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and good sense of their fellow countrymen. As regardsthe work itself, this is fairly well understood from theterms of the Act, which we have repeatedly discussedin former issues. Among other points worth notingis the conviction expressed in this report and foundedon experience, that cruelty can be put down by suchefl’orts as those put forth by the Society. The offender,once convicted and punished, is less ready to transgress infuture. Conviction, however, though successful in a verylarge proportion-88 per cent. of the cases taken into court-is not desired where it can with any degree of safety bedispensed with. Happily, it is enough as a rule to warndefaulting guardians in order to ensure their betterbehaviour. This fact in itself should help to confirm

public confidence in the motives and methods applied bythe oflicers of the Society. There are likewise othermatters connected with the farming of nurse children andthe system of infant insurance which have occupied theparticular attention of the committee. With regard to these,their propositions are very reasonable. Of such and manymore details of interest contained in this report we cannotnow speak at length, but a full statement on the subjectwill be found within its pages, and is worthy of more thana cursory survey. -

BUCOLIC ESTIMATE OF THE VALUE OFPUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES.

IT is interesting to observe the view which some localsanitary authorities entertain as to the desirability of makingthe services of the county medical officer of health availablein their districts in accordance with the provisions of theLocal Government Act. The Pershore Rural SanitaryAuthority recently discussed this question, and came to theconclusion that it was better to reappoint their own officers,a member explaining that if they did not do so " they wouldbe playing into the hands of the County Council." Judgedby the report of a local journal, not a single word was saidas to the relative efficiency of one or the other arrangement.The chief question discussed was as to whether they couldnot appoint their officers at less salary than they hadpreviously received. The chairman maintained that thesalaries should be continued as before, at an annual stipend,which it is worth recording was £20 for each district. Atthe next meeting, therefore, the board were to discusswhether this sum should be given, or whether £15 was not

adequate remuneration. Apparently the thought did notenter the minds of the guardians that this might be the bestway of playing into the hands of the County Council. It is

by such circumstances that the need for the District CouncilBill will be made apparent to all.

HEREDITARY CHOREA IN ADULTS.

DR. BERNATSKi reports in a Polish medical journal acase occurring in the Warsaw University Clinic of theso-called " fluntington’s chorea," or chronic hereditarySt. Vitus’s dance in adults. According to the accounts of itgiven in medical literature, it is an extremely rare affec-tion, appearing in adults and being complicated with mentaldisturbance. It is hereditary, whole families being affectedby it. Irregular incoordinate movements appear first in thefacial muscles, and afterward.3 spread to those of the upperextremities and of the trunk. These movements becomearrested or diminished during voluntary movements, thisconstituting, according to Landois, a pathognomonicsymptom distinguishing the affection from St. Vitus’sdance as described by Sydenham. The majority ofauthors who mention the disease describe it as incurable.Dr. Bernatski’s patient was a man of forty-eight yearsof age, a shoemaker by trade, who, when admitted, hadbeen suffering from choreic movements for five years.

His mother and his maternal grandfather had been similarlyaffected. The movements occurred in the head, face, theupper extremities, and in the trunk. At first bromide of

potassium was prescribed to the amount of sixty-two grainsper diem. This, however, was quite useless, the movementscontinuing as before. Liquor arsenicalis--that is, of coursethe Russian one, which is stronger than that in the BritishPharmacopoeia, in the ratio of 6 to 5-was then ordered;six drops per diem were given at first, being graduallyincreased until ten drops daily were taken. After four daysof this treatment there was some perceptible improvement,and by the eleventh or twelfth day the involuntary move-ments had very nearly ceased, the fingers only showingsigns of them. It would, therefore, appear that arsenic isindicated in this disease, and affords some hope of cure.The patient referred to left the hospital and was not seenagain.

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TYPHOID FEVER AT MILAN.

THE laudable endeavours of the municipality of Milan to.make the sanitary record of the city commensurate withits position as the richest and most interprising of Italianir dustrial centres have again broken down-this time in thepopulous quarter of the Porta di Genova. Typhoid fever hasdeclared itself in that neighbourhood with a severity farexceeding its normal limit, the cases being much in excessof the chronically high average. Sewage-polluted water hasalready, in the opinion of the medical authorities, been tracedas the local cause of the outbreak, and energetic measuresare being enforced to remedy the evil at its source. Milan,with its growing population, must have some purer

water-supply than that of wells sunk in the outsoil ofthe plain in which it stands. Why not accede to thewish expressed by the most enlightened of its citizens,and seconded by the ablest of its sanitary engineers,and make an aqueduct between the city and the adjacentAlps, so as to bring water in purity and abundance from asource in every sense above suspicion? Under the ancientRoman regime such an undertaking would have been carriedout with military despatch and efficiency, and in modernItaly similar enterprises have once and again been success-fully brought to completion. Milan owes it to itself, as the

’ leading commercial city in the peninsula, and as a great

’

entrepôt of the travelling world, to make its hygienic’

apparatus equal, if not superior, to that of its less affluent’

I neighbours. ___

THE EFFECT OF SENSORY AND PSYCHICALSTIMULATION ON THE TEMPERATUREOF THE CEREBRAL HEMISPHERES.

SOME very interesting experiments on this subject haverecently been made, in the laboratory of Professor Schiff, byM. Dorta, a full account of which he has recently published.He first of all points out the fallacies which beset themethods employed by Corso, Musso, Tanzi, and Lombard,who estimated the temperature by placing their instrumentsin contact with either the scalp or the pia mater. Dorta,following the method employed by Schiff in 1870, passedone couple of a thermo-electric apparatus into the substanceof one cerebral hemisphere at about its middle point, whilethe other was placed in the middle ear. In the thermo-electric circuit was placed a very delicate galvanometer.The effects of the anaesthetic having been allowed to

pass off, the position of the needle was carefully noted.The sensory stimuli employed were all mechanical,such as pinching the skin and nostrils, touching the

conjunctiva, and so on. In all cases such stimulation wasfollowed by a deflection of the galvanometer, indicating arise of temperature in the brain substance. A point ofgreat interest which the author observed was that, at all