THE HUXLEY LECTURE.

1742 to contain on analysis not only nickel but and the green wax contained both those metals copper, also. We have not the slightest doubt, therefore, that the bullets in the first instance were steeped in melted paraffin wax or wax candles solely to prevent fouling of the gun-barrel and to protect the nickel case against rusting, to which this metal is particularly liable, and that after a time both the copper and nickel of the case of the bullet entered into combination with the stearic acid (which is commonly added to it green. The wax candles) in the wax and turned same phenomenon is familiar to everybody in the green tears of a wax candle in a brass candlestick. It has been suggested that the colouring was of arsenical origin, but we failed to find the slightest trace of arsenic. The fact that the wax on the bullets contained precisely the same metals as were present in the case entirely sweeps away the suspicion that the Boers entertained a malicious intention and expressly coated their Mauser bullets with poisonous copper salts. This should be stated with some emphasis in order that our enemy may be treated with common fairness. Further, it is doubtful whether the bullet would carry the smallest amount of this green wax coating (considering its comparatively low melting point) to its billet. The metals only existed in traces. Many erroneous and contradictory statements have been made in regard to this matter and we are glad to be able to present such a satisfactory and, as we believe, perfectly true interpretation of the facts as revealed by analysis, which hitherto does not appear to have been carried out at that length or with that precision which the serious nature of the suspicion demanded. case

proved

Crichton Browne, treasurer and vice-president, being in the chair, the following motion was unanimously agreed to :The managers of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on the occasion of the retirement of Sir Frederick Bramwell from the office of honorary secretary, desire to place on permanent record an expression of their high appreciation of the admirable way in which he has performed the duties of that office and of his signal services to the institution generally. -

Ingleby Lectures of the Mason University College, Birmingham, will be delivered on Wednesday, June 27th and July 4th, at four P.3i., in the medical lecture theatre of the College, by Dr. 0. J. Kauffmann, who has taken for his subject " The Commoner Neuroses of Childhood, their Pathology and Treatment." THE

Staff Surgeon Henry Peacock (retired R.N.) died on June5th in his eighty-eighth year. He qualified in 1837 and in 1839 entered the Royal Navy. Subsequently he was appointed medical officer to the Dockyard at Chatham and staff surgeon to the Royal Dockyard Battalion. A REUTER’S telegram states that Dr. J. Farrell Easmon of Cape Coast, West Africa, died from pneumonia on June 9th.

THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.

chronicle for the past week is of a mixed but, whole, of a very satisfactory character. It is nevertheless disappointing to learn at this stage of the campaign, and despite all the experience which our army has had of the tactics of the enemy that we still appear THE HUXLEY LECTURE. to be unable to prevent isolated bodies of troops and from being surprised, surrounded, and de. detachments As will be seen by a reference to our advertisement feated by superior numbers of the enemy. The defeat columns Lord Lister has consented to deliver the third and capture of the Sherwood Foresters’ (4th Derbyshires) Huxley Lecture at Charing Cross Hospital on October 2nd. Militia at Roodeval was a regrettable business, notwithThe lectureship was founded upon the death of Professor standing that it can have no real influence on the course of campaign. The direct result of the wrecking of some Huxley out of a sum raised by the medical school of the miles of railway by the Boers and the consequent interrupand Cross various in comfriends Charing Hospital tion of Lord Roberts’s line of communication cutting him off memoration of Huxley having received his medical from his base at Cape Town put a temporary check on his education at Charing Cross Hospital, and the subject military operations. These occurrences indicate that the spirit appointed was that of Recent Advances in Science and activity of the Transvaalers and Free Staters are factors and their Bearing upon Medicine and Sargery. The first which have still to be taken into account. Nevertheless, the lecture was delivered by Professor Michael Foster in 1896 with the occupation of the enemy’s capitals, with successes we have obtained in capturing Botha’s Pass and and the second in 1898, the lecture being biennial, by Almond’s Nek by Buller’s troops, and the news from the Professor Virchow. Lord Lister is a worthy follower of his Western side and elsewhere, taken in connexion with the two distinguished predecessors and his selection as lecturer overwhelming forces at our disposal, we may confidently in the present year is all the more fitting on account of our assert that the enemy’s back is broken. The Boer forces may strike a furtive blow here and there, successcountry being at war. The extraordinary and unpreceattack different points and intercept Lord Roberts’s fully dented success which the Royal Army Medical Corps has lines of communication from time to time, and long attained in the treatment of the wounded is due in very by making occasional raids and then skilfully retreating large measure to Lord Lister’s world-renowned researches cause the war to drag on, but these efforts must inevitably only prove futile in the end. How soon that end may now upon asepticism and its results. come no one can tell, for just at the moment of our writing the welcome telegraphic news has arrived of THE Helen Prideaux Memorial Scholarship, value 50, Lord Roberts’s successful attack on Botha’s force, and will be awarded in July, 1900, to a graduate of the London of the defeat and complete rout of De Wet by Lord Methuen’s The most unsatisfactory part of the (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women. business hastroops. hitherto been the way in which the Boers Candidates must be registered medical women of not more have usually succeeded in retreating without loss of their than three years’ standing on June lst, 1900, and must send guns and convoys or any material loss to themselves. in to the trustees, under cover to the secretary, an essay on The British have rarely succeeded in "cornering" We hope that The them so as to compel their surrender. some medical subject, on or before July 15th, 1900. is true what a telegram from Pretoria, dated June 5th, it subject chosen by each candidate may be connected with says-namely, that 150 officers and 3500 men whom the any department of medical or surgical practice. In estimat- Boers held as prisoners had been released. The Boers ing the relative value of the essays the trustees will attach had intended to take all the British prisoners with special value to the evidence afforded of clinical work and of them on evacuating Pretoria, but were frustrated by the arrival of the British invading force. Mr. Eruger neverdirect and personal experience. theless succeeded in taking away about 900 with him as hostages in his retreat towards the East. The casualties AT a general monthly meeting of the members of the in the Sherwood Foresters’ Militia at Roodeval were S6 Royal Institution held on Monday, June llth, Sir James killed and 104 wounded, and the news of the disaster THE the

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