thing, but with the exception of a new view of the disease which is given, we are no further advanced in our practical relations to it."

He then goes on to say that the cholera has for some time been practically treated as though it were caused by a special organism. He also referred to the laxity of the English in the matter of quarantine.Med. Record.

SEWAGE-DISPOSAL IN Canton.—In Canton a population of a million and a half is densely packed in narrow streets with very few open spaces. Miss Isabella Bird, speakin her book, The Golden Chersonese, of the sanitary arrangements of the city, says that every street of the city is paved with large slabs of granite, and that beneath this pavement is a large drain for carrying off rainwater. These drains open into six intercepting culverts which empty into four branches of the river on which the city stands. The local authority of each street is bound by law to cleanse the entire drain of the street, and it is the duty of the grand prefects to cleanse the intercepting culverts every autumn; neither of these authorities, however, discharges his duties in a very satisfactory way, yet Canton, in spite of its dirty drains and overcrowded areas, is on the whole a very healthy city, and serious epidemics are said to be very rare. This result may be attributed, according to Miss Bird, "to the excellent plan of sending out the garbage of the city daily to fertilize the gardens and fields of the neighborhood." This testimony in favor of disposing of the sewage by the dry method, coming as it does from an independent observer, who observed it in a town where the weather is very warm in summer, and where almost every other sanitary principle is violated, appears, at the present moment, to be worthy of serious attention. -Brit. Med. Jour.

DISPOSAL OF REFUSE IN CITIES.-About three years ago the town of Glasgow erected special works for the speedy dispatch of all the refuse collected all over the city. The refuse is made to undergo a process of separation, by which it is made more valuable to the farmers; and also of considerable profit to the town; for by a process of burning chemicals are extracted and sold at a high price. The results have been so satisfactory that the authorities have decided to extend the system; and on June 13 addition

al works, covering an acre, were formally opened. The importance of these refuse despatch works, as well as their necessity, is brought out when it is remembered that in Glasgow are 168 miles of streets to clean and water, and from these seven hundred tons of stuff are gathered daily. To be able rapidly and profitably to dispose of so large an amount of waste material, speaks well for the system which Glasgow has adopted, and which as yet does not seem to have been taken up by any other cities.-British Med. Jour.

DR. WYTHE, in the Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal, March, 1884, says: "The sanitary condition of the great cities of the world to-day is vastly better than of those of the Middle Ages, although very far from what common prudence deems desirable. It is still true that people live longer in rural districts than in cities, yet ever since civilization began to inquire into and regulate public hygiene there has been steady improvement. Statistics may not yet be fully reliable, yet the best we have prove that life has been prolonged by civilization. According to Wagner, 'In the twentieth year of life the probable survival was in the sixteenth century twenty-two years; in this century forty years.' Among children the death-rate depends upon the social position or high civilization of the parents. In England, according to the tables of Mr. Ansell, of 100,000 children born alive 74,000 will live at the end of their fifth year; but among the upper classes, who can afford the appliances of modern life, there will be 87,000, and among the peerage there will be 90,000.Boston Med. and Surg. Journal.

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HINTS FOR HOT WEATHER.. Don't shake the hornets' nest to see if any of the family are at home.

If a draft Sight drafts.

Don't go too near a draft. comes toward you, run away. are the most dangerous. Don't blow in the gun your grandfather carried in the war of 1812. It is more dangerous now than it was then.

Don't hold a wasp by the other end while you thaw it out in front of the stove to see if it is alive. It is generally alive.

Don't try to persuade a bulldog to give up a yard of which he is in possession. Possession to a bull dog is ten points of the law, -Allentown Critic,

Original Articles.

IMBECILITY.

A Paper read before the Lebanon Medical
Society, May 27, 1884,

By S. R. VOORHEES, M.D., Mason, Ohio. Before entering upon the argument of the cause of imbecility I want to state two propositions that occur to me from the last twenty or twenty-five years of observation.

First. An exhausted mental or physical organization can not impart or transmit any great amount of vital action or energy to its offspring.

Second. After birth there are no new or original mental or physical qualifications or faculties added to those which already exist at birth.

Now, assuming these premises to be true, we will inquire if there is any proof to support these propositions.

Take first the mental capacity and intellectual development of the rising generation. We see many children of seemingly very intelligent parents who are greatly de ficient in mental capacity. It is a fact in the history of our country that our best and most influential statesmen come from parents who occupy the more common walks of life, and that the children of those who work their mental faculties to their utmost capacity never develop above the mediocrity of their associates and many of them are imbeciles in mental structure.

The cause is plainly visible according to the first proposition. The statesman, instructor or minister exhausts his mental energy in his profession, so that when he begets offspring it is deficient in that of which he is exhausted. Some minds are so strong and fruitful of thought that it is almost impossible to exhaust them, but this is an exception rather than a general rule. We see children of the same parents that have different inclinations of mind and different degrees of mental and physical attainments.

There must be some cause for this, as every cause is followed by its effect.

Parents, in the course of life, have their minds directed in different channels of thought, and if a child is begotten when their minds are directed in a certain direction or absorbed in some particular subject, and have not pursued that subject so as to exhaust the mind, it is very likely that the

child's mind will be inclined to that same subject and will likely make that subject its occupation in life.

There must be some controlling principle that gives cast to the mind of the child, for the formation of the mental or physical system is not an accidental property in life.

The physical system is controlled by the same law. Where the body is reduced by exhaustion and hard work the child conceived at that time will be deficient in muscular energy. Stock raisers take advantage of this principle, and, in breeding, do not put the horse to hard labor, but only enough to produce healthy exercise and assimilation.

Having resided in this community for over fifty years and my attention being directed to this subject early in life, I have made careful observations on the subject.

In this vicinity it is almost an absolute fact that children seldom follow the occupation of their parents.

As men have faculties for different occupations in life and only one developed, which they follow, that faculty may be so exhausted that his offspring may not have it to any great degree.

We see men who follow some intellectual pursuit in life have children well developed in physical ability, but very weak in mental structure. Some of our best athletes are children of men and women who follow some intellectual pursuit in life, but these children do not generally possess a high degree of mental development.

Some farmers in this community boast of the great amount of work they did in their younger days, working part of the night in clearing their farms and all winter in threshing their grain or preparing their flax for the weaver, have sons and daughters greatly deficient in muscular development but have well developed minds and some are occupying prominent positions in the affairs of the nation.

We, as physicians, know that if the longings of the mother are not satisfied it has an influence on the child when it grows up, and that longing may produce monomania on that subject.

I have inquired of parents if they knew of any cause why a certain child possessed such a peculiar turn of mind, and they often answer that they were constantly thinking on that subject before the child was born.

We see another principle developed in

schools were from the country and were the sons and daughters of mechanics and farmers, showing that the minds of mechanics and farmers are not so severely tasked and impart a higher degree of vitality and mental endurance to their children than professional men.

now eighteen years old, a mute, but very intelligent.

Again, we have another family of twelve or fifteen children, who seldom or ever pass an unkind word to each other. The father says the reason is that he has such an amiable and lovely wife that he can not think of giving her an unkind word or an unpleasant look. This may also account for the number of children they

have.

The children of drunken parents, those who openly drink and confess they are drinkers, generally go to the other extreme and are among the best temperance workers in the community.

It also seems a fact that those persons who carry any business or profession to an extreme their children generally go to the other extreme. The children of the miser are usually spendthrifts. The children of the clergy do not possess that high degree of religious culture that the parents do.

It is a well known fact among instructors that some children possess no inclination for certain studies and that it cannot be taught to them, while other branches are learned with great facility. Take, for illustration, a person who has no taste or faculty for music. That person can never make an accomplished singer. It is said that Hon. Jas. G. Blaine could never learn mathematics successfully, but has a remarkable memory for literature and history. Horatio N. Robinson, the great mathematician, could not compose his ideas of mathematics into an intelligible sentence but employed some one else to do it.

It seems then that the second proposition holds true.

It is a fact in history that fifteen of our twenty-one Presidents were farmers or the sons of farmers. A well known educator informed me a few days since that a ma

PNEUMOTHORAX.

A paper read before the Vanderburg County
Medical Society, July 18, 1884.

By A. M. HAYDEN, M.D., Evansville, Ind. While strictly speaking there is no such thing as a pleural cavity, that name has appropriately been given to the interior of the closed sac formed by the pleura, whose walls, however, in their normal condition are completely collapsed and glide freely over each other with the motions of the viscera, and containing nothing within its interior except serous fluid enough to secure thorough lubrication.

That abnormal substances, either solid, liquid or gaseous, may appear in this sac, and distending it, encroach upon the delicate spongy substance of the lung, needs neither a philosophical nor a pathological demonstration.

These substances may be a perversion of the natural pleural secretion giving rise to pneumothorax, hydrothorax or pyothorax, or a combination of these, or they may appear from without through openings accidentally made.

As the case in question is peculiar only by virtue of the pneumothorax, I shall confine my remarks to that form of pleural trouble.

Notwithstanding that certain authorities contend that under peculiar circumstances the pleura may secrete a gas which would distend the pleural sac, I think there may be no hesitation in saying that when there is gaseous distension of the pleural sac, that there must of necessity be a communication between it and the external atmosphere. It is true that gas might arise from the decomposition of pus within the cavity, but it is extremely doubtful whether pus can undergo decomposition unless subject to atmospheric action.

Hence we may conclude that the pathological condition expressed by pneumothorax supposes a communication between the atmosphere and the pleural cavity. Granting that such an opening exists, as it actu