THE RECENT STATE TRIAL IN ITALY.

734 va.llI.Bless and the results of Jsurgical interference are very Alta Corte (the supreme court of the Upper Chamber). The good. The exactoperation will vary with the condition instant that became known Nasi emerged from his concealpresent. To sum up, Dr. Torok claims that in addition to ment and in a telegram dated from Bologna announced his cases with perforation or with stenosis of the pylorus all speedy intervention in Parliament, when the decision of the Court of Cassation was to be discussed and thereafter cases of gastric ulcer in which medical treatment fails to cure or which relapse frequently or in which the haemorrhage the reference of the case to the Alta Corte. On the 28th Nasi appeared and spoke in his own defence beforeis weakening the patient should be treated by operation. a crowded assembly which remained cold and unconvinced. He had barely withdrawn when the House appointed THE RECENT STATE TRIAL IN ITALY. three commissioners to prosecute him before the Alta " INTERESTS, professional and educational, social and Corte, and in due course he was arrested and imprisoned political, even medical and psychological," writes an Italian but was allowed, on grounds of health, to be transferred to correspondent, ’’ combined to make the trial of Signor his own house where he remained under custody till the trial Nunzio Nasi, ex-Minister of Public Instruction, one of the which closed with the sentence above referred to on the most remarkable that ever engaged a Parliamentary tribunal. That sentence, by the press and the public, 24th ult. Here was a man of rare endowments and accomplishments in Sicily, where insular chau1,inisme maintains the except who, from humble beginnings, had fought his way upward innocence of its representative in defiance of the evidence, in political life till he not only was twice a Minister of has been generally approved-the attempt to make the State but was even placed in the running for the Premiership offender out asI irresponsible’ from megalomania having itself. The poet Gray in hisOde on a Distant Prospect of in spite of authoritative pleading, backed by high Eton College,’ forecasting the several careers of the happy failed, medical names, including those of Mosso and De Giovanni. boys I disporting on the margent green’ of the Thames, has His chief counsel, the Avvocato Mur ttori, showed great anticipated the thought of many a compatriot of Nunzio skill and resource as well as rhetorical address in legal Nasi who has witnessed the rocket-like ascent of the exminimising the extent of his guilt, and to him, indeed, Minister, his sudden outburst into radiance, and his speedy it is commonly believed to be due that the sentence fall to the ground:is not more severe. But to all who know the conAmbition this shall tempt to rise, urban rural of dition and Then whirl the wretch from high, Italy in the matter of educaTo bitter scorn a sacrifice, tion-the lanalfabetismo’ (inability to read or write) of And grinning infamy!’ more than a third of the population-to say nothing For the sentence itself-of a period of imprisonment, of a of the universities struggling with impecuniosity and fine, of the payment of the expenses of a long and far- clinical and research work literally starved-the malversareaching trial, with deprivation of the honours, titular and tion to political purposes and personal ambition of the other, bestowed by king and court; worst of all, exclusion, all too scanty fund reserved by the State for public -for a term of years, from intervention in official life-is but instruction seems a misdemeanour, indeed a crime, of the light when compared with the exposure of practices too gravest magnitude. One good result of the trial will be the sinister to ’live down,’ too crushing in their ensemble to thorough purification of the Minerva (Education Office) and .admit of their author’s rehabilitation. The story, tragic in the consequent cessation of abuses which have made its itself and replete with dramatic incident, is soon told, though administration a byword throughout Italy. Indeed, a Bill we have to go back four years to find its beginning. framed with that object has just been submitted to ParliaFrom the January of 1904, at which time Signor Nasi, ment by one of the Florentine Members and appropriately representing Trapani in Parliament, was installed as emanates from a city which, as the centre of Italian culture, Minister of Public Instruction at the Minerva (Education is peculiarly interested in redeeming united Italy from the Office) in Rome, rumours began to get abroad of abuses charge of educational inefficiency so long and so justifiably practised there-abuses taking the form of favouritism brought against her." In the and bribes, euphemistically called ’subsidies.’ February of that year certain Members of Parliament interTHE KEEPING PROPERTIES AND DOSAGE OF pellated the President as to these abuses and demanded LIQUID EXTRACT OF ERGOT. the production of documents relating to Nasi’s tenure of office. Placed on his defence Nasi was able to impress the IN the P7tarniaoeutical Journal of Jan. 25th Dr. J. Gordon House favourably, thanks to his skill as a special pleader and Sharp makes a practical and useful contribution to our the witchery of his address ; but still the investigation was knowledge of the keeping properties of liquid extract of proceeded with and by March 22nd the investigating body ergot. He purchased a quantity of the preparation with the (the Giunta di Bilancio) gave forth an opinion of his conduct object of trying to discover how long it would retain its which brought him again before the House which appointed activity. A one-ounce bottle was filled from the stock a committee of five to sift the matter to the bottom. On the bottle from time to time and no attempt was made to 31st a sensation was caused by the flight of Signor Lombardo, protect the contents from light or air. The preparation Nasi’s secretary, for whose arrest an order was issued, and was administered by the mouth in 30-minim doses which, from that day the ex-Minister appeared to all a doomed in Dr. Sharp’s experience, should produce the full pharmaOn May 5th the committee made its report-a cological action of the drug within 20 minutes. man. The - terrible indictment-and the House authorised the public trials extended over a period of 12 months, at the end of prosecutor to proceed. On the 6th Nasi fled, no one which the fluid extract was found to be perfectly active, knew whither, and for the next three years the press a dose of 30 minims producing a contraction of the uterine and the political world were agitated by controversy muscle six minutes after it was given, this effect being still as to his guilt between those of his friends who remained well marked 15 minutes after administration. As a result loyal to him and the advocates of moral purity in high of these trials Dr. Sharp considers that a well-prepared places. Meanwhile, thequestion of competence’ had been liquid extract of sound ergot will remain active for a year submitted to the Court of Cassation, which on June llth, or for as long as the preparation can reasonably be expected The paper contains interesting remarks on the 1907, declared the ordinary tribunals to have nojurisdiction to keep. in the case-a decision much commented on at the time. dose of ergot. Some physicians give half a fluid ounce On the 16th the leader of the Extreme Left in Parliament of the liquid extract, repeating the dose within an hour, Such carried a motion that the matter should be deferred to the ften without producing the desired contraction. --