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INHERITANCE OF TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS.
538 may have vested, it would certainly have been much more satisfactory if the fact of suicidal poisoning by a certain drug had been clearly demonstrated. A
"HOUSE
EPIDEMIC" OF PNEUMONIA IN SWEDEN. Dn. FR. RUDBERG gives a brief account in the Eina of an epidemic of pneumonia occurring at the end of last year in a workmen’s barrack at Sandarne, near Söderhamm, in Sweden, where there are five of these barracks situated in a row at a distance of a couple of hundred feet from one another on a piece of sandy soil near a pine wood. The epidemic was confined to one of these barracks, there only being a single case in the remaining four at the same time, and very few in the surrounding districts. This building was constructed of wood, and had sixteen rooms arranged in
stories, there being
a common porch to every two Each room was occupied by a separate family. The total number of inhabitants was seventy-eight, of whom forty-seven were over fifteen years, and thirty-one under that age. The first case occurred on November 16th, in a boy of eight; subsequent cases occurred on November 27th and December 4th, 7th, llth, 14th, 16th, 19th, and 20th. Of these there were four males and five females, one boy and one girl being under ten, but all the rest between twenty and forty. Six cases occurred in the lower story, and three in the upper. The disease appeared to have no tendency to pass from one room to the adjoining one, or even to another room on the same story; and in no case was more than one inmate of a room affected; but one woman living at a distance, who occasionally visited some of those who had the disease, was attacked by it herself on December 14th. It should be stated that there was plenty of intercommunication among the families. The writer does not mention any of the clinical characters of the epidemic.
two
rooms.
THE GERMAN IMPERIAL BOARD OF HEALTH.
quality in one parent is checked by some opposing quality in the other. This conclusion discourages the extravagant expectations of gifted parents that their and valuable
children will inherit all their powers, and it no less discountenances extravagant fears that they will inherit all their weaknesses and diseases. Captain Galton holds that the number of individuals in a population who differ little from mediocrity is so preponderant, that it is more frequently the case that an exceptional man is the somewhat exceptional son of rather mediocre parents than the average son of very exceptional parents.
THE DANGERS OF THE THAMES. THE dangers of Thames navigation and the perils of locks and weirs are too well known to call for more than passing notice at our hands; but we are glad to find that the gallant rescue of a lady from drowning by Mr. Henry S. Wellcome last week has once more directed attention to the subject. It appears that the boat or canoe in which the lady was seated, in endeavouring to pass through Boulter’s Lock, was suddenly overturned and sucked down by the inrush of water. Mr. Wellcome, seeing that the position was one of imminent peril, at once dived, and, after some three or four unsuccessful attempts, succeeded in reaching the lady and bringing her to the surface. The danger, however, was not over, for he found himself whirled with irresistible force by the inrush of water to the other end of the lock; and it was only by the exhibition of the greatest coolness and presence of mind that he was enabled to prevent his charge from being torn from his grasp and dashed against the projecting sides. The position was seen to be a most critical one, and some time elapsed before the rescuer succeeded in reaching a pole which was thrown down to him by the lock people, and by means of which he ultimately conveyed his burden to a place of safety. Coolness and presence of mind are all-important in an emergency of this kind. We trust the Royal Humane Society, with its usual discrimination, will think fit to mark in a suitable manner its appreciation of Mr. Wellcome’s intrepid conduct.
As we intimated a few months ago, the publications of the Imperial Board of Health of Germany now take place on a new system. Every week there is issued a journal SMALL-POX AT ZURICH. containing sanitary information and news, whilst from time to time there are to be published in supplementary quartos THis cosmopolitan Swiss town deserves all the praise just the scientific memoirs which represent the laboratory work lavished on it by Sir Lyon Playfair as an educational centre, of the institution. Hitherto these have appeared in com- but it must be more attentive to its hygiene if it is to retain pleted volumes at intervals of about two years. There is the attractions it has hitherto had for English-speaking now before us the first instalment of the new issue youths. Last year it was severely visited by typhoid-the (" Arbeiten aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsumte," Erster result, among other causes, of deepening the lake and leaving Band, Erstes und Zweites Heft. Preis 6m.) It contains the upturned filth to fester on its banks. And now the (1) a report upon the Condition of the Berlin Water-supply, Children’s Hospital at Hottingen (in the educational quarter) edited by Dr. G. Wolffhiigel; (2) Methods of Milk Analysis; has had to be closed by the district medical officers from a (3 and 4) Experimental Researches &c. on Swine Fever and fatal outbreak of small-pox, supposed to have been brought Preventive Inoculation, by Drs. Loeffler and Schiitz; and into the institution by a child suffering from varicella. (5) the Vaccination Statistics for Germany for 1882. Unfortunately the first cases occurring in the house were also regarded as due to varicella, and so their isolation was not so strictly enforced as is usual in variola proper. Hence INHERITANCE OF TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS. it was that in the last week of August and the first week of THE address of the President of the Section of Anthro- September the disease spread to a dozen of the inmates-ten pology, at the meeting of the British Association at children and two nurses. In the cases of these two adults Aberdeen, was one of the most interesting of the year. and of two of the children the malady ran a mild course: The stability and instability of types is held to be governed but with the rest it assumed a very grave form, and caused by a law of hereditary transmission. Captain Galton has six deaths; while the remaining two cases, though now made this subject his own, and for some years has devoted quite convalescent, were at one time alarmingly ill. The himself to the investigation of hereditary stature. He has epidemic, the leading local journal assures us, may now be compared the heights of some nine hundred adult children regarded as at an end. We hope so: but the same authority with their respective parents, two hundred in number, and tells us that of the children attacked not one had been he finds that there is a mid-parentage, the mean of their vaccinated; while, it somewhat superfluously adds, the respective heights above and below which the respective other inmates of the institution, who had been made variolaheights of the offspring average evenly. In the same way, proof, escaped without blemish and without spot. This fact he holds that the hereditary transmission of any rare it properly regards as yet another rebuke to the anti-
"HOUSE
EPIDEMIC" OF PNEUMONIA IN SWEDEN. Dn. FR. RUDBERG gives a brief account in the Eina of an epidemic of pneumonia occurring at the end of last year in a workmen’s barrack at Sandarne, near Söderhamm, in Sweden, where there are five of these barracks situated in a row at a distance of a couple of hundred feet from one another on a piece of sandy soil near a pine wood. The epidemic was confined to one of these barracks, there only being a single case in the remaining four at the same time, and very few in the surrounding districts. This building was constructed of wood, and had sixteen rooms arranged in
stories, there being
a common porch to every two Each room was occupied by a separate family. The total number of inhabitants was seventy-eight, of whom forty-seven were over fifteen years, and thirty-one under that age. The first case occurred on November 16th, in a boy of eight; subsequent cases occurred on November 27th and December 4th, 7th, llth, 14th, 16th, 19th, and 20th. Of these there were four males and five females, one boy and one girl being under ten, but all the rest between twenty and forty. Six cases occurred in the lower story, and three in the upper. The disease appeared to have no tendency to pass from one room to the adjoining one, or even to another room on the same story; and in no case was more than one inmate of a room affected; but one woman living at a distance, who occasionally visited some of those who had the disease, was attacked by it herself on December 14th. It should be stated that there was plenty of intercommunication among the families. The writer does not mention any of the clinical characters of the epidemic.
two
rooms.
THE GERMAN IMPERIAL BOARD OF HEALTH.
quality in one parent is checked by some opposing quality in the other. This conclusion discourages the extravagant expectations of gifted parents that their and valuable
children will inherit all their powers, and it no less discountenances extravagant fears that they will inherit all their weaknesses and diseases. Captain Galton holds that the number of individuals in a population who differ little from mediocrity is so preponderant, that it is more frequently the case that an exceptional man is the somewhat exceptional son of rather mediocre parents than the average son of very exceptional parents.
THE DANGERS OF THE THAMES. THE dangers of Thames navigation and the perils of locks and weirs are too well known to call for more than passing notice at our hands; but we are glad to find that the gallant rescue of a lady from drowning by Mr. Henry S. Wellcome last week has once more directed attention to the subject. It appears that the boat or canoe in which the lady was seated, in endeavouring to pass through Boulter’s Lock, was suddenly overturned and sucked down by the inrush of water. Mr. Wellcome, seeing that the position was one of imminent peril, at once dived, and, after some three or four unsuccessful attempts, succeeded in reaching the lady and bringing her to the surface. The danger, however, was not over, for he found himself whirled with irresistible force by the inrush of water to the other end of the lock; and it was only by the exhibition of the greatest coolness and presence of mind that he was enabled to prevent his charge from being torn from his grasp and dashed against the projecting sides. The position was seen to be a most critical one, and some time elapsed before the rescuer succeeded in reaching a pole which was thrown down to him by the lock people, and by means of which he ultimately conveyed his burden to a place of safety. Coolness and presence of mind are all-important in an emergency of this kind. We trust the Royal Humane Society, with its usual discrimination, will think fit to mark in a suitable manner its appreciation of Mr. Wellcome’s intrepid conduct.
As we intimated a few months ago, the publications of the Imperial Board of Health of Germany now take place on a new system. Every week there is issued a journal SMALL-POX AT ZURICH. containing sanitary information and news, whilst from time to time there are to be published in supplementary quartos THis cosmopolitan Swiss town deserves all the praise just the scientific memoirs which represent the laboratory work lavished on it by Sir Lyon Playfair as an educational centre, of the institution. Hitherto these have appeared in com- but it must be more attentive to its hygiene if it is to retain pleted volumes at intervals of about two years. There is the attractions it has hitherto had for English-speaking now before us the first instalment of the new issue youths. Last year it was severely visited by typhoid-the (" Arbeiten aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsumte," Erster result, among other causes, of deepening the lake and leaving Band, Erstes und Zweites Heft. Preis 6m.) It contains the upturned filth to fester on its banks. And now the (1) a report upon the Condition of the Berlin Water-supply, Children’s Hospital at Hottingen (in the educational quarter) edited by Dr. G. Wolffhiigel; (2) Methods of Milk Analysis; has had to be closed by the district medical officers from a (3 and 4) Experimental Researches &c. on Swine Fever and fatal outbreak of small-pox, supposed to have been brought Preventive Inoculation, by Drs. Loeffler and Schiitz; and into the institution by a child suffering from varicella. (5) the Vaccination Statistics for Germany for 1882. Unfortunately the first cases occurring in the house were also regarded as due to varicella, and so their isolation was not so strictly enforced as is usual in variola proper. Hence INHERITANCE OF TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS. it was that in the last week of August and the first week of THE address of the President of the Section of Anthro- September the disease spread to a dozen of the inmates-ten pology, at the meeting of the British Association at children and two nurses. In the cases of these two adults Aberdeen, was one of the most interesting of the year. and of two of the children the malady ran a mild course: The stability and instability of types is held to be governed but with the rest it assumed a very grave form, and caused by a law of hereditary transmission. Captain Galton has six deaths; while the remaining two cases, though now made this subject his own, and for some years has devoted quite convalescent, were at one time alarmingly ill. The himself to the investigation of hereditary stature. He has epidemic, the leading local journal assures us, may now be compared the heights of some nine hundred adult children regarded as at an end. We hope so: but the same authority with their respective parents, two hundred in number, and tells us that of the children attacked not one had been he finds that there is a mid-parentage, the mean of their vaccinated; while, it somewhat superfluously adds, the respective heights above and below which the respective other inmates of the institution, who had been made variolaheights of the offspring average evenly. In the same way, proof, escaped without blemish and without spot. This fact he holds that the hereditary transmission of any rare it properly regards as yet another rebuke to the anti-