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BELFAST.
1203
occurring in investigation was
that a thorough most desirable change, as there is a grave suspicion that the by the military hospital is placed in anything but a good sanitary situation, .authorities. At last, however, they appear to have awakened and its present size is not adequate to the requirements of from their lethargy, and I am informed that the Com- such a rapidly increasing town as Belfast. During the mander-in-Chief has appointed a commission to investigate present session there are 130 students receiving clinical and report on the subject. Grave doubts have existed for instruction, while last winter there were 162. The appointyears as to the sanitary state of the Royal Barracks, and the ment of a new matron took place on Saturday, when Miss commission, by a thorough overhauling of the sewerage Isbitt (Canterbury) was unanimously chosen out of twentyarrangements, will carry out an investigation, which is six candidates. LISBURN DISPENSARY. urgently required. MUSCULAR ANOMALY. At a meeting of the Committee of the Lisburn Dispensary There is at present in the dissecting-room of the Ledwich district held on Monday, Dr. James Jefferson, the brother of School of Medicine an example of the biceps flexor cubiti the late medical officer of the district, was appointed distaking its origin by three heads instead of two, so that it pensary doctor. The salary of the late Dr. John Jefferson might be designated an anterior triceps. The third head was £100 per annum, but the Lisburn Board of Guardians came off close to the insertion of the lower part of the decided, in view of the present agricultural depression, to coraco-brachialis muscle, on its outer aspect, and passed to reduce the income to .E&0, and at this salary Dr. Jefferson the posterior part of the muscle. Each head was well was elected. DEATH BY SUFFOCATION. defined. This anomaly I believe to be extremely rare. Dublin, Dec. 14th. Two women, mother and daughter, were found dead in a
fever
the latter
institution,
not at once ordered
BELFAST.
(From
our own
THE VACANT SENATORSHIP
Correspondent.)
OF
THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY.
A LARGE number of the northern graduates, who are had agreed to support the candidature of
Presbyterians,
Professor O’Sullivan of Cork, as they believed that Cork should get a share of the representation on the Senate of the Royal University, and, further, as the vacancy was caused by the death of the Rev. Dr. Kavanagh, they thought that it was but j ust that another member of the Catholic body should be elected. However, owing to the recent action of the Government in appointing Dr. O’Dyer, the Catholic Bishop of Limerick, a senator of the Royal University in room of the late Dr. Fleming Stevenson, a leading Presbyterian, the coming contest has assumed a new .,phase. The members of the Presbyterian Church consider they had a hereditary right to Dr. Stevenson’s seat, and they urged the Lord-Lieutenant to appoint Dr. Todd-Martin, a very distinguished graduate of the late Queen’s University. As this recommendation has not been attended to, it is feared by many that Professor O’Sullivan may at the eleventh hour lose his expected northern support. THE LAGAN NUISANCE.
At the present time a great deal of discussion is taking place, both in the public press and in private circles, in reference to the Lagan nuisance. This river is always greatly polluted by receiving the abominable Blackstaff, as well as many other sewers, and at certain times of the year, especially ia summer, the smell arising from it is simply intolerable. The Town Council propose building two main sewers, one on each side of the Lagan, which would intercept all the various drains which now open into that river as well as into the Blackstaff, and which are planned to discharge their contents in deep water far beyond the harbour. Further, it is arranged to narrow and deepen the channel of the Lagan and to construct substantial banks. A section of the public are supporting another scheme, which aims at purifying the river by the construction of locks. By this plan the present offensive mud-banks would be placed .permanently under water, thus rendering them innocuous ; an ornamental pond suitable for boating would be formed; and the flow of the Lagan would be used to increase the velocity, dilute, and direct the flow of the Blackstaff and sewers at present discharging above the Albert Bridge, so that the sewage would be carried out to sea and not returned by the flow tide. It is satisfactory to find that public opinion is being aroused to the necessity of having this terrible nuisance abated. THE ROYAL HOSPITAL.
As the financial condition of this charity is again in an unsatisfactory state, it has been suggested that, in commemoration of the Queen’s Jubilee, a sum of money should be subscribed, the interest of which could be devoted to this institution ; and a very energetic member of the board of management writes to the press advising that the hospital should be removed to the place where the old charitable society is at present located. This would be a
house in Belfast on Monday. The discovery was made by another daughter who slept with them, and who was so overcome that she did not awake until twelve o’clock, seven hours after her usual time. On the police being informed, they searched the house, and found a quantity of smouldering cinders in a vessel under the bed. The vapour from this vessel in a small and badly ventilated room is supposed to have suffocated the women, although there is a supposition that the deceased may have been injured by eating tinned meat, which, it is said, constituted the supper. Belfast, Dec. 7th. _________________
PARIS.
(From our own Correspondent.) PROFESSOR
PETER’SINAUGURAL
LECTURE.
I ON Dec. 8th Professor Peter delivered his first lecture on Clinical Medicine at the Hopital Necker before a crowded audience, composed of students and practitioners, selecting " The Clinical Aspect of Contemporary Medical Doctrines" as his subject. Sixty-seven years ago, said the lecturer, a shy, and sickly man, alone in the hospital, without assistants or appliances, made a discovery that was to revolutionise the medical world. The man was Laennec ; the discovery, mediate auscultation. Mediate percussion had been discovered towards the middle of the previous century by Avenbrugger, but it has passed unnoticed except for a curt mention by Stoll and Van Swieten, and remained unknown until the treatise of the Viennese physician was translated and commented on by Corvisart. Corvisart, the pupil of Avenbrugger and Morgagni, was the teacher of Laennec, and bent his mind in the direction of his subsequent inquiries, to which inquiries the medicine of today owes much of its precision. But precision in medicine is only possible for the recognition of the accomplished fact-that is, the physical change in living matter, the lesion and its signs. The morbid act, disease in its evolution, escapes precision; for the act, which is the to become is subordinate to the vitality of the affected organism, dependent upon the forces of the organism, and, like these forces, infimtely variable. Laennec definitely introduced into medicine pathological anatomy and semeiology, and showed the relationship between the symptoms and the lesion. He taught us to be localisers. To take, for example, pneumonia. The old doctrine of febris peri-pneumonica was set aside, and inflammation of the lung is treated as a local disease, of which the accompanying pyrexia is only a symptom. The disease in its pathological anatomy and physical signs is discussed at length, but the patient, as revealed in the general symptoms and the type of the malady, comes in for but scant consideration. From the stethoscope of Laennec have sprung numerous other instruments of precision; and thus we have the opthalmoscope, the laryngoscope, the otoscope, and the microscope, which, together with chemical analysis, enable us to make the necropsy, as it were, of the living body. From precision to prelesion, in the diseased organs we have sought the diseased tissue, and in the tissue the morbid element. It might have been thought that beyond this there was nothing, but this were to reckon without the microbe, the
weak,
occurring in investigation was
that a thorough most desirable change, as there is a grave suspicion that the by the military hospital is placed in anything but a good sanitary situation, .authorities. At last, however, they appear to have awakened and its present size is not adequate to the requirements of from their lethargy, and I am informed that the Com- such a rapidly increasing town as Belfast. During the mander-in-Chief has appointed a commission to investigate present session there are 130 students receiving clinical and report on the subject. Grave doubts have existed for instruction, while last winter there were 162. The appointyears as to the sanitary state of the Royal Barracks, and the ment of a new matron took place on Saturday, when Miss commission, by a thorough overhauling of the sewerage Isbitt (Canterbury) was unanimously chosen out of twentyarrangements, will carry out an investigation, which is six candidates. LISBURN DISPENSARY. urgently required. MUSCULAR ANOMALY. At a meeting of the Committee of the Lisburn Dispensary There is at present in the dissecting-room of the Ledwich district held on Monday, Dr. James Jefferson, the brother of School of Medicine an example of the biceps flexor cubiti the late medical officer of the district, was appointed distaking its origin by three heads instead of two, so that it pensary doctor. The salary of the late Dr. John Jefferson might be designated an anterior triceps. The third head was £100 per annum, but the Lisburn Board of Guardians came off close to the insertion of the lower part of the decided, in view of the present agricultural depression, to coraco-brachialis muscle, on its outer aspect, and passed to reduce the income to .E&0, and at this salary Dr. Jefferson the posterior part of the muscle. Each head was well was elected. DEATH BY SUFFOCATION. defined. This anomaly I believe to be extremely rare. Dublin, Dec. 14th. Two women, mother and daughter, were found dead in a
fever
the latter
institution,
not at once ordered
BELFAST.
(From
our own
THE VACANT SENATORSHIP
Correspondent.)
OF
THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY.
A LARGE number of the northern graduates, who are had agreed to support the candidature of
Presbyterians,
Professor O’Sullivan of Cork, as they believed that Cork should get a share of the representation on the Senate of the Royal University, and, further, as the vacancy was caused by the death of the Rev. Dr. Kavanagh, they thought that it was but j ust that another member of the Catholic body should be elected. However, owing to the recent action of the Government in appointing Dr. O’Dyer, the Catholic Bishop of Limerick, a senator of the Royal University in room of the late Dr. Fleming Stevenson, a leading Presbyterian, the coming contest has assumed a new .,phase. The members of the Presbyterian Church consider they had a hereditary right to Dr. Stevenson’s seat, and they urged the Lord-Lieutenant to appoint Dr. Todd-Martin, a very distinguished graduate of the late Queen’s University. As this recommendation has not been attended to, it is feared by many that Professor O’Sullivan may at the eleventh hour lose his expected northern support. THE LAGAN NUISANCE.
At the present time a great deal of discussion is taking place, both in the public press and in private circles, in reference to the Lagan nuisance. This river is always greatly polluted by receiving the abominable Blackstaff, as well as many other sewers, and at certain times of the year, especially ia summer, the smell arising from it is simply intolerable. The Town Council propose building two main sewers, one on each side of the Lagan, which would intercept all the various drains which now open into that river as well as into the Blackstaff, and which are planned to discharge their contents in deep water far beyond the harbour. Further, it is arranged to narrow and deepen the channel of the Lagan and to construct substantial banks. A section of the public are supporting another scheme, which aims at purifying the river by the construction of locks. By this plan the present offensive mud-banks would be placed .permanently under water, thus rendering them innocuous ; an ornamental pond suitable for boating would be formed; and the flow of the Lagan would be used to increase the velocity, dilute, and direct the flow of the Blackstaff and sewers at present discharging above the Albert Bridge, so that the sewage would be carried out to sea and not returned by the flow tide. It is satisfactory to find that public opinion is being aroused to the necessity of having this terrible nuisance abated. THE ROYAL HOSPITAL.
As the financial condition of this charity is again in an unsatisfactory state, it has been suggested that, in commemoration of the Queen’s Jubilee, a sum of money should be subscribed, the interest of which could be devoted to this institution ; and a very energetic member of the board of management writes to the press advising that the hospital should be removed to the place where the old charitable society is at present located. This would be a
house in Belfast on Monday. The discovery was made by another daughter who slept with them, and who was so overcome that she did not awake until twelve o’clock, seven hours after her usual time. On the police being informed, they searched the house, and found a quantity of smouldering cinders in a vessel under the bed. The vapour from this vessel in a small and badly ventilated room is supposed to have suffocated the women, although there is a supposition that the deceased may have been injured by eating tinned meat, which, it is said, constituted the supper. Belfast, Dec. 7th. _________________
PARIS.
(From our own Correspondent.) PROFESSOR
PETER’SINAUGURAL
LECTURE.
I ON Dec. 8th Professor Peter delivered his first lecture on Clinical Medicine at the Hopital Necker before a crowded audience, composed of students and practitioners, selecting " The Clinical Aspect of Contemporary Medical Doctrines" as his subject. Sixty-seven years ago, said the lecturer, a shy, and sickly man, alone in the hospital, without assistants or appliances, made a discovery that was to revolutionise the medical world. The man was Laennec ; the discovery, mediate auscultation. Mediate percussion had been discovered towards the middle of the previous century by Avenbrugger, but it has passed unnoticed except for a curt mention by Stoll and Van Swieten, and remained unknown until the treatise of the Viennese physician was translated and commented on by Corvisart. Corvisart, the pupil of Avenbrugger and Morgagni, was the teacher of Laennec, and bent his mind in the direction of his subsequent inquiries, to which inquiries the medicine of today owes much of its precision. But precision in medicine is only possible for the recognition of the accomplished fact-that is, the physical change in living matter, the lesion and its signs. The morbid act, disease in its evolution, escapes precision; for the act, which is the to become is subordinate to the vitality of the affected organism, dependent upon the forces of the organism, and, like these forces, infimtely variable. Laennec definitely introduced into medicine pathological anatomy and semeiology, and showed the relationship between the symptoms and the lesion. He taught us to be localisers. To take, for example, pneumonia. The old doctrine of febris peri-pneumonica was set aside, and inflammation of the lung is treated as a local disease, of which the accompanying pyrexia is only a symptom. The disease in its pathological anatomy and physical signs is discussed at length, but the patient, as revealed in the general symptoms and the type of the malady, comes in for but scant consideration. From the stethoscope of Laennec have sprung numerous other instruments of precision; and thus we have the opthalmoscope, the laryngoscope, the otoscope, and the microscope, which, together with chemical analysis, enable us to make the necropsy, as it were, of the living body. From precision to prelesion, in the diseased organs we have sought the diseased tissue, and in the tissue the morbid element. It might have been thought that beyond this there was nothing, but this were to reckon without the microbe, the
weak,