. Cahn & Hepp, of Strasburg, called attention to its value as an antipyretic. Since which time it has sprung into great popularity, and its employment has now become very extensive upon what grounds and with what advantages we shall endeavor to show-not so much from personal knowledge of it, as from the various medical journals of 1887, very, very many of which contain articles upon it from the pens of eminent clinicians and experimental observers.

"Acetanilide" is the proper and chemical name of the drug, "Antifebrine" its description and trade mark name. It is prepared by the action of acetic acid upon aniline at an elevated

temperature. It is a permanent combination, not affected by acids or alkalies, its form is that of a light crystalline powder, sparingly sol uble in cold water, but is dissolved by about 25 parts of boiling water; is also soluble in alcohol, ether, brandy or strong wines.

It has no distinguishable taste, and patients do not object to taking it, even when long continued.

As to its physiological action. When added to freshly drawn blood, or to blood in the body, a peculiar change from the normal color to a brownish hue always ensues, and this is due to alterations in the red globules of the blood, producing the third spectroscopic band of methaemoglobin.

Lepine and Aubert, both experimenting in the same line, observed on healthy dogs that had been poisoned by this substance, that after the lapse of 3 hours from administration of the drug, more than 1⁄2 of the oxygen usually present was absent, and that the blood corpuscles were unaltered in form, but decreased in numbers, and Beaumetz asserts that this change is far more marked when an elevated temperature exists.

Upon this change of color in the blood, Henocque has pointed out a very valuable diagnostic sign as showing that antifebrine is being pushed to the border line of danger, viz.: That previous to the change of color to methaemoglobin with its accompanying cyanosis, the capillaries of the thumb first show congestion and discoloration previous to the involment of the rest of the body.

Herczel found that the symptoms of aniline and antifebrine poisoning are the same, save in antifebrine the blood destruction is not so extensive, and the same author come to the conclusion that death occuring from it is due more to the impairment of the functions of the medulla presiding over respiration, produced by change of blood supplied to it, than to any direct influence of the drug itself on the nervous proto plasm, and as this belief seems founded on sound reasoning, as well as experiment, it may be accepted as true.

Along with the perversions of functions of the medulla, the reflex and other spinal movements are involved.

When antifebrine is given for several weeks at a time, in doses of 30 or 40 grains a day to animals, a peculiar cachexia is produced, resembling exactly that of aniline.

The decomposition and dissolution of the coloring matter of the blood become very marked, and finally the animal dies with the presence of spots resembling purpura haemorrhagica, extravisa