HONOURS TO MEDICAL MEN.

435 chloric acid in the gastric juice, nor did they necessarily interfere with the due digestive power of the latter. It would thus appear that the digestive functions of patients with chronic Bright’s disease need not necesbe very seriously impaired, and, indeed, in many cases they may be affected very slightly, if at all. These researches are instructive, but unfortunately they required constant recourse to the oesophageal tube, which is by no means pleasant for the patients, and may sometimes be fraught with danger; thus, in some of the reported cases the first time the tube was introduced an acute attack of ursemia ensued, a result which should make clinical observers somewhat cautious as to such experiments in cases of nephritis.

sarily

MEDICAL LEGISLATION AT THE CAPE. IN a petition against the final portion of the eighteenth clause of the Medical Bill, twenty-two of the medical practitioners of Cape Town and the suburbs express a very strong protest against the power given to the governor to grant a licence admitting as a medical practitioner any person of whose skill and experience he is satisfied, and who, before the passing of the Act, may have been for twenty years and upwards continuously practising as physician and surgeon in the colony. This is a serious power to entrust to lay hands, and might lead to the admission of many to the profession who would do it no credit and the public no good. There seems no excuse in the circumstances for such an exercise of irregular authority, and it would be unfair to men who have qualified in accordance with a medical Ordinance in existence for sixty years. We hope the proposal will be reconsidered. THE DRINKING-WATER OF FLORENCE. AN Italian correspondent writes :-" Florence was a great auSerer last year by the falling off in the number of the foreign visitors and sojourners, on whom she depends, if not for her livelihood, at least for her prosperity. From Her I Majesty Queen Victoria down to the personally conducted tourist, the expected arrivals held aloof; and some notion of what their absence meant to the Florentines may be inferred from the fact that the receipts at the door of the great picture gallery of the Ufizi were for the season more than 16,000 francs less than for the same period in 1889. The fever epidemic, though never so severe as reported, was still alarming enough to make the outside world uneasy as to the sanitary condition of the city, and the suspicion that fell on the drinking-water, at the best of times below the ideal standard, was confirmed by official examination, which has since proceeded to the next stage of such inquiries, and busied itself in devising means for preventing such deplorable results of municipal shortsightedness in future. A commission charged with the study of the Anderson system of purifying water has for some time been at work, and its conclusions havejust been embodied in an elaborate report now before me. Basing itself on the fact that it will be several years before Florence can provide herself with potable water from sources not yet found, through aqueducts not yet constructed, the commission puts the pertinent question:‘How is the city, with its inhabitants native and foreign, to be supplied with that prime essential in the meantime ’ To this it replies:‘By adopting and vigilantly safeguarding the best system yet devised for purifying the water already available.’ That system it finds in the Andersonian-a system to be rigorously applied so as to make the water not only innocuous, but actively

experiment was accordingly unanimously voted; and should the results prove satisfactory, the apparatus will be forthwith introduced and worked to secure a supply ofaquapotabile’ to Florence, until the greater scheme of bringing in water from entirely new sources by a new system of aqueducts shall have found its consummation. It is impossible not to approve this resolution of the commission. More than other Italian cities, Florence is in financial difficulties-the legacy of that shortlived pre-eminence she had as intermediate capital between Turin and Rome. She is sorely in need of money even for the commonest municipal wants, and has had to cut down her working personnel far below the point at which it can be properly effective. Her postal service, for example, is an unceasing source of vexation ana loss to the English-speaking resident. But necessity has no law, and her present course is her wisest: to do nothing with premature despatch, but to make the best of such means as she possesses for the well-being of her population and for the continued countenance of such visitors as she is even now expecting-Mr. Gladstone in the late autumn, and Her Majesty Queen Victoria in the ensuing spring." HONOURS TO MEDICAL MEN. ON Tuesday the following honours were bestowed on members of the medical profession at a private investiture I held by HerMajesty at Osborne:-TheDirector-General of the Army Medical Department, William Alexander Mackinnon, F. R. C.S.Ed., C. E , received the honour of knighthood, and was invested with the riband and badge of the Order of the Bath of the Second class; on Brigade Surgeon Robert Waters, M.D., and Principal Veterinary Surgeon James Drummond was conferred the Companionship of the same Order; and on Surgeon-Major Thomas Holbein Hendley, L.R.C.P., &e., was conferred the Companionship of the Order of the Indian Empire. -

CONGRESS THE British Pharmaceutical Conference met at Cardiff during the past week under the presidency of Mr. W. Martindale. The President, in his address, referred to the position of the pharmacist in relation to the public and the medical profession. He said: "The advances made in chemical science during the present century, and the experiPHARMACEUTICAL

THE

BRITISH

mental

investigations

of recent physiologists and theratend to peutists, prove that the physiological action on the animal system of the simpler chemical compounds in many cases is a chemical and physical action of the elements of which they are composed, modified to some extent by what constitutes life; and that the elements themselves act somewhat in accordance with what might be expected from their chemical alliances, and the positions they occupy in regard to the periodic law of Mendelejeff. In the more complex organic substances there is also a marked connexion between physiological and chemical constitution." The meetings of the Conference were closed on Wednesday. Edinburgh was selected as the next place of meeting, and Mr. Stanford, a Scotch member, was appointed the president.

ANOTHER FATAL LAMP ACCIDENT. illustration of the danger attending the use of A spirit lamps is afforded by a fatal accident which occurred in Bayswater a few days ago. In this case a lady, while attired in her dressing-gown, was burnt to death by the lamp used to heat her curling tongs. It is difficult to say which among several circumstances is here specially accountable for the unfortunate occurrence. The lamp health-giving, before its distribution for home-consumption. employed, if constructed like others of its class, which are An application to the ’Revolving Purifier Company’ to flat, broad based, and somewhat heavy, was not a par. procure from it the required apparatus with a view to ticularly dangerous one. A loose dressing-gown was cerFRESH