PARIS.

950 Normal School of Mines, South Kensington, elected Professor of Chemistry at Aberdeen succession to the late Professor Carnelly.

was yesterday r during the ensuing winter and spring; and they beg to University, in invite the governors of the County Infirmary to appoint a,

committee of four of their members to meet a committee of the Council to make arrangements for the carrying out of the above proposal " The governors, after considerable discussion, unanimously adopted the following: "Resolved, IRELAND. that while thanking the President of the Queen’s College his colleagues for their generous proposal, we deem it and OUR OWN (FROM CORRESPONDENTS.) inexpedient to form a committee of governors to confer with the committee of the Council of the Queen’s College on the proposed arrangement in connexion with the reRoyal University of Ireland. A MEETING of Convocation was held on Tuesday, pre. opening of the county infirmary, but we are prepared to sided over by the Right Hon. J. T. Ball. The reportaccept the sum of £500 proposed to be supplied by the of the annual committee referred to the expediency of College Council; that the money be lodged in the joint names of three or more governors for the benefit of the securing to members of the University the privilege of future working of the institution, and that the treatment of and use the museum, and, University library making of patients be continued in the hands of the present surgeon, secondly, the question of University Fellowships. Under the statutes in force up to last year, Fellowships becoming with all reasonable facility afforded to the College staff and vacant by death or resignation in and after 1889 could students." The Materia Medica Chair at Belfast. only be filled up by competitive examination among the As was generally anticipated, Dr. Whitla has been graduates of the University. These statutes, however, have been altered and new statutes substituted, from appointed Professor of Materia Medica in Queen’s College, which the provisions for competition have disappeared. Belfast, in place of Dr. Reid, resigned. Dr. Whitla has The committee considered it undesirable that changes so during his professional life devoted himself specially to the vital to the interests of graduates should be made in the study of materia medica and therapeutics, and his book, statutes of the University without consulting or even which is deservedly popular with students, has run through notifying Convocation, and were of opinion that when any several editions. Dr. Whitla is examiner in Materia Medica alteration of the statutes was contemplated Convocation in Glasgow University and in the Royal University, and was entitled to have an opportunity of exercising the his appointment will be received with much favour by the right of discussing the matter and declaring their old members of the Belfast Medical School, of which he was opinion thereon. They therefore recommended that a a student, and in which he has been for some time a popular deputation be appointed to request the Senate to secure teacher. that in future Convocation shall have an opportunity of Medical Association for Midland Counties, Ireland. discussing proposed statutes before they are submitted to At a meeting of practitioners belonging to the Midland the Crown. This was agreed to, and then Mr. O’Byrne Croke moved seven motions in reference to an obligatory Counties on Wednesday, held at Mullingar Infirmary, it knowledge of Irish history, six of which were adopted. The was resolved to form an association for the protection of the following medical members were elected on the annual medical profession. Among the resolutions adopted was committee: John J. Charles, A. H. Corley, Christopher one that, where charges were proved frivolous, members Gunn, F. T. Heuston, E. J. McWeeney, J. F. O’Carroll, pledged themselves to refrain from accepting employment J. P. Pye, A. J. Smith, and W. Thomson. The Senate had under the Poor-law in districts where such injustice had been perpetrated until reparation had been made to the a meeting the same day, and awarded passes, honours, exhibitions, prizes, scholarships, and studentships as recom- injured medical officer. mended by the Standing Committee. A letter was read Mr. M. Burke Savage has been elected physician for the from the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, Chancellor of the extern department of St. Vincent’s Hospital. University, forwarding a gold medal in fulfilment of a pro- Oct. 28th. mise made last year; and the Senate decided to offer it as a prize for the best essay in English prose, to be open for competition to all graduates of not more than three years’ PARIS. Oct. 28th.

,

,

.

standing.

Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland. During the past session an application was made by the Council of the Pathological Section for the General Council to provide some superior microscopes for the work of that

(FROM

OUR OWN

CORRESPONDENT.)

Hysterical Facial Paralysis. AT a recent meeting of the Medical Society, M. Chantemesse section, and in accordance with the request a sum of £50 has been utilised for the purpose, and these microscopes presented three patients suffering from facial paralysis ownwill be available for the exhibition of specimens in the ing a hysterical origin. He remarked that these cases were various sections. The lecture which was intended to be extremely interesting, for although facial hemispasm was delivered last session by Professor Purser was unavoid- well recognised in hysteria, it was quite otherwise with paralysis, which was rare, and the true existence of ably postponed, but it will be given on Oct. 31st at the facial was, for many observers, sufficient ground for rejectCollege of Physicians. Professor Purser has chosen for which his subject the Modern Diagnosis of Diseases of the ing its hysterical origin. He submitted, however, that after Stomach. The election of office-bearers for the various examining the three examples which he exhibited, the sections will take place on Friday. There will be contests members of the Society would have no hesitation as to their for seats on the Council of the Sections of Medicine, nature. It was nearly always the inferior division of the Surgery, Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, and State facial nerve which was involved, the orbicular division Medicine; but those nominated for the Obstetrical Section being left intact, as is usual in paralysis due to a central will be unopposed. Mr. W. Thomson has given notice of cause. The attack is in general seated indifferently on the the following motion : " That all rules referring to the left or right side, often, however, bilateral, with a predomi. admission of Fellows, Members, and Student Associates nance on one side. The appearance of the patient is shall be interpreted as referring to ladies as well as characteristic, almost pathognomonic. On the affected side the sensibility of the pharynx and the conjunctiva is gentlemen." diminished ; the same applies to the senses of smell, taste, Galway County Infirmary. hearing, and vision. Hysterical zones are, on the contrary, The meeting of the governors to appoint a surgeon fell rare. The is blunted and the memory defective. through, as mentioned last week, for want of a quorum; but The onset intelligence of the attack is usually sudden and the recovery on Saturday a special meeting was held to take into consideration a proposal made by the President of the Queen’s gradual. Dentists and Cocaine. College, Galway, and which had been sanctioned by the Lords Justices previously to being submitted to the governors. It will be recollected that in a recent communication I The resolution passed by the Council of the Queen’s College gave the particulars of a death which occurred in a dentist’s was as follows : " The Council, in the interest of the practice in Lille, and which was attributed to cocaine College and of the public at large, propose to apply funds, poisoning, an injection of this alkaloid having been adnot exceeding ;f,;500, for keeping the County Infirmary open ministered as a local anæsthetic previous to extraction. The

951

circumstances, as I then mentioned, were being investigated by the legal authorities, which resulted in the dentist being indicted before the local tribunal. He was charged, in legal phraseology, with ° homicide by imprudence," but of this the tribunal acquitted him. The judgment sets out that the deceased, who was a young girl, succumbed to an .attack of syncope, that it was not proved that the adminis-

(FROM OUR

BERLIN. CORRESPONDENT.)

OWN

The Cure of Consumption. IT will be remembered as one of the most remarkable tration of a moderate dose of cocaine caused her death, but 4events of the International Medical Congress in Berlin that -that this was more probably brought about by the shock ofProfessor Koch declared that he had discovered a substance the operation itself in a highly nervous and anaemic subject.which brings tuberculosis to a standstill in guinea-pigs. The dentist was, however, fined 15 fr. for practising medi-Since then he has continued his researches, and has tried cine illegally, the Court holding, to use the judge’s words,the remedy on human patients in the Charité, where Pro"that practising on the 8th of August last injectionsfessor Leyden is chief of the department of internal mediof cocaine on the person of the deceased without being pro-cine. These facts give a very special interest and significance vided with a medical degree or diploma was in contraven- to certain words of Professor Leyden at the last sitting of tion of the law of the year XI. on the practice of medicine. the Society for Internal Medicine. He stated, with refeMoreover, that cocaine is an anaesthetic of which the use rence to the establishment of special hospitals for diseases necessitates great prudence, and the employment of which of the lungs in Berlin, that the enterprise had received a as such must therefore be restricted to legally qualified lively impulse from its discussion by the delegates appointed medical men, one of whom a dentist is bound to have pre- by the various societies ; but that, " in view of the decisive and beyond all expectation happy turn which the therasent for the purpose of administering the said anaesthetic." peusis of consumption at present promises to take," it had Asphyxia by Movable Stoves. resolved not to take any practical steps in the matter Hardly have the first few days of wintry weather set in yet. In order to have more time for his researches, Professor when we read of accidents, often fatal, caused by the use Koch will not give his usual course of lectures on hygiene in of movable stoves. In a country where fuel is compara- Berlin University this winter, and his place will be taken tively dear, for reasons of economy they are largely had by his assistant, Dr. Erwin von Esmarch. recourse to by the poorer classes. These accidents were so Instructionfor Army and Navy Doctors. frequent last year that the Academy of Medicine held that The head of the medical department of the Prussian the authorities ought to exercise some supervision over the way in which heating stoves were placed in dwellings, not army has ordered that several doctors of the army and only in the interests of those who use such stoves, but also navy shall attend a course of instruction every autumn in of their neighbours who may not use them, but whose flat the Hygienic Institute in Berlin, in order to inform themin a dwelling may be so situated as to become readily im- selves as to the progress made in hygiene, and especially in pregnated with the noxious fumes from a neighbour’s stove. bacteriology. The said course will last from the middle of A few days ago, in broad daylight, a singular accident October to the end of November, and will be conducted by occurred from the use of these stoves. A workshop, Professor Koch. composed of three rooms, was heated by two stoves. The Empress Frederick’s Seaside Hone. In the establishment were seated nine workgirls, when, 240 The beds of the Empress Frederick’s Seaside Home without any warning, the whole nine suddenly became unconscious and fell to the ground. Luckily they were dis- in the little island of Norderney were constantly occupied covered almost immediately and a medical man summoned, during last summer, and 150 applications had to be refused. eighty children in the Home, and the who, being apprised as to the nature of the accident, brought There are still about state of their health is a new proof of the satisfactory with him a few bags of oxygen which he lost no time in very effect of the Norderney air in autumn. specially salutary with the that he and result succeeded in administering, Home remains open in winter, and very satisfactory rescuing them from the grasp of death. In to-day’s paper I The were obtained last winter in cases of scrofula and results read of another accident, this time a fatal one, from the same various diseases of the chest. The maintenance of each this instance the victim in a much. esteemed cause, being curate of one of the Paris churches, who was yesterday child costs ten marks-i.e., shillings-a week, and fifteen found suffocated in his bed. The stove was placed in a are charged for the better-off. In doing honour to the International Medical Congress dining-room, which led into a studio, and thence into his bedlast August the Berlin municipality spent about 80,000 room beyond, all the intervening doors being left wide open, with the idea that heating and ventilation would thus be marks (nearly £4000). insured at the same time. Berlin, Oct. 28th.

been

Prosecutions for Illegal Practice. France, as elsewhere, quacks of all kinds Although abound, prosecutions for the illegal practice of medicine are much more frequent than with you. At a Paris police-court yesterday one of these gentry, whose record is a curious one, had his career cut short, at least for a time. The prisoner, for such he was made, gained his living during the Exhibition by hawking tickets of admission, then he was a messenger, and next a waiter, at a resort much frequented by medical students. Here he began and completed his clinical training, obtained what smattering he could of medical terms, and the names of some drugs in common use. Finding himself in difficulties some time later, he hit upon the idea of passing himself off as a physician. He even went the length of assuming the title of a professor at the faculty of medicine, which faculty was not very clear, and thus, so easily are the public duped in matters medical, obtained a few patients. He had three prescriptions of a sufficiently harmless character which he administered indiscriminately. His daring did not stop here, however; he next procured some note paper in

(FROM

CANADA. CORRESPONDENT.)

OUR OWN

British Practitioners in Ontario. THE statements referring to practitioners in Ontario con. tained in a previous letter accurately described the conditions as they existed befere June 1st, 1887, the day named for registration in the British Medical Act of 1886, but the Council of the College of Physicians of Ontario hold that the words in Clause 6 of that Act, "subject to any local law," brought into force the following clause in the Ontario Medical Act-viz., "That it shall be optional for the Council to admit to registration all such persons as are duly registered in the Medical Register of Great Britain, or are otherwise authorised to practise medicine, surgery, and midwifery in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, upon such terms as the Council may deem expedient. 37 V., c. 30, s. 22 (1)." Some doubt having existed regarding the power of the Council to exact examiwith the stamp of the Prefecture of Police, and wrote a nation from a registered British practitioner under the letter purporting to come from the Prefect recommending above clause all applicants from Britain were reluctantly the "professor"to a wealthy lady, who suspected the registered. But now, if the applicant’s certificate of British imposture and caused him to be arrested. In court he registration is dated before June 30th, 1887, he is granted Blade no attempt to deny all this but begged for mercy, to the privilege of practising in Ontario upon the payment of which the magistrate responded by sentencing him to the fee of$25, and the gentleman (or lady) with a certificate thirteen months’ imprisonment and a fine of £20. of a later date must pay the fee of$100, and pass the final Paris, Oct. 28th. examination. One of the evils of our system of provincial