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Medicine and Pharmacy.

LEAD POISONING.

DR. E. S. WOOD, Professor of Chemistry in the Harvard Medical College, contributes a long and careful article to the Sanitary Engineer on this subject. The causes which give rise to the greatest number of cases of chronic lead poisoning, as he states, are the use of lead carbonate in painting-and of these the majority occur in manufacturing the pigment- and the use of lead or lead-containing pipes for the conduction of drinking-water. After suggesting precautions to be observed by workmen in white lead factories, he goes on to speak of water pipes as follows:

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under discussion, the thought of the profession During the eight years that this subject has be been turned toward the discovery of materials thx would be in more electrical harmony with toot bone than gold is, and also make water-tight a saliva-tight fillings, and there has been great s cess in this line. Alloys of metals have been made. which, being amalgamated, make not only watertight plugs, but even those which will exclude al hol as a test of completeness, and which have a ti more in harmony with the color of the enamel that gold has.

The acid contained in some of these as tomatoes As is well known, it is the positive element may easily remove a dangerous amount of lead suffers chemical disintegration in the battery. from the solder, if eaten frequently during a consid- The entrance of saliva under and around a ; erable period. The use of lead-containing enamel plug in a tooth gives the condition of a consta for lining iron-ware to be used for cooking is very battery, and, consequently, a constant decay of dangerous. I have personally known of several cases tooth at that point. of acute and sub-acute lead poisoning resulting from Dr. Chase himself, Professor Flagg, of Phi cooking tomatoes in such enamelled iron-ware, and delphia, and other experts have made care one fatal case in an infant, due to drinking milk which had been warmed in one of these vessels. investigations with a view to settling this ques This particular vessel is in my possession, and yields tion, and they fully agree with Drs. Fletche to water, to which a few drops of acetic acid have and Palmer that gold is an inferior material & Of proposed substitutes Dr. Cha been added, when allowed to stand a few hours at filling teeth. the ordinary temperature, an amount of lead which remarks: The addition of lead compounds to articles of food might produce symptoms of poisoning in an adult. or drink. thus many yellow candies are colored with lead chromate, and many olive-green ones with The use of lead pipe for conducting drinking- a mixture of lead chromate and Prussian blue. Snuff water is very extended, and yet comparatively few has been known to be colored with lead chromate A not uncommon cases of poisoning result from it. This is due chiefly and with red lead. source of to the fact that certain hard waters cause a deposit of chronic lead poisoning is the cleaning of glass bottles an insoluble coating, consisting of lead sulphate and with shot; the greatest danger arises in the case of carbonate, upon the inner surface of a pipe, which champagne bottles, one or more shot sticking in the prevents any further action of water upon it, and angle between the side and bottom of the bottle, owthat the people generally have learned the necessity ing to the carelessness of the bottle-washer. The carof thoroughly emptying the pipe of the water which bonic or other acid of the wine, malt liquor, or cider had stood in it for several hours. All waters do not readily removes a dangerous amount of lead from act upon lead pipe with equal readiness. As a rule, the shot. I have in mind a recent case of lead colic the purer the water, the more readily does it attack due to drinking bottled ale, the lead being derived metallic lead. Therefore soft waters take up the most from shot left in the bottles. Wine is sometimes lead and hard waters the least. Hard waters, how-sweetened by treating it with oxide of lead (litharge) ever, vary in this respect. If a hard water contains or sugar of lead. The use of lead pigments for colonly lime and magnesian sulphates and carbonates, oring children's playthings is very dangerous, the without any alkaline sulphates or carbonates, it has child being liable to put the toy in its mouth and no action upon the pipe except to deposit the insolu- suck off some of the poison. The use of spurious ble coating upon its inner surface; if, however, al- (lead-containing) tin foil is another source of chronic kaline salts are also present, the alkaline carbonate lead poisoning; some of this foil consists chiefly of takes up a little of the lead salt, however hard the lead (one specimen examined contained about 98 per water may be. cent. of lead), and is used for wrapping tobacco, pressed meat, and other substances. There is one case of poisoning recorded of a clergyman who was in the habit of using cachous for a sore throat, between one and two boxes being consumed daily: finally, after diligent search for the cause of the poisoning, it was found that several milligrams of lead were contained in the foil surrounding the cachous in a single box. The habitual use of some hair-dyes is also a frequent source of lead poisoning, many of these compounds consisting of sulphur, sugar of lead, and some fluid, as glycerine, water, etc. Some cosmetics also contain a lead compound.

Lead cisterns should never be used for containing drinking-water, nor, as a rule, should lead pipe be allowed to project beneath the surface of the water in a well, although in the case of most hard waters no serious consequences would result. It is better to use pure block-tin pipe beneath the surface of the water, soldering it on to the lead pipe above the highest level of the water in the well. Then only the small amount of water which is contained within the pipe has an opportunity to attack the lead, and if the pipe is thoroughly emptied of the water which has stood in it for several hours no serious consequences will result. Tin-lined lead pipe and tinned lead pipe are, in my opinion, more dangerous than pure lead pipe, since the galvanic action set up by contact of the two metals increases very much the

action of the water on the lead.

How numerous are the other possible sources of lead poisoning may be seen from this further extract from Dr. Wood's valuable paper, and the enumeration should serve to put the reader on his guard against such of these as are liable to occur in his own experience:

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About eight years ago Dr. Fletcher, of England, Any employment in which metallic lead or any announced in the dental journals that nine out of compound of lead is used is liable to cause chronic every ten gold fillings leaked. That is, the gold lead poisoning. Among the more common employ-plug did not exclude saliva from the cavity of dements may be mentioned working in lead mines, or cay in which it was placed to do such duty. An any mines in which plumbiferous ore is handled; "experimental dental club" in this country demonworking with metallic lead, as in the case of plumb-strated the truth of the assertion, much to the disers and type-setters; the handling of lead com- gust of its members. pounds, as in the case of glazers of porcelain and pottery ware, manufacturers of enamel, etc.; the use of lead chromate (chrome yellow) and red lead (minium) as pigments; the use of lead or any of its compounds in any cooking utensil, or article used for preserving food, especially acid fruits and vegetables, which are often put up in soldered tin cans.

About this time Dr. Palmer, of Syracuse, N. Y., asserted, in the Dental Cosmos of Philadelphia, that the failure of operations with gold lay mainly in its incompatibility with dentos (tooth-bone), forming with the latter a galvanic battery of low power, but of constant operation, of which gold was the negative element of the battery, and dentos the positive.

Besides metallic alloys, there are chemical combinations made at the instant of introduction into the cavity of decay, which are in comparative electrical harmony with dentos, and are, indeed, the positive element in the dental battery.

Other eminent dentists are not inclined to a

cept this "new departure" in their art, but we infer from the evidence collected by Dr. Chase that the “heresy" is rapidly spreading among the profession. We shall endeavor to keep our readers informed concerning its progress, or its losing ground, if that should be its luck, in the future.

THE "SALISBURY" TREATMENT OF PHTHI

SIS.

A CORRESPONDENT asks for information concerning "the so-called 'Salisbury' treatment of consumption," or phthisis. We have not see the recently published pamphlet on the subject, but we find the following abstract of the pract cal portion of it in one of our exchanges :—

In the opinion of the author, consumption comes from continued unhealthy alimentation, and must be cured by removing the cause. "This cause,” he says, "is fermenting food and the products of this fermentation;" and if the simple directions contained in the book "are faithfully followed out and persisted in, consumption in all its stages becomes a curable disease." Beginning at the first direction, half a pint of hot water is to be drunk an hour before each meal and on retiring, to wash out the stomach. Tea, coffee, or beef tea may be drunk at

meals, and hot water or beef tea in the intervals, if bone, broiled chicken or game, oysters, and fish, free from fat, are prescribed, with bread, toast, rice, cracked wheat or oatmeal, in the proportion of one part by bulk to from four to six parts of meat. Soups, vegetables, fruits, pies, cakes and sweets, pickles and preserves, fried edibles generally, and vinegar are prohibited. Meals are to be taken at regular intervals, and the patient should eat either alone or with others using the same diet; and after the appetite increases, as it soon does, lunches of broiled beefsteak and tea, coffee, beef tea, or hot water are permitted between the regular breakfast, dinner, and supper. In the way of general regimen. two thorough baths with hot water and soap are to be taken every week, oiling the skin all over afterwards, and every night and morning the body is to be sponged with hot water, containing for the even

desired. For food, broiled beefsteak, without fat or

ag bath a few teaspoonfuls of ammonia. Flannel is o be worn next the skin, and the clothing frequently hanged and aired. This, with as much open-air xercise as can be borne without fatigue, or thorough ubbing and pounding of the body morning and vening for those too weak to take exercise, constiute the substance of the treatment; but simple tonics of oil of peppermint, orange peel, ginger, witch-hael, and other mild ingredients are to be administered before each meal, with small doses of pepsine afterwards, and hæmorrhage is to be checked by inhaling he spray of a weak solution of persulphate of iron.

TOBACCO AND BLINDNESS.

Ar the annual commencement of the Hospital College of Medicine, of Louisville, Ky., Prof. Dudley S. Reynolds delivered an address to the graduating students, in which he took strong ground against the use of tobacco:

It is a well-known fact that tobacco deranges the

digestion and poisons the nerve centres of a majority of the male members of the human family. A species of blindness, not complete, but partial blindness, sufficiently great in extent to destroy the reading of ordinary type, results from the continued and excessive use of tobacco. Careful investigations have led to the discovery that that form of tobacco habit known as smoking produces the so-called amblyopia. This form of amblyopia is precisely identical in all respects with that produced from the excessive use of alcohol. Both are incurable. I know a number of persons in Louisville who are now practically blind from the excessive use of tobacco. A lady in Portland was forced to admit she had been a secret smoker of tobacco for thirty years. On abandoning

ANECDOTE OF NELATON.

At last

prised, however, to find that until lately the medical one case of ringworm treated in this way to leave aspects of the sunflower have been almost completely no scar whatever; while a sister of the latter patient, neglected. It is, indeed, reported that several med- who had had the same disease in a lesser degree, but ical students have bought sunflower pen-wipers, and had not employed this lotion, still retains the evia rural correspondent informs us, incidentally, that dences of the fact. The following is a convenient forhe is raising a crop of the genuine plant for the base mula for a wash: Borax,ounce; salicylic acid, 12 purpose of feeding his hens. But this is an inad- grains; glycerine, 3 drachms; rose water, 6 ounces. equate treatment by the profession of the leonine blossoms over which poets sing and ladies rave. We have to call attention, therefore, to the fact DR. CARADEC gives in L'Union Médicale the that, medicinally, the sunflower is a thing not to be following anecdote of Nélaton as authentic: A pet despised. It is an antiperiodic and a counter-irri- dog of the painter Meissonier one day broke one of tant of the best kind. About fourteen years ago an his legs, rendered friable by over-feeding. Meisarticle appeared in this journal, showing that the sonier, desolated by such an accident to so beloved sunflower, freely planted over malarious districts, an animal, resolved to have recourse to the prince had the power of dissipating the miasms. A district of surgical science, who at that time was Nélaton; upon the Scheldt, in Belgium, was said to have been but not venturing to declare the true motive, he made quite healthy by the growth of this now su- telegraphed in hot haste for him as if to visit one preme form of vegetation. In an address recently of the family, then living at their charming residelivered by Dr. A. S. Heath before the Farmers' dence at Bougival. Nélaton arrived, and, entering Club, in this city, the utility of sunflowers in keep- the drawing-room, began talking on various topics ing off malaria is forcibly urged. Farmers who live with the master of the house, who, although he had near marshes or stagnant water are advised to plant painted many battles and carried off many victories, them abundantly around these sources of infection. knew not how to face the present affair. The advantages, pecuniary and aesthetical, of sur-Nélaton, becoming impatient at the delay, and rounding one's self with sunflowers, instead of filling knowing the value of his time, asked, to the great the system with quinine, appear to be very great. embarrassment of the painter, where the patient forms one of the best natural moxæ. The stalk of the mature helianthus, when dried, was. Presently the wounded brute was brought in tains a considerable amount of nitre, burning slowly of all the care taken. The pith con- on a magnificent cushion, howling with pain in spite and quite steadily. The moxa is not, at present, Meissonier, forgetting everything else, exclaimed in At so distressing a spectacle, in vogue, but it must have its fashion again, and there is no time when it could be so easily rendered Nelaton dressed the fracture, and the dog recovered; agony, "Save him! illustrious master, save him!" popular and pleasing. He would be a poor disciple and shortly afterwards its master wrote a grateful be burned a little with art's most popular vegetable kindness, and requesting to know his fee. of the beautiful who could not cheerfully endure to letter to the great surgeon, thanking him for his expression. Nélaton the habit, the further progress of her dimness of visreplied that when the painter came to Paris he could The medicinal value of sunflower oil, or sunflower call upon him. ion ceased, though there is little or no hope of her This he soon did, and was producregaining that power of perception which she had tea, has not yet been satisfactorily determined. We ing his purse, crammed with bank-notes, when Nélaalready lost. She may be considered fortunate in may look for investigations in this direction from ton exclaimed, "Stop, sir! You are a painter, are the possession of enough vision to go about and at- find a solid therapeutical basis for the present idol- panels which the cabinet-makers have finished! some of our young medical societies. They may you not? Just put a gray coating on these two tend her ordinary household duties. Smoking to-ization of a flower which, to the conservative mind, This was indeed a delicate revenge; but which had bacco has never been known to result beneficially to any person in the world. It always lessens the sense of smell and taste; it always contaminates the breath; it always creates an unsteadiness of the muscles, through its irritating effect upon the nerves; and I know from personal experience it diminishes the capacity for mental labor. Now, if you can succeed in inducing even a few people to abandon the habit of smoking, and to pay over to a common charity fund the amount formerly spent for cigars and smoking-tobacco, the time may come when public taxation may be reduced, and the condition of the pauper, who is now miserable, made at least comfortable. If the money destroyed by burning cigars and tobacco in Louisville could be paid into the city treasury, it would support all our charitable institutions, and pay the entire expense of the street-cleaning department besides. This would reduce taxation nearly or quite one half, and produce a corresponding improvement in the public health.

THE SUNFLOWER IN MEDICINE.

THE New York Medical Record dilates upon the medicinal value of the aesthetic blossom as

seems to be a good deal of an artistic sham.

THE REMOVAL OF SCARS AND CICATRICES.
THE Journal of Pharmacy furnishes from good
sources the following hints on this topic:-

"

the last word? Meissonier, who, going at once to work, at the end of a few days produced two of his chefs-d'œuvre on the panels.

MISCELLANEA MEDICA. The cicatrices, scars, or marks left by various dis- HYDROPHOBIA FROM FEAR. - The Gazette des eases, burns, or wounds of divers kinds are often less Hôpitaux, while noticing a case of alleged recovery obstinately permanent than is generally supposed; from hydrophobia related to the Académie de Méand from some facts which have lately come under decine, observes that it is often difficult to make the our notice, we are inclined to think that their pre-distinction between true hydrophobia, due to the abvention or removal in many cases may be accom- sorption of the rabid virus, and the symptoms of plished by some mild but effectual antiseptic. hydrophobia, caused by fear of the disease. Was it

Among the exemplifications of the efficacy of the really hydrophobia of which a woman died at the formula we are enabled to lay before our readers is Hôtel-Dieu, with what seemed to be all the sympthe case of a gentleman of our acquaintance, whose toms of the disease? Several months before, this face was so severely burned by the violent spurting woman, a street vender, had been bitten by a dog as of a quantity of melted lead (owing to a workman she was passing Notre Dame, and went at once and having incautiously dropped a wet pipe into it) that had the wound cauterized at the Hôtel-Dieu. From his eyes were saved from utter destruction only by that time she continued perfectly well, until one day, pebble spectacles. when she was pushing her barrow before the HôtelAt first, of course, carron oil was the sole applica- Dieu, she was recognized by one of the students, tion; and as for weeks afterward particles of the who called out to her, "Holloa! you are not dead granulated metal had literally to be dug out of the yet, then! The dog which bit your thigh was downflesh, a deeply-scarred countenance was naturally right mad, as they found out at Alfort!" At the predicted by all, except the patient himself. One very instant the poor woman was seized with a The sunflower (Helianthus annuus) has been, for mark, of an almost imperceptible character, alone violent pharyngeal spasm, and was at once taken to some time, the object of very serious regard on the remained after the expiration of six months, owing, the Hôtel-Dieu, where she died with all the symppart of those who wish not only to live, but to live as our friend says, to the whole face being bathed toms of hydrophobia. beautifully. It is just now, perhaps, the most con- two or three times a day, as soon as the oil treat- JEWISH MILITARY DOCTORS IN RUSSIA. It is spicuous ornament of everything not too purely sa- ment could be discontinued, with a lotion of the sim- said that the number of Jewish military doctors is to cred or too rigidly scientific. Medical science is plest character, as is readily seen by glancing at its be limited to five per cent. of the entire number of very closely linked with human interests and fash- constituents. army medical officers. In the Kijew military disjons. It becomes us to live up to these, and follow Lint soaked in the same solution, and allowed to trict, where they far exceed this proportion, their our fellow-man (at a decent distance) in his pres- remain on some little time, will frequently mitigate number is to be brought down to it by gradually ent floricultural vagary. We are somewhat sur-the visible results of small-pox, and we have known drafting them into other military districts. In fu

follows:

ture the number of Jewish students admitted to the military medical academies is to be limited to the same proportion.

SEA-WATER BATHS FOR SMALL-POX PATIENTS. -In the medical circles at San Francisco it is believed that cold sea-water baths are beneficial to small-pox patients. This opinion is attributed to the extraordinary recovery of sixteen men suffering from this disease, who were nearly drowned in the bay in consequence of the upsetting of a boat conveying them to the hospital from the vessel in which When they were rescued it they were attacked. was thought that death would be inevitable, more especially as the patients, after their extrication from the water, were exposed for an hour to a cold wind in their wet clothing. Instead, however, of dying, every one of the sufferers recovered with a rapidity described as "truly astonishing." They had been discharged from the hospital, and were in perfect health.

DR. GALEZOWSKI'S TREATMENT OF PURULENT OPHTHALMIA OF INFANTS.- This consists, according to Le Progrès Médical, in touching, morning and evening, the surface of the conjunctiva with a pencil dipped into a solution of one fourth of a part of nitrate of silver to ten parts of distilled water. Immediately afterwards a second pencil is passed over the conjunctiva, after having been dipped in a saturated solution of chloride of sodium. This neutralizes any excess of the nitrate, which, remaining on the conjunctiva, might act as an irritant. This is the plan to be followed, without regard to the abundance of the discharge, the intensity of the chemosis, or the bad state of the cornea; and during the six years that he has treated 400 such ophthalmias at the Clinique, Dr. Galezowski has not lost Five or six weeks are required to effect a complete cure; but when the discharge has diminished, and the chemosis has disappeared, the application need only be made once a day, then every other day, or twice a week.

an eye.

AGES.

THE REMOVAL OF PLASTER-OF-PARIS BAND- Dr. Murdock states that a very convenient way of effecting this is to take a strong solution of nitric acid, and by means of a camel's-hair pencil to paint a strip across the bandage at the most desirable point for division. The acid will so soften the plaster that it may be readily divided by means of an ordinary jack-knife.

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TREATMENT OF DYSENTERY BY THE BENThe benzoate of sodium or ammonium, given in fifteen-grain doses three or four times daily, has been found to be of the utmost value in the treatment of acute and subacute varieties of dysentery. It has a decided cholagogue effect, and possibly the good results may be due to the increased flow of bile, and its action on the congested or ulcerated large intestine.

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"GOT THE CONVALESCENCE."-The Germantown Telegraph is responsible for the following: A country physician of limited sense and "limiteder " education, was called to see Mr. R.'s little boy, who was quite ill. He gave some medicine and left, promising to call on the following morning. When he arrived Mr. R. met him at the gate and informed him that the child was convalescent. "Convalescent?" said the doctor, "convalescent? Then if he is that bad off, you'll have to call in some other physician; I never treated a case of it in my life!" and with that he mounted his horse and departed. LADY DOCTORS. In an interesting collection of autographs, recently sold in London, was a curious one from the celebrated Mrs. Piozzi, formerly Mrs. Thrale, in which, writing from Weston-super"Mrs. Piozzi sends her compliMare, she says: ments to Mr. Price, by her cook-maid, who wishes He believes it to be the sole agent which will wisely enough to consult a professor, though twelve induce contraction of the blood-vessels without irri-grains of rhubarb and twelve drops of laudanum in tating the eye. The water must be as hot as can some weak brandy-and-water would have cured her be borne, and must be thrown against the eye with probably; and Mrs. Piozzi never extends her practice the hand. It should be used two or three minutes beyond innocent remedies: begs Mr. Price will set three times a day, or for five minutes every half hour, her up as quickly as he can, and drive out of her according to the indications. head the notion of this place disagreeing with her." THE OLD PROVERB. A gentleman, who took to medicine late in life, said to a friend, "You know the old proverb, At forty a man must be a fool or a physician'?" "Yes," was the reply; "but, doctor, don't you think he can be both?"

HOT WATER IN THE TREATMENT OF EYE DISEASES is highly recommended by Dr. Leartus Con

nor.

SELECT FORMULE.

MOSQUITO OIL. The following is a very good mixture for anointing the face and hands while fishing:

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MEDICAL CONSULTATIONS. - The following epi-
gram is quoted in a London medical journal, but
the author's name is not given :

"A single doctor, like a sculler, plies;
The patient lingers and by inches dies;
But two physicians, like a pair of oars,

Waft him with swiftness to the Stygian shores."

Boston Journal of Chemistry.

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Special Notices.

"Hebona" Poison.

THE Rev. W. A. Harrison read a paper, at the New Sh spere Society, On Cursed Hebona (Hamlet I. v.). Presen that the poison intended must be the same as Marlow's Spenser and by other writers of Shakespeare's age; that in t

of Hebon," he pointed out that the yew-tree is called heb

various forms of eben, eiben, ihben, etc, this tree is named in r less than five different European languages. He shows by its tions from medical authorities that the juice of the yew i. rapidly fatal poison; that the symptoms in yew poisoning er spond in a very remarkable manner with those which follow t = bites of poisonous snakes; and that no known poison but t yew produces the "lazar-like" ulcerations on the body wit Shakespeare in this passage lays such stress upon.

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GOOD WORDS FOR ADVERTISERS. THE Albany Aniline Works are at present extending ther buildings so as to cover three acres when completed. They t pose to manufacture all the different aniline dyes, many of wh can now only be obtained from Europe.

THE notice of our readers is called to the advertisement Ridge's Food in another column. At this season, when so na little ones are suffering from insufficient food and the vario diseases incident to the heated term, it is with pleasure we attention to an article which is not a medicine, and which, bṣ teen years of use here and twenty-five in England, has just merited the rank it holds with the public. All interested an invited to send to Woolrich & Co., Palmer, Mass., for pamphi treating of Care of Infants, Composition of the Food, etc.

HORSFORD'S ACID PHOSPHATE affords an excellent near of introducing phosphorus into the system. The London S*urday Review said: "The introduction of phosphorus intet. system forms a valuable accession to modern treatment of p monary phthisis."

This Acid Phosphate has been used by physicians all over te country for night sweats in consumption, with great benefit. 1: makes a delicious drink with water and sugar only.

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, April 22, 1882 J. C. RICHARDSON, ST. LOUIS, MO.: Dear Sir, I have been a sufferer from nervous sick beadof CELERINA, and I have found it to give me more relief tis ache for many years. Lately I have been using your preparata anything else I have used. I have also prescribed it in a fo» cases with entire satisfaction. I take pleasure in saying that I think it will supply a much-needed want in the treatment of a THOS. R. WALKER, M. D. neurological diseases.

EVERY STUDENT OF MUSIC in America has just reason to feel proud of the facilities now afforded by the New Engla Conservatory of Music. The New Home, admirably adapted ! the purpose for which it will be used, is situated in the beart a Boston, the home of Art and Music in America. The New Ez land Conservatory is at once the largest music school and oc pies the largest and finest building in the world used for such a purpose.

THE first steel pens that were made were sold at an Fogis shilling each. Esterbrook's can be bought by the gross at a rac considerably less than one cent each.

HEALY'S VEGETABLE TONIC PILLS are far preferal le alcoholic compounds in all cases of inflammation.

SENSITIVE organizations constantly derange the nervia functions. CEPHALINE restores them.

AND

POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW.

VOLUME XVI.

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lunar disk. Two days after the eclipse, an ob- already mentioned, libration, changes in our atmos109 server of forty years' experience, while looking phere, appearances due only to the instrument employed, etc., etc. But after we have carefully sifted at the moon, thought that he saw a cloud a hundred miles long and forty or fifty broad hov-out changes of these sorts, our observations seem to ...... 111ering over the Mare Crisium, presenting a misty, changes on the moon's surface. show a residue of phenomena due to the actual The recent excelfeathery appearance, unmistakably different from lent maps of that energetic and accurate observer, 112 other portions of the moon's disk. If this ap- Schmidt, of Athens, will make the detection of such pearance was a reality, and not an optical illu- changes easier, and additions to our knowledge in sion, other observers will be sure to detect some- this direction may now be expected to accumulate 113 thing similar. rapidly.

PRACTICAL CHEMISTRY AND THE ARTS. Testing Soap..........
On a Method of Constructing Areometers without Standard
Solutions.

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CHANGES ON THE MOON'S SURFACE.

same way

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Professor M. W. Harrington, of the Michigan 114 University, and director of the Ann Arbor Observatory, in a recent article on this subject, re

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Of course it does not follow, from these possible changes on the moon's surface, that it is inhabited or even inhabitable. The indications of an atmosphere, and of clouds, which imply the There are two sorts of changes on the lunar sur- presence of water, or some similar liquid that face which have been established with fair certainty. can become vaporized, suggest the possibility 116 The first is well seen in the land-slide, and seems to that life may exist in some form; but it must 116 be due to the great alternations of temperature to be wholly unlike the forms with which we are which the moon is subject. These slides leave familiar on our own planet. The atmosphere, 117 traces which can be recognized with little or no at best, cannot be of much extent or density. 118 ambiguity. At the foot of a cliff will lie a great The facts upon which the theory of its non118 mass of débris, and at the top will be a correspond- existence has been based remain undisputed and 118 ing notch from which this has fallen. The great

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120 120

119 walled plain, Plato, shows a land-slide at the south-indisputable, and the inference drawn from them ..... 119 east end, which must have been upwards of twenty can be but slightly qualified. The shadows of miles in length. The notch in the wall above can the lunar mountains are as black and sharply be made out without difficulty. In the so-called defined as ever, showing that the atmosphere, Great Pass of the Alps, not far west of Plato, nueven if there is one, is not sufficient to diffuse merous land-slides can be seen with a large tele- light to any extent appreciable to observers on scope. The writer has counted upwards of a dozen the earth; the absence of twilight is equally of them in a distance of sixty or eighty miles. certain; and occulted stars disappear at the They are smaller than the slip in Plato, but are in edge of the lunar disk, as of old, with no persome cases large enough to nearly close up the pass, ceptible dimming or distortion of their rays, which is from three to five miles in width. While the changes of the first sort are superficial, than ours, would inevitably cause. such as an atmosphere like ours, or far less dense and can be explained by mere changes in tempera-treme vicissitudes of climate on the moon would The exture, those of the second go deeper, and do not as yet admit of any satisfactory explanation. In one of the so-called lunar seas is a crater called Linné, after the great botanist. When described forty or fifty years ago, it was found to be some six miles in diameter, and an easy object. In 1866, one of the very men who had studied it before, and had then agreed with other observers, announced that he Later observation showed that it could not find it. was still there, but was a different object, with a crater of less than a third of the diameter of the original Linné; at the present time it is again an easy object.

of themselves render her surface uninhabitable
by creatures like those on the earth. During
the long lunar day - a period equal to about
fifteen of our days of twenty hours -
the sun
pours down his rays, with no atmosphere to
temper them; for the supposed atmosphere can
be but little better than none for such a purpose.
To this super-torrid temperature succeeds the
more than arctic cold of the lunar night of equal
length. Life may be possible in such a world,
as it may in any world, for we cannot set
limits to Divine power; but these recent dis-
do not
coveries if they prove to be such
materially affect the question either way.

Ir has been well said that scientific like all other human opinion is apt to progress in the that the incoming tide encroaches on the beach. Like the wavelets of the tide, opinion advances by steps, and is at one time ahead, at another behind, the knowledge of the age. A very distinct vibration of this sort can be detected in the opinions of students of the moon as to the character of its surface. When the telescope was first employed in scanning our satellite, its resemblance to the earth was found so great that it was at once taken for granted that it was in other respects like the earth; that it had atmosphere, oceans, and living beings. In the course of time the surface was scrutinized more closely, and its analogies to terrestrial conditions were found to be not so close as had been Another case is that of the two craters called imagined. The mountains were rather craters; Messier. They were described as alike by older the seas were dry; the atmosphere was, at best, observers, who, for some reason, paid special attenvery slight. Opinion passed gradually over into tion to them, and made hundreds of observations on the other extreme, until scientific men became them. They are now so dissimilar that the merest generally agreed that the moon was cold and dead, a "played-out" planet, a prophetic picture of what the earth may become when it has cooled down and dried up into an arid wilderness, in which animal or vegetable life is no longer possible. But within the last few years opinion has again started on the other tack, and cases a slight periodic change in color has been is difficult to believe that they are artificial con

tyro in lunar observations sees the difference at first
glance. One, perhaps both, have changed their
form since they were carefully observed fifty years
ago.

Many other changes have been suspected, but
they are of a more dubious character. In some
they are of a

noted which could not be explained by changes of
illumination. It should not be concealed that it is

it is already acknowledged that changes may be,
probably are, taking place on what has before always difficult to distinguish on the moon merely
been considered a changeless surface. Some of apparent from real changes. Several causes com-
the French observers of the recent solar eclipse bine to make the moon seem to change when it
detected imitations of an atmosphere about the really does not. These are varying illumination,

One thing is certain no evidences of artificial structures on the moon have been detected or even suspected by observers, though buildings or other works of the magnitude of many on the earth could be easily recognized by our best telescopes. Certain markings, closely resembling parallel canals, have been lately discerned on the disk of the planet Mars; but it

structions, unless the De Lesseps type of character is generic among the Martians. However it may be with the men of Mars, those of the moon, if they exist, are evidently no architects or engineers.

BORO-GLYCERIDE.

PROFESSOR BARFF'S new antiseptic, boroglyceride, of which he first gave a description at a meeting of the Society of Arts on the 29th of March, seems to be exciting much interest at present in England.

The method of preparing the compound is said to be as follows:

Glycerine is heated to a high temperature, and boracic acid is added as long as it dissolves, the propor

tions being ninety-two parts of glycerine to sixtytwo of boracic acid. When this is allowed to get cold, a white crystalline compound is formed, which disappears on further heating. Water is evolved during the whole of the operation, and at last, when steam ceases to be given off, the mass sets into hard, ice-like substance, and is found to have lost in weight exactly fifty-four parts, which corresponds to the weight of three molecules of water.

3

3'

The formula for boro-glyceride is C, H, BO, which is analogous to that of a natural fat, BO, taking the place of the fatty acid. That the compound is not injurious to health is shown by the fact that milk treated with it was used at a college near London by three hundred persons, during the summer of 1881, without its presence being suspected, or any ill effects being observed. As a preservative of food, the boro-glyceride is mixed with about fifty times its weight of water, and in this form it costs less than twentyfive cents per gallon. A gallon will preserve as much meat as can be covered by it in any vessel. It can be used by untrained persons, and the same liquid may be employed over and over again.

An English journal gives the following account of Professor Barff's success in the use of this liquid for preserving food:

them are a part of the same geological formation. off huge masses, which floated to sea as icebergs.
We call it the "drift." Beneath the drift we al- Over the interior the southward extension of the
ways find the surface of the bed-rock smoothed in a glacier reached the latitude of Cincinnati, and along
remarkable manner, and sometimes scratched and the Alleghanies the glacier sheet extended to the
grooved as if by the movement of some powerful Carolinas.
All these phenomena, and others, we connect
together and explain by means of the theory of
continental glaciation.

tool.

Its

The moving glacier transformed the surface. thickness was probably five thousand feet in favorable situations, and it pressed upon the underlying We must turn our thoughts for a moment to the surface with a force exceeding comprehension. The progress of the world's history. The continents, in fleecy snows had fallen into the gorges and chasms the progress of the ages, had grown methodically of the ancient surface. They had gathered themfrom their primitive germs. Meanwhile, those won-selves about the projecting crags and the beetling derful phases of organic history had been passed cliffs, and now the glacier mass held all the rocky which we call the "reign of reptiles" and the "reign prominences in their icy grasp. So, when the ice of mammals." New England had been the seat of mass moved, the rugged crags and the loose fragthese rising and vanishing empires. Organic life ments were wrenched from their places, and borne Each rock fragment, fixed in the under had advanced to the grade of the creatures next to onward. man. A finite intelligence would have looked for surface of the ice like a ploughshare, scored the the advent of man as the next great event. The surface of the bottom rocks. The finer sands, rebounds of the continent, as it was to be in human sulting from the crushing action, scoured the rocky times, had been attained. It was already covered floor, and left it in the condition first mentioned. by the forest growths which were to flourish in the The worn and rounded rock fragments became our human epoch. Everything seemed ready for the boulders, and the movement of the ice transported appearance of the lord of the animal creation, and them hundreds of miles southward from the places the possessor of the earth's surface. where they originated. Meanwhile, as the front of the ponderous ice mass marched southward, it prostrated the forest growths, and buried them - stem and branch and fruitage- beneath the accumulatHere we find these relics of the ing rock rubbish.

But still the preparation was not complete. The surface of the land had been wasted and scarred by the erosions in progress during many previous geological ages. The condition of the region of the Colorado River in our times may be taken as repre- pre-glacial forest, fifty and eighty feet deep in the senting the wasted and desolate aspect of many por- drift which we explore in human times. By action tions of the land which had served as the home of of this kind all those phenomena were produced countless generations of reptiles and mammals. Be- which we associate with the drift formation and the fore it could become a suitable abode for intellectual age of ice. and civilizable man, with all the diversified wants and aptitudes and capabilities of such a being, this ruined and exhausted surface must be renovated. Behold the method of nature in the accomplishment of this preparatory work!

In earlier times the completion of the continental outlines had been carried out along the southeastern and southwestern borders. Now it appears that the He exhibited eggs, oysters, lobsters, fish of vari-final work was to be done along the northern slope ous kinds, which had been preserved for nearly three of America. In accordance with the established months. These were tasted, and pronounced to be method of continent-building, the region now known perfect in freshness and in flavor. Specimens of as British America was gradually uplifted. Inmutton sent from the Falkland Islands in August creased elevation was accompanied by depression last were exhibited, both raw and cooked. Profes- of temperature, and the influence of this was felt by sor Barff also read extracts of letters from persons all the middle latitude regions. Unwonted frosts in Jamaica who had received from him cream and browned the foliage of forests once perennially other articles in a fresh condition, and a letter from green, and snows gathered in more northern parts, Zanzibar, in which the opinion of Dr. Steere, the which the summer's heat was insufficient to dissolve. Bishop of the African Missions, was given as to the perfect condition in which he received some Devon-Perpetual snow clothed British America, which hardened into glacier ice. Thus the country became shire cream. Samples of meat were also shown glaciated from ocean to ocean. Still the cold inwhich had been preserved for three months in open creased; the southern limits of perpetual snow were vessels. They were first exhibited in the raw state, extended annually; New England and New York in which they appeared satisfactory, and their taste when cooked was also tested by actual experience.

[blocks in formation]

were buried in snow and ice.

But a geological spring-time returned. The continent began again to subside, and the climate of pre-glacial times was rapidly restored. The sudden melting of the ice gave origin to floods, which wended their way southward, and bore an enormous freight of sand and gravel to the wasted regions of the Southern States, which the beneficent action of the glacier had not reached. These deposits overspread all the South. So, by ice and floods, the entire country had been renovated.

But the sinking did not pause. The continent was again submerged by the encroachments of the Atlantic. This also- the despair of any finite intelligence

was a beneficent incident. The conti

The coarser ma

nent rose again. As the sea-shore retreated down
all the slopes, every foot of land was subjected to
the assorting action of the waves.
terials were mostly buried beneath the finer. The
land reached its appointed level, and became fitted
for the abode of man.

Thus the study and interpretation of the commonest phenomena reveal to intelligence some glimpses of geological history enacted hundreds of thousands of years ago, and light up, as we shall see, even if dimly, the long corridors of time to come.

THE SPEED OF THOUGHT.

Moreover, there was an actual motion of the glacier ice. The glacier travelled. Whatever the explanation of the motion of glaciers, they all slowly descend towards lower levels. Agassiz thought exJames Forbes pansion and contraction the cause. WE have several times given the readers of conceived that they flow like viscid fluids. Faraday, the JOURNAL a report of what has been done by Tyndall, Moseley, and Croll have contributed sug- scientists to determine the rate at which nervous gestions, but it suffices for us that glaciers move in influence is transmitted through the telegraphic mass. The continental glacier moved. Its course system of our bodies. Some recent investiga was broken up into many eddies and diversions by tions on the subject are thus summed up in the the configuration of the underlying surface. Partial ice streams flowed along all the old valleys of the American Journal of Arts and Sciences :—

continent, down the Connecticut, down the Hud-
son, and far out to sea; down the Mohawk, up the
St. Lawrence from the Gulf to the lower Great
Lakes, and at least as far as Fort Wayne, in In-
diana. The great movement extended over Long
Island Sound and across Long Island. Along the
southern shore of the island the glacier sheet plunged
into the Atlantic, like the great Greenland glacier
into Baffin's Bay. The buoyancy of the water lifted

Sensations are transmitted to the brain at a ra

pidity of about 180 ft. per second, or at one fifth the rate of sound; and this is nearly the same in all individuals.

The brain requires one tenth of a second to transmit its orders to the nerves which preside over voluntary motion; but this amount varies much in dif ferent individuals, and in the same individual at different times, according to the disposition or con

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