The water through all this district had been extremely low, the streams and springs on the mountain sides being nearly dried up. The little water which could be had, and which the inhabitants have been forced to drink, has been very strongly impregnated with mineral substances, and perhaps also with decaying vegetation. As yet there has been no accurate analysis of it. The malady, as manifesting itself, was accompanied by intense thirst, by griping pains in the abdomen, and frequent profuse discharges from the bowels. In many instances those attacked have died in a few hours, but the usual course has been about two days, and the termination is generally a fatal one.

It is probable that the usual rains of this season of the year put an end to the trouble, but further and more accurate details will be awaited with interest. Cannot some of the subscribers in Kentucky or Virginia place the essential. facts on record in this JOURNAL?

A NEW NATIONAL BOARD OF HEALTH.-A genuine surprise has been given to the members of the National Board of Health by the action of the Conference of State Boards, which met in Washington in December. It was confidently expected by the National Board that it would be endorsed by the conference, the members of which were regarded as special friends of the Board. Instead of doing this the conference took steps to wipe out of existence the present Board and substitute for it another and entirely different Body. By a practically unanimous decision the conference agreed to recommend to Congress the passage of a law providing for a National Board of Health, to consist of one member from each State Board of Health in the country, to be approved by the State Board and appointed by the President. A bill to this effect has been prepared and will be introduced in the House of Representatives very soon. It will provide that the new Board shall hold regular meetings once a year, at which it may prepare regulations, which shall be approved by the President before going into effect. Having the earnest support of the men with whom it originated, it is believed that the bill will stand an excellent chance of becoming a law. The present National Board of Health has, in some way or other, become somewhat unpopular, and it has repeatedly failed to secure large appropriations asked for from Congress, members of which Body have impatiently characterized it as an excrescence. The new bill has been carefully examined, and is a good one.

MEDICAL EXPERTS IN COURT.-On the evening of December 11th, the Society of Medical Jurisprudence of this city held a very interesting session. The Hon. Amos G. Hull, the present vice-president, read a valuable paper on "Medical Experts in Court." He said:

"A clamor has been raised against all kinds of expert testimony. It reaches lawyers, juries, and more or less the Bench. It affects the administration of justice. The cry is to the effect that expert testimony is unreliable, purchasable and corrupt. Is there any just reason for this charge? There never was a time within human history when medical science stood as high as it does to-day, more especially the branches relating to toxicology, surgery, mental alienation and insanity. I answer that there is a cause for complaint. It arises from

causes in which members of the legal as well as medical profession are at fault. Members of the Bar in conspicuous cases have placed unscrupulous medical men on the stand as experts. They have used them as detectives, and every one ought to understand the difference between an expert and a detective. The experts should be present in the interest of science; the detectives are for vastly different purposes. Medical men on the stand have failed to show that candor, impartiality, frankness, truthfulness, learning and ability which the Public have a right to expect. Many a poor fellow has lost his reputation, property and even liberty by the unskilled and sometimes purchased opinion of an expert." The paper was freely discussed by distinguished lawyers and physicians.

CREMATION. Justly appreciating the dangerous facilities which cremation, as at present advocated and to some extent practised, presents for the escape of individuals who deprive their victims of life by means of poison, or through socalled "misadventure," Mr. Thomas Bayley, consulting chemist of Birmingham, England, proposes to keep the bodies for a certain time after death and treat them in such a manner as to avoid putrefaction. According to Mr. Bayley's method, the bodies would be loosely but completely enveloped in cotton wool, within cases which would be riveted up. They would then be exposed in underground galleries lined with impervious cement to a current of cold and dry air, from which the germs of putrefaction would be removed by filtration. The cooling would be effected by machinery worked on the compressed air principle, and the air traversing the chambers would be dried by any suitable chemical agents. At first thorough cooling would be necessary, but after a time the drying could be effected more rapidly at a higher temperature. The process would result in the formation of mummies, with white integument similar to those produced by the most efficient and costly system of embalming in ancient Egypt. Attached to each "dehydratorium" there might be mortuary chambers for bodies awaiting inquest. After treatment the bodies might be cremated, or kept for an indefinite period in a dry place or in air-tight cases.

GRATITUDE OF A MEDICAL COLLEGE.-The College of Physicians and Surgeons of this city has certainly very fully manifested its gratitude to Mr. W. H. Vanderbilt for his gift of $500,000. Papers of thanks have been sent by the President of the Faculty; by the Board of Trustees; by the Faculty; by the Alumni Association; and, finally, by the class of students in attendance upon lectures.

The statement, made by Dr. Dalton, that such a gift is especially valuable, because, coming from a private citizen, it differs from the custom in Europe of having such gifts emanate chiefly from Government or from royalty, is erroneous. Many of the best colleges in Europe are attached to hospitals built and endowed by private citizens. It was a gift, however, princely in amount, if not in origin, and the munificent and liberal capitalist will find that never before, unless in Tennessee, has he made so praiseworthy a use of his money. It is indeed a charity which blesses him that gives as well as all that receive, and not only in the present, but for all time.

HOSPITAL SUNDAY AND SATURDAY IN LONDON have become the foundations of a gigantic charity; its results are magnificent and will be almost immeasurable. Fifteen hundred churches take up a special collection. There are special fairs at the public gardens, with the Prince of Wales as treasurer. At every railroad station and place of prominence somebody distinguished in society presides with an offering box; there were 1,400 on the last occasion. Theatres give special performances. Young ladies with special badges and offering boxes take up collections in the open streets. Monster concerts are given at popular prices, the musicians offering their services. Torchlight processions take up night collections, etc.

Such charity is really beyond commendation. It makes humanity divine.

Hospitals will be largely increased in size and numbers, every bed will be endowed. The sick-poor will be treated and healed without money and without price.

The late collections in this city did not represent a tithe of such enterprise and energy.

CONGRESSIONAL MIRYACHIT.-The Globe for the Thirty-seventh Congress contains the same speech printed twice, and purporting to have been delivered by two members of the House. It came about in this way: A certain member of Congress contracted with a member of the literary lobby for a speech on the tariff. The price to be paid was $75. When the speech was turned over to the statesman, he accepted it as satisfactory, but refused to pay more than $50. He gave his literary friend that amount and took the speech away, little dreaming that the author had kept a copy. But the enterprising member of the literary lobby sold his copy for $50 to another statesman, who obtained leave to print it April 24, while statesman No. 1 obtained leave to print May 26. The speech made its appearance in the appendix, where it appears in two places, word for word.

These men are as seriously stricken with miryachit as any of the medical editors.

NEW YORK SANITATION UNDER THE PRESENT BOARD OF HEALTH.-Frederick N. Owen, chief of the tenement house inspectors, read before the Tenement commission recently a report giving the result of an inspection of 968 tenements, containing 8,811 families, composed of 37,114 persons. Twenty-one per cent. of the air shafts were found to be worse than useless, as they sucked up bad air from the cellars. Ninety-nine in every hundred vaults are leaking cesspools. One in every seven tenements has a broken drain under the cellar floor. Soil pipes are everywhere leaking and out of order. The plumbing of 329 tenements should be immediately looked after.

Out of 964 tenements inspected the plumbing of 20 was "good," the plumbing of 566 "fair," and the plumbing of 378 "bad." More than fifty per cent. of the houses inspected had plumbing with open joints, where the plumbers were too ill paid or too lazy to properly seal them.

THE ITALIAN DIVORCE BILL,-The Divorce bill brought before Parliament by the Italian Ministry seems little short of a proposal to revolutionize marriage. It provides that when a man and wife have separated for a period of three years provided they have no children, or for five years provided they have children -the aggrieved party can obtain a divorce. This is simply an abolition of permanent marriage, and gives to either busband or wife only a temporary interest in the marriage relation.

Of course the bill is ostensibly designed to afford relief to a wife or husband, as the case may be, who has been deserted. In practice, however, the law would permit the voluntary separation and subsequent divorce of all married people.

ADVICE TO DOCTORS.-The Harrison divorce case has moved the Lancet to take up its parable on the relation of medical men to their female patients. Will· the Faculty take heed to the warnings of their mentor? The Lancet would prohibit personal or social intimacy, and it declares that "no familiarity whatever, of any kind or degree, ought to exist." There should be no gossiping, less handshaking, more formality and a considerable reduction in the habitual length of visits.

The Lancet plainly intimates that the doctors are in fault, and ought at once to mend their ways. At present a lady's doctor, it says, is much like an abbé under the old régime in France.

This is libelous.

ARTIFICIAL IMPREGNATION.-This subject has been discussed, and has its advocates. The Gazette Hebdomadaire de Médecine et de Chirurgie views at length a new novel with the suggestive title of "Le Faiseur d'Hommes." The romance is nothing more nor less than a plea in favor of artificial impregnation; the dramatis personæ are a childless count and countess and a highly scientific physician. A certain abbé is also introduced, in order to fill out the religious side of the picture. Not to enter into the details of the subject, which are better suited for a treatise on gynæcology than for a popular novel, it suffices to say that the experiment is successful, the result being a son, who is afterward known at court as the "child of the syringe."

He should have been called "a son of a gun."

CAMPI'S SKIN TO BE TANNED.-Every one remembers Carlyle's remark, quoted in "Dr. Claudius," that the French nobles laughed at Rousseau's theories, but that their skins went to bind the second edition of his book. This incident of the tannery of human skins at Meudon has lately been outdone in grimness, if not in historical interest, by an official of the School of Medicine at Paris. The dead bodies of murderers, it is well known, are in France given over to the School of Medicine for dissecting purposes. The official in question-so the French papers say-has in turn handed over the skin of Campi, who was executed some time ago, to a tanner, with instructions that it should be tanned, and afterwards used to bind the documents relating to the murderer's post-mortem.

IS THE ELECTRIC LIGHT A SACRILEGE?" Michael Cahill, M.D.," of No. 356 Third'avenue, New York, who has amused every one with various protests on the subject of electricity, filed an affidavit with the District Attorney. He renewed his argument that the lightning flash is God. The electric light is the same as the lightning flash, and consequently the electric light is the Deity. On this theory he objects to electric light companies as employing a divine agency to light concert gardens and theatres, and asked the influence of the Government to prevent the formation of such companies. "The experts" will soon report in regard to his condition.

PORTABLE ANTISEPTICS.-Professor Lister has recently recommended, as a portable antiseptic, a saturated solution of corrosive sublimate in glycerine, a fluid drachm of this solution being sufficient to convert about four pints of water into a one-in-a-hundred solution. A more convenient way of carrying corrosive sublimate is to have it made up into powders, each containing seven grains of the sublimate and an equal quantity of ammonium chloride. One of these powders dissolved in a pint of water forms a solution of the strength of about one in a thousand. The ammonium salt is added on account of its property of rendering the sublimate more soluble.

CHOLERA BOXED UP.-It is said that two doctors of Marseilles fancy that they have succeeded in discovering the morbid agent of Asiatic cholera, which, according to their statement, is a "mucor " entirely distinct from the "comma of Dr. Koch. Considerable amusement was created at the Academy when the perpetual secretary, Professor Béclard, exhibited the sealed box which contained preparations and specimens of the offending "microbe." Amid a general burst of laughter, the president was requested "to keep the box sealed." Thus does the spirit of comedy invade the ground of tragedy even in the most serious of human affairs.

LAW AND MEDICINE.-Here is a very fair illustration of the kind of support that the Profession of Law gives to Medicine:

THE SUPREME BENCH.

ATLANTA, Sept. 23, 1884.-From experience I think S. S. S. a very valuable remedy for cutaneous cases, and at the same time an invigorating tonic.

JAMES JACKSON, Chief Justice of Georgia.

If the Bench acts thus, what can be expected from the Bar?

CHOLERA IN NAPLES.- Now that the cholera has done its work, the Italian Government proposes to spend $20,000,000 upon sanitary improvements in the city of Naples. More than this sum was lost in foreign trade alone, while the plague prevailed, and the additional loss in internal and local business, caused by an exodus of citizens and the paralysis of industries and trades, so greatly exceeded these figures, that no one has had the courage to estimate it.

If Naples had been clean, millions of dollars and thousands of lives would have been saved.