"While bright-eyed science watches round."

A scientific investigation into the nature and causes of consumption proves the immediate causes, apart from hereditary, to be dampness of houses and localities. Of races, the negroes seem most liable, and the Jews the most exempt. A french scientist has found that inhalation of air containing a small amount of hydrofluoric acid gas has a remarkably good effect on consumption. In England good results were obtained by inspiration of air mixed with ozone. That the disease results chiefly from inactivity of the lungs is the statement of a physician who maintains that the cure of the disease is a mechanical question. The International Tuberculosis Congress lately held at Paris admits that tuberculosis is contagious, can be transmitted from man to animals, and vice versa, and is the same in men, women, and cattle. Diseased milk is the most frequent agent of transmission, and with this meat, particularly lightly cooked, as food. Predisposing causes are sedentary life, overwork, mental anxiety, insufficient nourishment, in general, anything calculated to lower the vitality. The congress has discovered no remedy, only palliatives for tuberculosis. Catarrhs, bronchitis, and other throat troubles have a tendency to develop into pleurisy or consumption when neglected.

Typhoid fever never affects the atmosphere, but it does affect water, milk, ice, and meat. The eggs of a parasite from dogs, and hence more or less infecting all waters to which dogs have access, appear to have an unequaled facility of passage to all parts of the human system.

As for surgical operations, in a German paper are particulars of a case in which the eye of a man was thrust out of its socket by a parasite cyst in the rear, discovered by surgical exploration and extracted. From a 5-year old boy an injured kidney was removed successfully and the patient recovered. The bridge of the nose was completely restored by using the breast-bone of a chicken and stretching the flesh of the old nose over it.

Even the part of a destroyed nerve of the arm was restored by the substitution of a part of a sound nerve from an amputated limb, so that the continuity was restored and sensation returned in 36 hours! Prematurely-born children are kept in an artificial mother, which consists of a glass case warmed by bowls of water. A new opiate has been discovered called the sulsonal. It produces sleep in nervous people and those affected with heart disease, but not in healthy subjects. The idea that sufferers from heart disease should avoid physical exertion has been dispelled by a noted physiologist who has successfully employed regulated exercise.

Brown-SÉquard has brought out his great Vital Fluid. He is reported as saying: "I never made use of the word 'elixir,' still less of the words 'elixir of life.' These are all expressions or inventions of sensational newspapers. If quacks or ignorant men in America have killed people, as stated by the New York papers, they would have avoided committing those murders had they paid the least attention to the most elementary rules as regards the subcutaneous injection of animal substances. Injections of animal matter have no danger, as a rule, unless the substances begin to be decomposed. When this condition of things exists, no good can be obtained, and there is grave danger of inflammation, abscesses, and even death."

"Professor Brown-SÉquard is reported to have lately informed the French Academy of Sciences that, by condensing the watery vapor coming from the human lungs, he obtained a poisonous liquid capable of producing almost immediate death. The poison is an alkaloid (organic), and not a microbe or series of microbes. He injected this liquid under the skin of a rabbit and the effect was speedily mortal without convulsions. Dr. SÉquard said it was fully proved that respired air contains a volatile element far more dangerous than the carbonic acid which is one of its constituents, and that the human breath contains a highly poisonous agent. This startling fact should be borne in mind by the occupants of crowded horse-cars and ill-ventilated apartments."

"A very curious geographical distribution of certain virtues and vices has been mooted by a scientist. Intemperance is mostly found above latitude 48°, amatory aberrations south of the forty-fifth, financial extravagance in large seaports, industrial thrift, in pastoral highland regions."

"Advance in Hygienic Clothing.—The new cellular clothing now coming into use in England is said to be a success. It is woven out of the same materials as the common weaves of cloth, being simply, as its name indicates, closely woven into cells, the network of which is covered over with a thin fluff. Its porous quality allows the slow passing of the outside and inside air, giving time for the outside air to become of the same temperature as the body, obviating all danger of catching colds, and allowing vapors constantly exhaled by the body to pass off, thus contributing toward health and cleanliness. The common objection to cotton clothing—that it is productive of chills and colds—is removed if woven in this manner, and the invention can certainly be said to be strictly in accordance with hygienic and scientific principles."

The annual death rate, in 1888, for the principal cities of the world, per 1,000 inhabitants, was: San Francisco, Cleveland, Stockholm, 17; Bristol, Dresden, 18; Chicago, Cincinnati, Edinburgh, London, Turin, 19; Berlin, Baltimore, Brussels, Buffalo, Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, 20; Brooklyn, St. Louis, Tokyo, 21; Amsterdam, Christiana, Paris, Washington, 22; Glasgow, 23; Copenhagen, 24; Bombay, Boston, New Orleans, Pesth, Venice, Vienna, 25; Breslau, Calcutta, Manchester, New York, Prague, Rotterdam, 26; Dublin, 27; Rome, 28; Hamburg, Munich, 29; Trieste, 30; Buda Pesth, St. Petersburg, 32; Alexandria, 38; Madras, 40; and Cairo, 51.

The death rate among the poor and rich respectively varies much. In Paris the death rate per 1,000 inhabitants between 40 and 50 years in easy circumstances was 8.3 against 18.7 among the poor. In London are some districts of the wealthy classes where the rate was 11.3 against 38 in the slums. The mean age at death among the gentry was 55 years, while among the workers it was 20-1/2 years. It was found that only 8% of the children of the upper classes died in their first year against 19% in the general population of Liverpool and 33% in the slums of that city. Deaths from consumption were nearly one-fourth of all deaths among the poor, and only one-eighteenth among the rich.

The above facts and figures cannot fail to set every intelligent person who reads them to thinking of this great health problem.