clear, slightly acid, without sediment, presented only a rose colour when treated with heat and nitric acid. Under the microscope it presented a diminution in the quantity of urea and uric acid. A thousand parts of the blood, when analysed, showed-water, 804; globules, 74; fibrine, 2; solid matter, 118. There was, therefore, a diminution of the quantity of red globules.

TREATMENT OF HYSTERIA AND CHLOROSIS.-M. Delfrassé, of Cahors, writes to the National Academy of Medicine, that he has derived great benefit from the use of the acetate, or hydrochlorate of morphia, passed into the cavity of the uterus, in cases of hysteria, chlorosis, and other nervous affections.-Bulletin de l'Académie Nationale de Médecine.

CHRONIC SCIATICA.-M. Robert has published in the Annales de Thérapeutique Médicale et Chirurgicale, the case of a countrywoman, fifty years of age, who had suffered for fifteen months intense pains in the right lower extremity, extending from the sciatic notch to the foot. The pains were greatly aggravated at night, so that she could not rest in bed nor obtain sleep. Various plans of treatment had been tried unavailingly. M. Robert, after chloroform had been administered, applied an iron at a white heat on the outside of the dorsum of the foot, in the direction of a line drawn from the external malleolus to the third and fourth toes. When the patient awoke, she declared the pain had entirely ceased, nor had it returned at the date of the report, a fortnight after the operation.

SONNAMBULISM.-Professor Vannoni describes in Il Progresso a singular case of sonnambulism. He was summoned to see a young married lady, and ascertained that she was pregnant. This declaration evidently caused her extreme pain, the explanation of which was not made to him until a few days afterwards, when it appeared that the husband, to whom she was greatly attached, declared he could not be the father of her child, as he had not had intercourse with her for five months. From some remarks that fell from the lady, it was discovered that the husband had become a sonnambulist, and that the attack came on about one o'clock each morning, when he left his own room and visited his wife unconsciously. The sonnambulism appears to have arisen in consequence of alarm caused by an accident to his mother.

ACONITUM NAPELLUS.-M. Teissier, of Lyons, has conducted a series of experiments on the aconitum napellus, with the view of studying its stupe. fying and antiphlogistic actions. The stupefying action is undoubted; it differs from that of morphia, the influence of which is perceptible in more or less relieving all kinds of pain; aconite, on the contrary, has power only over special pains. This specialty of action of the aconite is one of its principal characters, and it results from the fact that the stupefying property of this medicine is only secondary: its principal, and in some sort specific, action is exerted on the skin; it consists in eliminating the noxious elements from the vessels of that membrane, and in re-establishing its functions, when they have been disturbed either by the repercussion of the perspiration or by the presence of any virus. Thus aconite is adapted for the treatment of diseases caused by cold, the consequences of catarrhs, and also of the diseases in which a morbid principle is retained in the cutaneous tissue, such as the exanthematous fevers. The painful diseases in which M. Teissier has obtained benefit from the sedative action of aconite, are those depending on a catarrhal or rheumatic cause. The antiphlogistic action of the plant is quite secondary and subordinate to its action on the skin.-Révue Médicale.

CHLOROFORM IN NEURALGIA.-M. Barrier, of Lyons, and Messrs. Rollet and Jeannel, of Bordeaux, have employed chloroform successfully in the treatment of neuralgia. The first-named administered it by inhalation; the others employed it topically, a flannel moistened with forty drops of chloroform being applied to the affected part. The local action of chloroform has been compared to that produced by a sinapism. M. Amesille, at a meeting of the Academy of Medicine, stated that he also had had recourse to the topical application of chloroform, with benefit in diverse cases of neuralgia,—in a case of suffocating, precordial pain, and in two cases of very severe nervous colic.-Révue Médicale.

TREATMENT OF EPILEPSY.-M. Cheneau, in a communication read before the Academy of Sciences at Paris, in summing up his remarks on the treatment of epilepsy, observes that the cure of that disease, when it takes place, is not exclusively at the early period of life, but may be effected at a rather advanced age: that the difference of age does not modify in a notable manner the chances of success, nor the difficulty of the treatment; that the complications of idiocy, and more or less extensive palsy, are not insurmountable obstacles to the cure; that the treatment may be of short duration, but that it is impossible to ascertain this beforehand; that digitalis is worth the attention of practitioners in the treatment of this disease; that the opinion emitted by physicians that several fits cannot occur in the same day is not sufficiently supported; that it is an error to look upon an extreme paleness, succeeding towards the close of the fits the redness which had previously existed, as a characteristic symptom of epilepsy; and that man is subject to a kind of epilepsy, called tournis, which is not always dependent on a lesion of the brain, or of the peduncles of the cerebellum, and may be cured.-Gazette Médicale.

HYDROPHOBIA. Dr. Jackson, of Philadelphia, has published several cases of hydrophobia in the American Journal of Medical Sciences, in one of which chloroform was administered with relief to the spasms, but the case terminated fatally. In another case, the cicatrix of the bite was excised, the wound cauterized, and free suppuration induced. Chloroform was also used whenever the spasms threatened. The patient recovered. Dr. Jackson appears to be doubtful whether or not the case is to be considered one of hydrophobia. Dr. Curtis, of Lowell, has published in the same journal another case of hydrophobia, in which chloroform entirely failed.

EPILEPSY.-Dr. R. W. Evans, of Richmond, C. W., relates ("British American Journal of Medical and Physical Science,") a case of epilepsy successfully treated by an infusion of the scutellaria geniculata, made according to the following formula: R Scutell. genic., 3ij; aq. bullientis, f3viij ft: inf. The mode of administration is to begin with two tablespoonsful every eight hours, increasing the dose, after the termination of a week, to double that quantity, with an occasional aperient.

The subject of Dr. Evans' case was a female, 26 years of age, who had suffered from the disease for eight years, the attacks coming on every six or seven days. She had taken for months nitrate of silver, iron, zinc, strychnia, digitalis, ammoniuret of copper, valerian, musk, &c., without any benefit. Dr. Evans directed the scutellaria according to the above formula; its use was continued for six weeks, when a profuse salivation took place, with slight constriction of the fauces. The medicine was discontinued, a Seidlitz powder directed, and in a few days the ptyalism ceased At the date of the report, the patient had been taking the medicine daily

for four months, during which time she had not had a single attack. She enjoys excellent health, and her memory seems to improve daily.

Dr. Evans states that he has under his care two other cases, which seem to manifest the superiority of this medicine. They are in a manner almost recovered, with the exception of a violent palpitation of the heart at the expected period of attack, which passes off without any bad result by the timely administration of a few doses of tincture of digitalis, and by keeping the patient free from mental irritability, which is a frequent cause of epileptic palpitation.

THE ESSENTIAL PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS of the BRAIN IN INSANITY. -Dr. Palmer, of Bow, in a communication published in the "Lancet," says, no evidence is wanting to prove that the vesicular neurine of the convolutions is the centre of the intellectual operations, and that, if it be not also the emotional centre, it is, at least, most intimately connected with it. Here, by means of some molecular changes, our sensations first become perceptions, impressions are fixed, and trains of thought are worked out in the various operations of imagination, abstraction, comparison, &c. This view of the seat of the intellect is held by nearly all great anatomists and physiologists, and may be regarded as a settled point; we have thus a strong light to guide us in the investigation of the pathology of mental diseases, and are led unhesitatingly and necessarily to refer all intellectual unsoundness, of whatever form or grade, to some deficiency of, or morbid molecular change in, the vesicular neurine of the convolutions. The remote causes of insanity may be either physical or moral, eccentric or centric, originating in other organs of the body or operating immediately on the intellectual centre; but to whatever sources they may be traced, some disturbance of the healthy molecular changes on which the nutrition and functions of the cortical grey matter depend, must be presupposed before insanity can be admitted. The appearances which have come under Dr. Palmer's observation, in the post mortem examination of the brains of eighty-two lunatics, are quite in harmony, he says, with these views, not one case having been met with in which there was not distinct lesion of this portion of the grey matter, associated in most cases with other morbid conditions of the brain or other viscera, which had their corresponding symptoms during life, but always bearing a direct ratio to the extent of mental aberration. Cases of insanity, he adds, may, and no doubt do occur, in which no traces of cerebral disease are discoverable after death, but this cannot be received as evidence that such disease did not exist during life, and was operating as the immediate cause of the mental aberration.

Various degrees of defective development, anemia, atrophy, &c., of the cortical matter, are commonly met with, but the most striking and apparently specific lesion in insanity is asthenic inflammatory degeneration of this substance, to which may probably be referred all the alterations in its colour and consistence, noticed from time to time by various writers. It proceeds from without in an inward direction, commencing immediately beneath the pia mater, and advancing until the entire thickness of the cortical substance is involved. On different parts of the hemispheres it may be observed in different stages of its progress, but always more definitely marked about the apex of the posterior lobes, in the posterior part of the convolution, described by Solly as the great convolution of the second order. It is also often observed in the middle lobes, and occasionally, but less distinctly, in the frontal lobes. On minute examination, a welldefined line is perceived to intervene between the outer degenerated por

tion, which has already succumbed to the inflammatory action, and is of a pale, ash-grey colour, without any appearance of vascularity; and the inner, which is of a full, brownish, pink hue, highly injected, and distinctly undergoing the inflammatory process. Dr. Palmer has not examined these structures under the microscope, but he says he has no doubt that complete disorganization of the vesicular neurine would be found in the ash-grey layer.

Insanity-i. e., disease of the convolutional grey matter, has not of itself a fatal tendency, but death usually results from some previously existing, associated, or induced disease of other portions of the cerebral mass, or of other organs. The nutrition of the cortical matter is often primarily disturbed by the influence of morbid blood circulating through it, and as often by the influence of distant visceral disease conveyed to it through the medium of the sympathetic grey matter of the cord, olivary columns, sensory tract, and radiating fibres of the hemispheres. The reverse also frequently takes place-viz., the cause of the intellectual disturbance being purely moral, the quantity and quality of the secretions, and the process of nutrition generally, may be morbidly altered, so that the blood becomes changed in its properties, and vital organs impaired in their power of resisting morbid impressions. Both these conditions are of common occurrence, and constitute distinct varieties of insanity in regard to symptoms, prognosis, and treatment, although the cortical matter probably undergoes the same change in each of them.

Watchfulness, and a rapid flow of ideas, with emotions not readily under control, are the more prominent mental phenomena of the first stsge-that of undue irritability of the grey matter. In the second, that of erethism, (also the stage of invasion,) a rapid succession of illusions and false perceptions, and their quick obliteration, are the more salient features. These, however, are always in proportion to the amount of cortical matter implicated. As structural lesions take place, the illusions and perversities of character become less transitory, and are more or less numerous in proportion to the superficial extent of disorganization, and more or less permanent and complete in proportion to the depth to which the cortical matter is diseased. This constitutes chronic insanity, which, when the inflammatory action ceases, (as is often the case,) may be termed fixed chronic insanity, in contradistinction to the still extending disease, which may be designated progressive chronic insanity. These forms are very distinct in symptoms, as well as in the treatment required. In the former, there are certain fixed delusions and oddities of character without the watchfulness, excitability, and hurry of ideas characteristic of erethism; in the latter, these fixed delusions are still prominent, but the indications of erethism are superadded. In the former, the general health may remain good for years; in the latter, the organic nervous system may soon become deranged, and the patient fall a victim to some abdominal or thoracic disease. At length, when the vesicular neurine of the convolutions is both extensively and deeply disorganized, the various grades of dementia, ending in a total obliteration of the mental faculties, supervene.

Another form of dementia of an acute character is sometimes observed to follow immediately on the erethismic stage, without passing through the grades of progressive chronic insanity. It is not unfavourable as regards prognosis, and is probably due to the capillaries relieving themselves from congestion by inter-vesicular effusion, (edema of the grey matter,) and thus causing suspension of the intellectual functions by mechanical compression of the vesicles. Diminished nutrition, and vital stimulus of the grey matter from imperfectly filled capillaries produces simple delirium, (pre

sent in the course of many exhausting diseases,) but if long-continued, and especially if the blood be in an impoverished state, it also furnishes one of the pathological conditions of senile insanity.

HEMICRANIA. Dr. Turenne states that hemicrania is a pain in the head resulting from the compression of the trifacial nerve, more particularly of its ophthalmic branch, caused by the accumulation of blood in the sinuses at the base of the cranium, and especially in the cavernous sinuses.

ORIGIN OF THE VIS NERVOSA.-Mr. Strachan, in a letter published in the Lancet on the origin of the vis nervosa, observes that, by every chemical action either positive or negative electricity is produced. It is clear, therefore, he says, that the various and extensive chemical actions constantly going on in the animal system-the change from venous to arterial blood in the lungs the change from arterial to venous blood in the capillariesthe various secretions-the digestion of food-the nourishment and decay of every organ, are sources whence an immense amount of electricity must be evolved. And for the hypothesis that this is the source of the nervous fluid, it is only necessary to suppose that the afferent nerves receive the electricity set free, and convey it to the brain, whence it is constantly returned by the efferent nerves, and thus an electric circle is produced, which again modifies all the chemical changes going on, and is capable of producing all the effects usually ascribed to the nervous fluid. According to this view, the brain and spinal marrow, instead of generating, serve the purpose of accumulating, distributing, and directing the nervous force. They hold a similar relation to the nervous fluid that the heart does to the blood. Or they may be likened to the coiled wire of the galvanic machine.

CHLOROFORM IN DELIRIUM TREMENS.-Mr. Hyde, of Maryborough, records in the Lancet a case of delirium tremens, which was apparently cured by the production of anesthesia. About a drachm and a half of chloroform were used. The anesthetic condition continued about eight minutes, soon after recovering from which, the patient fell into a quiet, deep sleep, in which he remained for nearly fourteen hours, when he awoke with clear and sound intellectual faculties. The case afterwards did well. Opiates were given before the chloroform was employed.

CHLOROFORM IN QUOTIDIAN HEMICRANIA.-Mr. Broxholme, of Islington, records in the Lancet a case of severe quotidian hemicrania, followed by an attack in some degree resembling asthma, in which he successfully had recourse to the anesthetic action of chloroform. Aperients and subsequently quinine were also used.

PUERPERAL CONVULSIONS.-At a meeting of the Westminster Medical Society, Dr. Cormack detailed the history of three cases of puerperal convulsions which had occurred in his practice. The main object of his paper was to point out the connexion between renal congestion and puerperal convulsions, which exists in a very great proportion of cases. He considered puerperal convulsions to be, though not always, yet generally, the toxicological results of non-elimination of the excretion of the urine; and that in by far the greater number of cases this non-elimination depends on the renal congestion, caused by the pressure of the gravid uterus. Edema and albuminuria are frequently concomicants or precursors of convulsions, as shown by Dr. Lever and Messrs. Devilliers and Regnault. The gravid uterus, or any tumour pressing on the renal veins, must cause congestion of the kidneys, and consequent toxemia; this is the more injurious to the preg