Dr. Goethe, expecting the necessity of extracting body in sections; but happily for my own satisfaction and the preservation of my specimen, I succeeded in passing a twine in a catheter through the right axilla, and after drawing a strong tape through with it, succeeded in drawing the shoulder down, and with aid of my tape and right forefinger broke humerous and delivered right arm. The remainder was plain sailing, and I was happy in delivering the body without a single tear or bruise to the mother. The placenta was not of unusual size. The patient made a rapid and uneventful recovery without the establishment of active lactation.

I am sorry to weary you with the details of the case, but hope it may prove interesting in connection with the singular points presented for our consideration. The first thing is the brainless monster. How was it produced in a family where on both maternal and paternal sides there had never been a physical anomaly? Those who believe in maternal impression may find in the fright from the snake some resemblance between this monster and that symbol of subtlety and wisdom. And what is more apparent than what was suggested to me, that this mother, laboring under the terror of night, witnessing her home collapse in flame and smoke-what more natural than that she should transmit to her unborn child the wreck and ruin that she saw, and in the very citadel of this divine temple actually duplicate the sorrows and woe of that night? I shall leave this to those inclined to such things, with the suggestion that there is ample room for the imagination.

Possibly there may have been a connection between this anomaly and the poor health, with repeated shocks, which the mother suffered during her pregnancy.

But, leaving the arena of speculation and imagination to those interested in embryology and teratology, I turn to those especially instructive to the obstetrician. I re

fer, in the first place, to the long period of gestation. I believe that while no one attempts to determine definitely the exact number of days in a normal pregnancy, all agree that they are about two hundred and eighty. But here is a case in which, beyond a doubt, gestation lasted for three hundred and forty-five days, or an excess over a normal period of sixty-five days. I am positive of this. The lady is a lady of intelligence, and she is most emphatic as to the period of last menstruation, her morning sickness, and the time of quickening. But this is not all. In the face of two normal pregnancies and normally developed children of a normal size, she gives birth to a headless monster of extraordinary size, weighing at least ten pounds and possibly twelve. Were there a cranium and contents of a proportionate size, this child must have weighed at least fourteen or fifteen pounds-double the size of her former children.

I believe it is an established principle that pelvic abnormalities, causing more or less obstruction to the outlet of the womb, may cause a prolongation of pregnancy; but this case demonstrated a normal pelvis by two normal births, and, with much difficulty, this large body

There are then these two facts that remain, to my mind. at least, associated as cause and effect: the absent cranium and the long period of pregnancy; and we must conclude that the head and calcified cranium of the fetus is a decided factor in closing the term of a gravid uterus.

The factors which are generally accepted as entering into the precipitation of labor may be briefly summarized as follows: The tension to which the muscular fibers of the womb are subjected in the last months of pregnancy, and their reaction therefrom; the increased irritability of the gravid uterus at menstrual epochs; the progressive changes in tissue and the circulation of the blood about the attachment of the decidua, causing its easy response to an irritable womb in separating, and so acting as a foreign

body. But would these causes so combine if there were no firm cranium to respond to their call, and so increase irritability of the uterus by its hard and unresilient pressure upon its wall as to whip it into active and permanent contractions? My case would seem to answer, "No."

Furthermore, I find, on investigation, that as a rule these acranial monsters are of unusual size, and are spoken of as bodies of fine development. Is it not possible that, as a rule, these monsters, like this specimen, were over term, and attained their malignant growth by extended life in utero?

LA GRIPPE.

BY W. C. LYLE, M.D., AUGUSTA, GA.

I realize that my paper would have been much more opportune could it have been presented some months ago, for at that time there seemed to be a general epidemic of this dread disease, of unusual severity and embracing almost every variety of symptoms.

However, I hope that this paper will at least evoke some interesting discussion relative to a disease which, in many respects, is still a somewhat mysterious one.

During the epidemic of 1890, when grippe attracted such universal attention in Europe, it was at first supposed to be some new disease, a product of our modern civilization, and it was so accepted and treated not only by the public and by the newspaper press; but by a small portion of the educated physicians.

When the epidemic shortly afterwards crossed to this continent, and attacked us in all its fury, it was regarded by many of the medical profession and almost all the laity as only a more fashionable name for a "bad cold."

Further research and more extended investigation, however, revealed the fact that this was merely the reappearance of a disease familiar to the world for ages, but which in its epidemic form has been so long dormant or absent. from the western world, that its very existence had been forgotten, or it was looked upon as an extinct disease.

It may be of interest to introduce at this point a résumé of what students of medical history have resurrected from the past relative to the antiquity of grippe.

Those who have delved into the history of epidemics and epidemiology, recognize in grippe merely a recurrence of à disease which for centuries has periodically ravaged the whole civilized world.

These epidemics date from before the Christian Era, an attack having occurred in the Athenian army in Sicily 415 B. C.

After this they began to appear at irregular intervals, spreading over Europe generally in the direction of from east to west, of which no exact or complete records have been kept up to the year 1510, when it prevailed in the British Isles to quite an alarming extent, and quite an accurate account of the epidemic was written.

Hippocrates himself gives an account of an epidemic which ravaged Northern Greece in the fifth century before our era, a description of which he summed up as follows: "It was an infection frequently, in fact most often, ushered in by a kind of cough, intermittent at first, but recurring and accompanied in its recurrence by visual disturbances, sometimes with anginas and occasionally with paralysis of the limbs. Sometimes it followed a pre-existing fever, producing feebleness, pains, even abscesses of the limbs, etc.

Thus it will be seen that grippe possesses a very respectable antiquity. When we seek for predisposing influences there seem to be few.

People are attacked without regard to age, sex, occupation or social standing; the young and the old, the rich and the poor, male and female, the king upon his throne and beggar in his hovel.

Overcrowded, unhealthy, ill ventilated and damp dwellings render attacks more severe, but the dwellers are no more subject to them.

Previous or present illness is no protection and one attack renders no immunity to another.

Perhaps I should mention here, that according to ob