838

cold air is good for consumptives of white race belongingto temperate climates. A hot, equable, sunny climateis not so good for such cases as a cold, variable,cloudy one, as is shown by the contrast between thebad results of treatment in the Philippines and the goodresults obtained in the Adirondack Hills of New York State.All cases cannot, however, be transported to an appropriateclimate, so that a proper environment must be providedlocally. The cooling of the air of hospitals is a simplematter. All that is needed is a " steam coil " or "radiator,"in which circulates cold brine instead of hot water. Thisdoes not radiate, it absorbs, heat. According to Dr. Woodruff,all the air needed to ventilate a ward of 12 beds can becooled from 950 to 550 by an electrically driven apparatusof the capacity known as a "one kilo-watt ammonia com-pression set," which can be installed on a base 10 feet

square. As the coils drip moisture they cannot be put ina ward. Also, the air is damp when it leaves the coils, butit warms up on its way to the ward ; or, if needed, can be ’’

warmed artifi 1ially so as to be delivered dry. The method z’

may be carried out for ordinary dwellings as well as

hospitals. Health would be preserved longer, and more workcould be done with greater ease, if a northerner living inthe tropics could live in and breathe air at a temperatureof 55° ; and this might be effected if the same expenditurewere allowed for cooling in the tropics as for warming incold temperate regions. It may be some years before inthese islands we get a recurrence of the exceptional heat ofthe present summer, but in nearly every year there are spellsof sultry weather which are extremely trying to a consider-able proportion of hospital patients. The installation of acold room for suitable cases would be an admirable offeringfrom some wealthy and benevolent person.

DR. CARL SPENGLER’S "I.K." TREATMENT FORTUBERCULOSIS.

SINCE Professor Koch first introduced tuberculin for thetreatment of tuberculosis several modifications of that

substance have been made and experimented with. Dr.

Carl Spengler, whose researches on the subject are wellknown, has more recently made trial of a derivative of

Koch’s original tuberculin which he has named" I.K." We

have received a communication from Dr. H. W. Godfreycontaining an interesting reszcme of Dr. Spengler’s investiga-tions and also the results of his own experience with thisremedy. Dr. Godfrey explains the various steps which finallyenabled Dr. Spengler to form" I. K.," and further states thatit is a clear solution rendered durable by the addition ofcarbolic acid and sodium chloride solution. It has a two-fold action-antitoxic, which neutralises the poisons pro-duced by the bacillus, and is therefore, directly anti-

febrile ; and secondly, a lytic or bactericidal action.

Dr. Godfrey has treated several patients with" I. K.,"and sums up his conclusions thus: ’’ One of the first

effects of the I.K. treatment is an improvement in thesubjective condition of the patient, he feels better, the

breathing is easier, and as a rule the appetite is improvedand weight gained, there is a decrease in the rhonchi

audible, and the sputum after a few injections is lessened,though at first it may temporarily increase, and the tempera-ture falls in some instances rapidly." Dr. Godfrey thenproceeds to give brief notes of the cases of eight patientswhom he had treated by this remedy. His results are rather

startling. At the termination of the course of treatment allthe patients were either in " perfect health," " perfectlywell," or " quite as well as usual," and one had been " medi-cally examined for insurance and accepted." He does not

.state whether 1 1. K. had been tried in other of his caseswith less wonderfully good progress We are moved,

however, to point out that this preparation has been tried bycompetent observers who have entirely failed to obtain theresults claimed by Dr. Splengler and Dr. Godfrey. Thereis nothing more fallacious than to judge of any treatmentfor pulmonary tuberculosis which has only been tried in afew cases. A very large number of recorded instances arerequired before any definite conclusion can be arrived at;and, further, the preparation must be used by numerous phy.sicians and their results carefully compared. The pupils andfriends of Dr. Spengler have recently published a collectionof his writings as a presentation to him on his fiftieth

birthday. Several articles appear in this volume which havenot been previously published, and the whole forms

interesting reading and a valuable addition to the presentknowledge on tuberculosis and syphilis, though we ask ourreaders to receive the results of employing "I.K." withreserve for the present.

-

A MUCH STUDIED PEOPLE.

IT is necessary to go back but very few years in the litera-

ture of Egyptology to appreciate the extraordinary revolutionwhich has taken place recently in our knowledge of thepeople who lived and fought, who built temples and raisedmonuments, and finally died and were embalmed in ancientEgypt. But a very little while back anyone who desired to

gather information concerning the actual physical remainsof the ancient Egyptians would have found in the literaturelittle save the records of the examination of individualmummies and the comparison of the findings with theaccounts of embalming as given by Herodotus and byDiodorus Siculus. To-day it is very different: an extensiveand specialised literature has sprung up, a vast amount ofwork has been done, and all the search-lights of modernmedical science have been turned on the ancient dead of

Egypt and Nubia. With most of these more modern studieswe have already dealt in our columns, but it would seemthat the time has arrived when some inventory might betaken of our knowledge of the people whose remains,though now the subjects of scientific medical inquiry,have so long been reserved merely for mysteriousspeculations or museum curiosity. The scientific studyof the mummy has ever been in the hands of medical

men, and it may be said with truth that it has been the

medical man, and not the professed Egyptologist, who haslearned the secrets of the arts of embalming as practised inancient Egypt, and who has given us trustworthy dataconcerning the physical condition of the embalmed. Morethan 200 years ago Greenhill wrote Ms "Art of Embalming"

"

and established himself as an authority on mummies. In his

train there followed a number of members of the medical pro-fession. In 1825 Dr. A. B. Granville wrote his "Essay onEgyptian Mummies," and nine years afterwards Dr. T. J.

Pettigrew published a work which is a monument of accurateobservation. Dr. Pettigrew’s History of Egyptian Mummies

"

reached the high-water mark of researches on the methods ofembalmers; for several years no additions were made toreal knowledge ; and many who essayed the task fell intograve errors which Dr. Pettigrew had avoided. The modern

period of research dates no further back than the last 15

years or so, when Professor Alexander Macalister showed themethods by which the physical characters and the mode ofpreparation of mummies might be studied according to

the requirements of modern science. Since then the

study of the mummy has made extraordinary progress.Professor G. Elliot Smith and his co-workers in Egyptand Nubia have enormously elaborated methods and

perfected research, and by the examination of a vast

amount of material have placed our knowledge of the

methods of embalming employed at different historical