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PARIS. BERLIN. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

The Paris Drinking-2vetter. " A ntibakterikon.’’ THE defective supply of the drinking-water of Paris is A BERLIN chemical factory has produced a new kind still occupying the attention of the authorities. At a of ozone water, which is said to be distinguished from recent meeting of the Council of Hygiene, Drs. Chante- other liquids of the kind by its freedom from lye miesse and Vidal observed that in the month of February, of Javelle, and by its durability. It is to be patented 1887, they had shown the intimate relation which existed under the name of "Antibakterikon," and is manu- between the increase of typhoid fever in Paris and the factured as follows:-Oxygen gas is made of chlorate of -distribution of the water of the Seine. The researches and potassium and pyrolusite, and conducted into a pressure observations made since that period showed (1) that in 1889 gasometer, whence it is sent through a series of so-called the relations between these two factors were the same as Siemens’ tubes. With the help of a strong electric stream, those pointed out in 1887 ; (2) that the arrondissements pro- produced by a machine similar to that which gives the vided with the Seine water had undergone a mortality from electric light, a secondary stream is produced in these typhoid fever three or four times higher than that of the tubes, which discharges itself slowly but constantly, and rest of the city, which was supplied with spring water. The converts the oxygen gas into an ozone solution of about practice here consists in distributing the water from the 10 per cent. During this process various substances are Seine successively to all the quarters, which proceeding is added to the gas to prevent its evaporating. Dr. Otto most favourable to the spread of typhoid fever. Ringk of Berlin, the inventor of this new preparation, declares that it sanative Storing Food in Inhabited Rooms. possesses extraordinary virtues, not only producing a good effect in cases of tuberculosis, A writer in the Gazette M6dicale de l’Algérie calls the cholera nostras, typhus, diabetes mellitus, toothache, &c., attention of hygienists to the danger of eating butter but also destroying the virus of diphtheria and scarlet fever impregnated with dangerous miasmata. Frequently the with absolute certainty. The future will show whether butter is and in inhabited and some- prepared kept rooms, this news be not too good to be true. times even in rooms occupied by sick persons. Milk also is The often kept in the same manner. The result is a contamina- Tetanus Bacillus. tion by morbific germs. Care should therefore be taken to A Japanese physician named Kitasato has recently ascer- obviate these grave risks to the public health. tained a series of important facts about traumatic tetanus in the Institute of Berlin of which in Urine. Hygienic University, Sugar Robert Koch is the head. The first proof that traumatic Dr. as the result of his has arrived Gaube, observations, tetanus is an infectious disease was given in 1884 by the at the following conclusions, which lie has published in the Italian investigators Carle and Rattone, who inoculated Gazette Médicale de Paris. The mean of the quantity rabbits with pus taken from a person suffering from this normal sugar in the urine during infancy is 1 gramme disease, and fatal tetanus. A later 70 in the and 80 centi- thereby produced year per litre, centigrammes adult, a student at named a of Professor at the of hours. Gottingen Nicolaier, pupil grammes age maturity, per twenty-four Flugge, made the highly important discovery that there are Every individual whose urine contains more than these bacilli in the which, if introduced under of to Dr. in of everywhere ground, quantities sugar is, according Gaube, process the skin of mice, guinea-pigs, and rabbits, invariably cause diabetic evolution, and the individual whose renal excretion traumatic tetanus with fatal result. One later the contains less is cachectic. year sugar Gottingen surgeon Rosenbach showed that Nicolaier’s Myopia in French Schools. are found, in persons attacked by traumatic in the tissue where the infection It was Dr. Motais of has made an communi- tetanustetanus, bacilli began. Angers interesting that the bacillus discovered cation on the hygiene of vision amongst pupils in the recognised by schools and colleges of France. The author asserts that thereforeNicolaier is the cause of traumatic tetanus in human and animals. The exact of these tetanus myopia in schools exists in France, as in Germany, in an beings study .alarming degree, and will increase if the authorities content bacilli, however, was attended by many difficulties, themselves with simply formulating certain regulations chiefly because no one had succeeded in isolating them on an without that are carried out. Dr. in pure cultivations, further cultivating them seeing they properly tetanus Motais has shown that is not a of artificial nutritive basis, and finally producing myopia only question with all of which heredity or of race, but may be acquired, and it then often experimentally pure cultivations, processes becomes hereditary. I need not here mention all the the rules of bacteriology require to be carried out with success before the of the tetanus bacilli can be reforms advocated in his paper, as the greater part of them theory ;have already been pointed out by others who have studied regarded as proved even in its main points. Dr. Kitasato has now done this in a conclusive manner. He owes his this branch of hygiene. He, however, insists on the necessity of organising inspections in the schools. These success to the circumstance that he changed the usual besides useful in the method of cultivation. One of the chief difficulties was ’inspections, being preventing develop- in order to the tetanus bacilli must be most ment of ocular affections, would lead to the discovery of that, thrive, :lesions which, taken in time, would be curable. rigorously guarded against the access of air. Dr. Kitasato’s studies enable him to give a much more exact description Pasteur Statistics. of the tetanus bacilli and their way of life than has been According to the report published in the given hitherto. In particular, he gives a precise account Pasteur Institute, there have been treated at thatAnnals institution of the of the formation of spores. He also states that the from Nov. 1st, 1888, to Nov. 1st, 1889, 1830 persons bitten destructive power of the tetanus bacillus is not in the by rabid animals, of whom 11 have, in spite of the treatment, least impaired by cultivation. succumbed to This a of hydrophobia. gives mortality Professor Hans Virchou. 0’60 per 100. Deducting, however, the number of persons As announced Dr. Hans a son of (4) who died during the treatment or in the fifteen days already by us, Virchow, the famous has been which followed it, the mortality is reduced to 0’38 per cent., pathologist, appointed Extraordinary Professor of in the of Berlin. He was which figure is still inferior to that of the preceding years. Anatomy University It has been established that the number of deaths after born in 1852 at Wurzburg, was educated in Berlin, and studied in ’treatment is becoming more and more reduced. For this medicine, especially anatomy, Berlin, Bonn, and His studies were year it is 1 per cent., whereas the mortality of cases not Strasburg, Wiirzburg. interrupted by treated is less than to 15 cent. the French war, in which he fought for the fatherland as a equal per of Paris, Dec. 3rd. lad eighteen. He graduated in Berlin in 1875. His thesis for his degree was a report of a series of microscopic investigations of certain constituents of the ovum, and he THE SANITARY INSTITUTE.-At the meeting on chose microscopic anatomy as his special. province. The Dec. llth, at 8 P.M., a paper will be read on " The Disposal narrower field of this wide province, to which he has of Sewage," by W. Santo Crimp, Assoc. M. Inst. C.E., devoted and still devotes special attention, is the finer F.G.S. structure of the eye. He has thoroughly studied its 1205 details-the ramification of its vessels, the structure of the humour, &c.-in human beings and in animals. He published the results of these investigations in Obituary. two essays, entitled, "On the Vessels of the Choroid of the Rabbit," and " Contributions to the Comparative, i RICHARD VON VOLKMANN. Anatomy of the Eye." Another group of Dr. Hans RICHARD VON VOLKMANN, one of the greatest of Virchow’s to and relates publications belongs physiology, German surgeons, died at Jena on Nov. 28th. He was to the motion and bearing of human beings. They are born at on 17th, 1830. His father, Alfred founded on very laborious observations of persons in action Leipsic Aug. a famous and heldj and in sleep, of acrobats, athletes, so-called caoutchouc men, Wilhelm Volkmann, was physiologist, and armless persons. He has taught in Berlin University I the chair of physiology in the University of Halle from as private lecturer and as demonstrator since 1884. Before 1843 till 1877. Richard Volkmann studied at Halle, that he was for about seven assistant to Professor years Giessen, and Berlin. He established himself as a private- Kölliker of Berlin now has two Wiirzburg. University in Halle in and was ordi-- ordinary professors of anatomy, Waldeyer and Hertwig, lecturer University 1857, appointed and two extraordinary professors, Hartmann and Hans nary professor of surgery and head of the surgical hospital Virchow. Another of Rudolph Virchow’s sons is a chemist, there in 1867. He was with the Prussian army in the wars. and at present assistant to Professor Liebreich ; a third is a of 1866 and 1870-71, in the latter of which he accompanied botanist. the fourth army corps as He has Case surgeon-general. always. of Blood-poisoning. stood true to the University of Halle, which l@ses its brightest. A somewhat singular case of blood-poisoning has occurred I ornament in him. When Langenbeck retired to well-earned in Berlin. A woman walked across her room without repose in 1882, the professorship of surgery in Berlin was. and a ran into one of her feet. It was slippers, pin pulled off’eled to Volkmann and declined by him. He was a kind out at once, but the foot soon swelled, with most violent of king in Halle. One of his chief merits, the and a doctor was called in. He declared it to be a probably pain, greatest of all, was that he was one of the first and most case of blood-poisoning caused by the circumstance that enthusiastic apostles of Lister’s method in Germany. He: some of the coloured wool of the stocking had got into the simplified Lister’s bandage, showed the of He ordered her to be taken at once to a hos- application puncture. crimped gauze, introduced chloride of zinc as an antiseptic, pital, where the foot was amputated without delay. The created the conception of ″ aseptic wound-fever," and did operation was successfully performed, but the patient is not all that in him to Lister’s method introduced without. of lay get yet out danger. in and in all over Cholera in Western Asicr. delay hospitals private practice Germany. But it was not only as the eloquent advocate and active: A Berlin paper hears from St. Petersburg that cholera is propagator of Lister’s great reform (which, owing to the less. dying out in the provinces of Persia. In Southern Mesopo- scrupulous cleanliness of German hospitals, was still more tamia, on the other hand, all over Irak and among the salutary in Germany than in Great Britain) that Volkmanm nomads of the Syrian desert, who resist all medical super- gained an undying name; his treatment of diseases of the- intendence, the epidemic is raging with great violence. The joints, especially in children, of wound-erysipelas, lupus, and Persian authorities are executing the quarantine regulations synovitis, and his investigations of the growth, bending, and with considerable rigour. atropny 01 bones and ot tumours, especially cancer-tumours, entitle him to rank the . paraffin workers, among great. benefactors of mankind. He was at the same time one of The dengue fever, the reappearance of which in the among of and his lectures on diseases of Piræus was announced a few days ago, forms the subject off the surgery, the are as the best treatment of the an essay by Professor Zuelzer of Berlin, intended forr bestjoints teachers regarded subject. in His name also stands in the von Ziemssen’s Handbook of and existence. high irnagina- special " Pathology tive literature of and he will be remembered The first of the disease re-. Germany, long Therapeutics." symptoms " in non-scientific circles as the author of Reveries at French semble those of As a rule, it pretty well apoplexy. keeps were written in the within the and is confined in to the, Firesides." These poetical effusions tropics, Europe intervals of his hard work in the Franco-German Mediterranean coasts and a part of Southern Spain. It is surgical were intended for his own endemic on the coasts of the Red Sea. to war, and originally children, According fourteen editions and the. Vauvray, it breaks out every year at Port Said at the time but have gone through become common of the German nation. He had suffered of the date harvest, and is known there as the date fever. property for from a severe affection of the In the height of summer isolated cases have occurred in several years spinal New York and Philadelphia. cord. A long stay on the Lake of Constance and journeys. in so far restored him that he was able to re- A Italy History oftlte Prussian Institutions for the Training of sume his work in Halle last summer. His work, how- Army Surgeons. ever, soon proved too much for him, and he had to give Dr. von Coler, physician-general to the Prussian Army, it up entirely. Severe neuralgic pains induced him to has recently published an essay entitled " The Berlin consult Professor Binswanger of Jena some weeks ago. Institutions for the Education of Army Physicians and He had invited the chief German surgeons to meet him Surgeons, their Origin and their Development." The first in Halle on Nov. 17th to constitute the surgical section token of special care for the training of army surgeons in for the International Medical Congress that is to meet in Prussia was the founding of the Theatrum anatomicum in Berlin next summer. Notwithstanding the delicate state 1713 by " the great drill-sergeant of Prussia," King Frederick of his health, he kept this appointment, and took part in the William I. The idea was suggested to the King by Surgeon- deliberations with his wonted vivacity. On his return to General Hotzendorf. The next step in the same direction Jena he was prostrated by inflammation of the lungs, and was the erection in 1724 of the Collegium medico-chirurgi- paralysis of the heart suddenly ended his sufferings. cum, which was open to all students of medicine, but accorded certain privileges to those who intended to enter the army. The famous Pepinière, an institution intended I simply and solely for the training of physicians and surgeons THE SERVICES. for the army, was founded in 1795 ; it was the good result of the very sad experience of the Prussian army in ARMY MEDICAL STAFF.-Deputy Surgeon-General Wm. to the care of the sick and wounded in the respect Cattell has been placed on retired pay (dated Nov. 23rd, wars of Frederick the Great. 1889).-The undermentioned Surgeons-Major to be Brigade Berlin, Nov. 26th. Surgeons, ranking as Lieutenant-Colonels:—Wm. Winslow Tomlinson, vice J. Robinson, retired (dated Nov. 4th, 1889)y THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND FUNERAL REFORM William Sparks Martin Price, vice W. Temple, V.C., M.B., retired Nov. ASSOCIATION has lately, through its hon. see., the Vicar (dated 7th, 1889). of Westow, York, issued a manifesto in which it complains Surgeon Justin F. Donovan, M.D., has been allowed to. of lack of funds. The objects of the Society-namely, the withdraw, with a gratuity, from the Service, which he minimising of the expense of funerals, and securing entered in March, 1879. In 1882, while Surgeon of Jamaica. throughout the kingdom the use of coffins of a readily- Hospital, he received the expression of their lordships’ perishable material—are such as ought to commend them- great satisfaction at the display of zeal and devotion to. selves to the public. iuty manifested during the epidemic of yellow fever at