659OVER-PRESSURE IN SCHOOLS.

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CONGRESS.PHYSIOLOGICAL SECTION.

Cheyne-Stokes’ Breathing.PROFESSOR Mosso (Turin) has constructed an apparatus

for registering respiratory movements in the healthy subject.This consists of a respirator applied over the mouth andnose connected with a delicate gasometer, and which can beworn by many persons during sleep without producing muchinconvenience. An examination of the tracings which canbe obtained showed a rhythmic variation of the same

character as those seen in Cheyne-Stokes’ respiration.These consisted of rhythmic variations, both in time and in

quantity of air respired. Professor Mosso maintained thatthis condition, about which so much had been written, wasa normal one, and could not be considered a pathologicalphenomenon at all. I.Professor HAYCRAFT remarked that the experiment was

not conducted under normal conditions, and that the resist-ance produced by the gasometer exhausting the nerve-centresof the respiratory muscles would, as in other cases of suchdepression, produce rhythmic variations of activity. A

pathological condition may be a quantitative deviation fromthe normal; and if rhythmic variations should eventually beproved in normal breathing, the exaggeration of this seen, say,in a case of apoplexy might well be considered pathological.Professor CHEVEAU suggested an improvement which

might be made in the instrument of Professor Mosso, whichwould simplify it and diminish the resistance.On the Action of a Secretion obtained from the Medicinal

Leech on the Coagulation of the Blood.Professor HAYCRAFT found that the leech secretes from its

sucker and gullet a juice which prevents the coagulationof the blood, which therefore remains fluid within its body,and is difficult to stop when exuding from the wound afterthe animal is withdrawn. This may be extracted from theanterior part of the creature with water after dehydration inalcohol. The juice destroys the blood-coagulating fermentwithout killing the corpuscles. On invertebrate blood wherethe clotting is due to the welding together of the corpusclesit has no action. When injected into the veins of dogs orrabbits, the animals are thrown into a condition resemblinghasmorrhagic diathesis ; the blood withdrawn from theanimal remaining fluid, and the smallest wound bleeding con.tinuously on this account. It was suggested that in the caseof transfusion of blood any chance of clotting could be pre-vented by injecting small quantities of the substance intothe body of the person from whom the blood was afterwardsto be taken,

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THE INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIVE INVES-TIGATION OF DISEASE.

A STATEMENT has been submitted by Dr. Isambard Owen,general secretary, in which the main object of the Inter-national Committee formed at the Copenhagen Medical

Congress for the Collective Investigation of Disease isdefined as follows. To widen the basis of medical science, togather and store the mass of information that at present goesto waste, to verify or correct existing opinions, to discoverlaws where now only irregularity is perceived, to amplify ourknowledge of rare affections, and to ascertain such points asthe geographical distribution of diseases and their modifica-tions in different districts. It will be its endeavour toplace clearly before the whole profession the limits anddefects of existing knowledge, as well as to stimulateobservation and to give it a definite direction. Thefollowing is the proposed method. A subject having beenselected, a person or persons of acknowledged authoritywill be asked to write a memorandum, in the form of ashort essay, upon it. The memorandum will succinctly givethe present state of our knowledge. It will also point outthe directions in which further research may best be made;and, with this view, will suggest a few simple and definitequestions upon the subject selected. The questions willrelate to matters of fact, to be elicited by observation ofcases, rather than to matters of opinion. The contemplatedorganisation will, it is hoped, in time enable the Committee

to ask and collect answers to these questions from the pro.fession at large wherever scientific medicine is studied orpractised. It will be a further duty to examine, arrange,tabulate, and deduce results from the mass of observationsthus collected, due credit being given to each contributor forthe information he has furnished; and reports on the resultsof the several investigations will be laid before the Inter.national Congress at its next meeting at Washington.

OVER-PRESSURE IN SCHOOLS.

THAT the views which we have thought it our duty toenforce in connexion with the subject of over-pressure inelementary schools are accepted by those who, next tomedical men, are best entitled to express an opinion on thepoint-viz., the school teachers-may be gathered from thefollowing resolutions adopted at a meeting of the ExecutiveCouncil of the National Union of Elementary Teachers onSaturday, the 4th instant.Resolved :-" That this Executive Council, consisting of

men practically engaged for years in the work of elementaryeducation, and representing 13,000 elementary teachers inall parts of the country, endorses the general conclusionsarrived at in Dr. Crichton Browne’s report with respectto over-pressure in schools, and thanks him for themasterly way in which he haa presented the facts ofthe case as known to teachers, and as established bycommunications received from teachers, managers, andparents of pupils in all classes of elementary schools in allparts of England and Wales. That this Executive Councilhas read with the greatest surprise the memorandum ofMr. Fitch on Dr. Crichton Browne’s report, and distinctlyaffirms : 1. That teachers in Mr. Fitch’s district and through-out the country declare that they find detention after schoolhours absolutely necessary to meet the requirements of theinspectors and secure a sufficient number of passes. 2. Thatexaminations, instead of being tests of school work, havebecome, to a great extent, its one aim and guiding principle.3. That the power to withhold children from examinations.isnot, and cannot be, effective to remove the over-pressure solong as the inspector is the sole judge, on the day of exami-nation, of the reasonableness on which children are with-held."

In the face of testimony of this kind, what becomes ofthe charge of exaggeration brought against Dr. CrichtonBrowne by interested or ill-informed critics ?

THE PROGRESS OF CHOLERA.

WITH the advent of cooler weather the number of freshcholera cases in Italy is showing a decided diminution ; theabatement being especially marked in Naples, Genoa, andSpezia, where the force of the epidemic had principallyshown itself. There are still fluctuations ; thus the latestnews from the province of Cuneo relates to a notable increasein the number of attacks ; and notwithstanding the generalabatement which has taken place, the epidemic is stillcausing about 120 deaths a day in the localities concerningwhich statistics are officially published. The accounts fromVenice are contradictory, but even if any cases of truecholera have occurred there, they have been but isolatedones. Rome still remains free from the epidemic.In France, a few cases still occur daily at Toulon and

Marseilles, and a new outbreak is reported from Oran ; butelsewhere the epidemic still maintains signs of subsidence.In Spain, the provinces of Alicante, Lerida, and Tarragonacontinue to be the only ones whence cholera news comes ;and in view of the late season, it may now be confidentlyhoped that the Peninsula will escape any such prevalence aahas occurred in France and in Italy.

QUARANTINE AND INFECTED PORTS.All arrivals in Algeria from Portugal are subjected to a

quarantine of five days ; the quarantine on arrivals fromFrance has been reduced from five to three days.The port and shore of the whole " Circondario" of Genoa