896

Readers of the late Albert Smith’s popular tale,"Christopher Tadpole," may remember how a medical

man induced an unwilling innkeeper to receive the

corpse of a man killed by an accident by reminding himof the probability that the twelve jurymen would spendtwelve shillings in drinking. The incident at Hackneyought never to have occurred, and it certainly ought notto be repeated before Dr. Westcott or any other coroner.Although the coroner’s court is one of first instance, andmany cases begin and end there, the coroner is in the

position of a judge, and to "heckle" him is as great animpropriety as to heckle a magistrate, a recorder, or ajudge of assize. Moreover, coroners’ jurors are by no

means the only persons who have to suffer loss in

performing a duty to their country. Medical and lay wit-nesses have incurred losses far exceeding the very modestsum of 6s. mentioned previously as incurred by the foreman,though unquestionably that was a very serious sum for aworking man to lose. The debate was wound up by thecoroner saying, "The matter lies in your own hands,and by combination you can get it." The mat’er, we fear,is not quite so simple as Dr. Westcott makes it. Bythe Act of 1887 a coroner’s jury must comprise not

less than twelve and not more than twenty - threemen. Taking the very modest sum of ls. per juror perinquest or even per diem, this would mean a large additionalburden to the rates. Possibly the question would then arise,Why not dispense with coroners’ juries altogether, as is donein many other countries, and place the coroner in thesame position as the procurator-fiscal of Scotland or

the procureur of France ? The case of Matilda Clover is

recent enough to remind us that our death certificationis not perfect, and that a searching inquiry into all

violent, unnatural, and sudden deaths the cause of which isunknown must always form an important part of our socialsystem, and the memorable case just alluded to was a proofof the necessity of having no deaths medically certifiedwhich are not legally entitled to be so dealt with. It mayappear to be a cumbrous and harsh proceeding to summontwelve men to inquire, without remuneration, into the causeof a death which after all turns out to have been a natural

one; but it is not desirable that a death due to homicidal

strychnine poisoning should be certified as due to alcoholism,as happened in the cause célèbre already mentioned. On theother hand, a coroner’s jury, wisely guided by the evidence,sent to trial a wretched murderess whom a bench of

magistrates had discharged on the grounds that no jurywould convict. But the woman was convicted andexecuted.

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VINOUS FERMENTATION WITHOUT YEAST CELLS.

THERE is no more interesting group of bodies in the

organic world than that of the ferments. They are remark-ably complex in chemical composition and possess pro-perties of an extraordinarily energetic character. In their

power to transform one substance into a new and quitedifferent substance perhaps the action of the so-called

unorganised ferments or enzymes, as, for instance, the

diastase of malt or the pepsin and pancreatin of the ali-mentary tract, is more wonderful than when an organismis concerned. To the organised ferments belong the

bacteria and germs of disease, and also yeast, the

common torula. According, however, to an exceedinglyinteresting research carried out recently by Dr. E. Buchner,and published in a recent number of the Berichte derDeutschen Chemischen Gesellschaf, the transformation of

sugar into carbonic acid and alcohol is not necessarilydependent upon the presence of the yeast cells themselves.Rather would the fermentation appear to be directly dueto a substance contained in the cells of the nature of an

unorganised ferment, an enzyme. Dr. Buchner showedthat by crushing pure yeast with sand, with the additionof water, that a liquid could be expressed which, aftercareful filtering, was found to act on cane-sugar like-

yeast-that is to say, in exciting fermentation and pro-

ducing carbonic acid and alcohol in the ordinary way.The addition of chloroform in small quantity does notappear to deter the action, although some precipitation of albuminous substances results. The fermentative

property of this liquid is lost when it is heated to a tempera-ture of50°C., a point which is close to that at which theactive properties of malt diastase are destroyed. Theoutcome of this very important investigation would seem to-be that fermentation is not directly the action of a livingcell, but rather the results of the action of a liquid excretedby the living organism. The precise nature of this actionand the constitution of the enzyme concerned are alike farfrom being understood. Dr. Buchner believes the substanceto be of a proteid nature, and he has proposed to

call it "zymase." The importance of this discoverycannot be doubted when the application of yeast in thearts and industries is taken into consideration. It possesses,too, a very interesting bearing on the study of the vital

processes. We do not doubt that before long a substancecapable of exciting alcoholic fermentation will be preparedon a commercial scale, so that instead of depending uponthe uncertain action of yeast cells we may have a reliablesubstance yielding definite products. I Zymase" should beapplicable to the estimation of sugar in urine and make thismethod depending upon fermentation more exact, since itwill exclude errors arising from the gas produced by theliving cell itself or from other sources, while, still more

important, the action would be due to the presence of sugaralone, and give an accurate estimate of this substance apartaltogether from the presence of other reducing substancesthat might occur along with-it.

THE BLACK WATCH.

LORD G. HAMILTON recently, in reply to a question bySir H. Maxwell in the House of Commons, stated that themonthly returns from India showed that enteric fever hadprevailed in this corps quartered at Subathu, a hill station inthe Punjab on the road to Simla, during April, May, andJune, increased in July, August, and September, butdiminished greatly in October, and ceased in November.Lord G. Hamilton added that the report on the health ofthe British troops for 1896 had not yet reached him and thathe would ask the Government of India to expedite it and tofurnish information as to the water-supply of all the hillstations on that route-namely, Subathu, Dagshai, Kassauli,Solon, and Jutogh. The amount of enteric fever at thehill stations in India is considerable, and at several of themseems to have been increasing of late years. At Subathuthere have been several outbreaks of the fever from time to,

time, and the medical history of the station in this respectwould indicate that it is less healthy than other hill stationsin the neighbourhood. The maximum prevalence of entericfever corresponds greatly with the period of maximum heat;it rises in April and May, falls somewhat during the rainyseason (monsoon), and again rises somewhat as that seasonends. During the past year there has been a relative or

complete absence of rain in India, with failure of the cropsand famine as a consequence, and the cases have continuedto occur during the whole of the hot season. There is, ofcourse, something over and above the effects of climatic heatto account for the origin and prevalence of enteric fever;heat is only one of the factors. The greater liability of onestation as compared with another to outbreaks of this feverpoints to the presence of some specific cause and local

insanitary conditions. A water-supply derived from wells